hobbit-humanist
Humanism, atheism, some politics and lots of common sense.
Archive for the tag “Hitchens”
Hitchens Remembered
It’s been a little over a year since Christopher Hitchens died. Usually I never get upset about people I’ve never met dying but I did with Hitchens. I sat there that day with my head in my hands on reading the news, it was expected because he had cancer but I always thought he might beat it, sadly he didn’t and I felt devastated at his passing because he was a great influence on me. I think it was at that point I resolved to do a Humanist blog, and of course a little later this came into being.
Few people can match his elegance with words, his skill at debating, his brevity and his knowledge. He was a man of extensive life experience, had a ready wit and love the little indulgences in life. I still read his books, watch him on YouTube and use his lines in debate. In short, I miss not seeing more of him.
Here’s an article with some of his many great quotes.
Ministries of Deception
If you type the word ‘Ministries’ into Google or Facebook and do a search you’ll find the list of results pretty staggering. There’s an endless list of Ministries and Pastors and that’s just in America. They all have slick professional websites, they all have Facebook pages where people hang on their every word and repeatedly type ‘Amen’ – in their brainless thousands.
There’s no doubt at all regarding where the battle for hearts and minds is being fought, it’s here on the internet. Anyone can tap into Christianity at any time at the click of a button in the comfort of their own home, the message of God is delivered to your monitor screen and so is the merchandise.
What do I think? I think the charismatic people that run these ministries of deception are intellectual slave holders peddling empty messages of hope in order to gain from it financially – it’s that simple.
The leaders of these Ministries are all dressed impeccably, white teeth, immaculate hair, nice clothing, great turn of charismatic phrase and a constant stream of bullshit coming out of their mouths yet people follow them like sycophantic sheep unable to think or question for themselves.
I’ll admit though, it’s not all one sided, there seems to be some Atheist Facebook groups that are aggressive in posturing and seem intent on making fun on Christians. I’m not for this approach, I may pity Christians, I may reason with them but I respect them as they are people after all but that said – I think there is a real need to challenge religion at every turn to try and demonstrate it’s not needed.
How can Atheists fight this huge tidal wave of religious fervour and folklore nonsense?
Join a discussion forum and put your points across. Challenge Christians that preach in the street with rational argument and debate, blog about things, start a Facebook group, quote slogans by great thinkers (Mencken, Hitchens et al) on religious websites, print and put posters up on church message boards concerning atheist events or inspirational quotes by great minds.
There was a recent local instance near me where atheists challenged a church over false advertising in which the church claimed it could heal the sick and various ailments and obviously couldn’t. The local advertising standards made them remove the false messages. Cheaper parking was also challenged by local secularists alarmed at Christians getting cheaper parking to attend church services around the city.
The fight back against religious control, bigotry, brainwashing and nonsense is very real – it’s gaining momentum.
Be pragmatic, be strong, be sensible, don’t be afraid to question and fight back with reasoning, common sense, individuality and human spirit – free from the tyranny of any gods or ministries created in their names.
Inspirational
Ok, so this quote has been used a fair bit but it is very relevant, succinct and well… just inspirational.
“It is a horrible idea that there is somebody who owns us, who makes us, who supervises us, waking, and sleeping, who knows our thoughts, who can convict us of thought-crime, who can judge us while we sleep for things that might occur to us in our dreams, who can create us sick, as apparently we are, and then order us – on pain of eternal torture – to be well again. To demand this, to wish this to be true, is to wish to live as an abject slave. It is a wonderful thing that we now have enough information, enough intelligence, and – I hope – enough intellectual and moral courage to say that this ghastly proposition is founded on a lie, and to celebrate that fact.”
Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011
Don’t Fear The Reaper
This week I had some minor surgery to my eye and the experience made me reflect on medical attention I’d had in the past. Over the years I’ve had quite a few operations to various parts of my body and I feel a huge debt to the National Health Service here in Britain which is free to all, it’s a great achievement and something envied around the world.
Anyway, without digressing too much, surgery in the past has involved anaesthetic. The amazing thing about a general anaesthetic is that you feel nothing, a peaceful blackness envelops you and you are whisked away to a void, bereft of consciousness and pain, one thing for sure it puts the brain into deep slumber and all is peaceful. Often on coming out of an anaesthetic and being reintroduced back to the world and pain again I’ve yearned to return to the black serene void to escape reality.
I imagine death to to be like an anaesthetic or the closest living experience we can get to it, do I fear death? No, perhaps I did once but once you come to terms with the one certainty in your life, the fear subsides. Do, I want to die? Of course not, who does? (Apart from crazed religious fanatic suicide bombers perhaps?)
Death gives us impetus and inspiration to live life, a realisation we must set goals, targets and live very much for the present as despite religious claims nobody is really certain what lies beyond, it’s always been the eternal enigma and indeed fear of mankind, it’s also been the obsession and prime controlling method of many religions.
One of the reasons I no longer fear death is that I have no control over it and neither can I do nothing about it so my conclusion is why worry or dwell on it?
I’ve seen death first hand. Some years ago I consented to my mothers life support machine being switched off on the advice of doctors. A nurse led me to her bedside and explained the procedure, she pointed out the blood pressure monitor on a panel and said when it dropped below a certain number my mother would be dead, it was all very matter of fact. I held her small cold hand, her partner sat opposite me the other side of the bed, the nurse left and the monitor beeped as my mums pressure dropped. We sat, we waited. Tears streamed down our faces and we both spoke to her even though she couldn’t hear us. Looking back now, I recall us blaming her for wasting her life, for indulging in excess alcohol and throwing it all away at such a young age. The reality was she was the only one to blame for destroying her health by her own volition.
The monitor stopped beeping. My mother lay dead, we fell silent.
I didn’t for one second think she had gone to some ethereal paradise but I did think she had at last found peace from the torment she had in the real world.
A few days later and the bitter irony was I had to take my mothers mum to see her daughter lay in the hospital mortuary. She was frail and leaned upon me and when she entered the small room where my mother lay she raised her walking stick and blamed my mum for wasting her life before breaking down into tears. It was something I never want to repeat. Again though, concern for the validity and gift of life was voiced by my grandmother.
A few years later that same old lady, my grandmother passed away, the thing was I mourned her loss more than my mothers for several reasons. Before she passed away we spoke of death, the fact was she longed for it, craved it’s solace away from her aches and pains and failing body, she had no fear of death.
Everything must end, nothing lasts forever even though we want it too. The Bible describes an celestial paradise but the reality is there’s few details but lots of imagination. The Koran gives offers more details. nubile houri’s, mountains of food, lush flowing rivers and many rewards.
Do I believe in an afterlife or heaven? No. I can see why an afterlife is appealing but lets be honest here, the practicalities of immortality are absurd.
I pretty much think Christopher Hitchens description of heaven being a celestial North Korea is very appropriate. After a lifetime of bending the knee we’d be presented with yet more, that’s when subservience would really begin. If it existed I’d imagine it to be something Orwellian, a sombre dystopia of identical homes and town built around yet more churches and statues, sirens calling you to debase yourself before your dictatorial benefactor and eternal life giver. There’d be no bars, no vices, no rock concerts, no cinema’s, nothing at all that could stimulate our base urges and enable us to further explore our humanity. It would be a sterile affair with constant subjugation and observance.
We’d be thrust into an eternity of abasement spent with relatives we never got along with in the real world. An eternity to do nothing but worship more, and with all the time you needed there’d be no inspiration to undertake anything because the concept of time would be redundant.
This is what I imagine a heaven to be like.
Valhalla of course, now that sounds an interesting place, feisty wenches, duels, roaring fires, flagons of wine and songs drifting up into smoky wooden beams of a Viking hall.
When you look at different religions they all have various takes on an afterlife, all are hopeful speculation based on the human imagination.
As for the here and now? Live it to the full, experience all you are able and when your body is old and broken and a full life has been lived welcome the peaceful nothingness that follows, after all, you’ve experience something wonderful that is life, a miracle in itself, you’ve done your bit, played your part and nothing lasts forever.
As the iconic Blue Öyster Cult’s song says – Don’t Fear the Reaper.
Tipping The Scales
Paul Edwards who edited and edited and wrote the introduction to his long time friend Bertrand Russell’s ‘Why I am not a Christian’ once said;
“Atheism may be defined as the view that ‘God exists’ is a false statement. But there is also a broader sense in which an atheist is someone who rejects belief in god … it may be rejected because it is incoherent or meaningless, because it is too vague to be of any explanatory value, or because as LaPlace put it in his famous exchange with Napoleon, there is no need for this ‘hypothesis’. Atheism in this broader sense remains distinct from agnosticism, which advocates suspension of judgement. It is surely possible to justify atheism in this broader sense.”
If you are wandering who LaPlace is in the above quote then it refers to French Physicist. mathematician and astronomer Pierre LaPlace who served Napoleon Bonaparte. On reading ‘Celestial Mechanics’ by LaPlace which explained the universe in terms of natural causes Bonaparte observed and mentioned to LaPlace that it had no mention of god. LaPlace replied with;
“Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis.”
It’s only fair to mention here that Bonaparte’s seems a bit of a maverick leaning towards atheists when it comes to matters of faith though generally declared his religion to be that of the country he happened to be invading at the time, he even imprisoned a pope on invading Italy. He was quoted as saying;
“As for myself I do not think such a person as Jesus ever existed; but as the people are inclined to superstition, it is proper not to oppose them.”
He also said;
“I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world, and yet they lay their hands on everything they can get.”
There’s other interesting quotes of Bonaparte but I want to return to the original one by Paul Edwards which to me sums things up nicely. Religion is meaningless to me in a personal sense but on a worldwide scale I see organised religion as manipulative, deceptive and dangerous. Though I’m a secular humanist, atheist or whatever people want to label me I would personally consider myself a militant atheist or as Christopher Hitchens called himself an ‘Anti-theist’. Agnostics annoy me in the fact I feel it is just fence sitting, especially when evidence against god and creationism weighs far heavier on the side of the scales for sense and reasoning.
The Bradford Spring
I’ll be blunt, I’ve no respect for the George Galloway MP, who ironically stands for the Respect party. His victory in the Bradford West by-election in the news today was celebrated by George before the result was even announced. In his winning speech he crowed it was the greatest ‘by election victory ever’, it wasn’t.
Afterwards George was held aloft by his supporters in the street but was also attacked by someone throwing eggs. Why don’t I like George? well where should I begin, the list would be extensive. This is a man after all that shook hands with tyrant Saddam Hussein and said “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability”. One thing is for sure, the people of Bradford won’t be represented by him that much as he hardly attended parliament sessions when he was MP for Bethnal Green and Bow.
George is very much an ego, this is a man who boasted about bedding women in Greece during during the War on Want conference which in 1988 led to tabloid front page news which led to a vote of no confidence in him from his constituency Labour party. Later in 2003 he was expelled from the Labour party of comments regarding the Iraq war and the leaders behind it. In his winning speech today he proved the wounds of expulsion are still there as he rounded on the current Labour party and Tony Blair, though personally speaking he can carry on doing that as I’ve no time for him either. George wants Labour as it used to be, the point to mention here is that the old Labour party never won elections, hence Thatchers long reign. The simple fact is, Labour had to modernise in order to become electable and Blair did at least facilitate that shift.
George defends regimes in the Arab world knowing full well of human rights abuses, he even defended Iran by saying gay and lesbians weren’t at risk of execution, a claim that has been refuted by all every reputable human rights organisation.
Then we could move onto the fact that when he was a sitting MP he went on the reality tv show Big Brother which showed scenes of Galloway in mine and many others opinion bullying fellow contestant Michael Barrymore. I’ve no liking for Barrymore, he gets on my nerves but it didn’t take an idiot to realise that at the time Barrymore was emotionally unstable and not in a good place. After initially befriending him and commenting what a difficult time he’d had at the hands of others George had no qualms in moving in for the kill when a disagreement occurred.
I recently heard George Galloway on a radio programme, the subject of Christopher Hitchens recent death came up and he gloated about it, remarking along the lines of ‘I hope he now knows god is not only great but is merciful’. This comment following plenty of derogatory remarks of Hitchens, and George stands for a party called Respect, hard to believe eh?
There’s no doubt Galloway is a half decent orator and has character to a degree, though I personally find him boorish, egotistical and self centered. Whilst Galloway winning Bradford West has no doubt rocked the Labour party I suspect his cry of this is the ‘Bradford Spring’ will see little bloom in the political winter I feel that we are now in. Galloway has a receptive audience in Bradford because of his links and knowledge of the Asian community both at home and abroad. It was an easy sure fire win for him. This is not really a great victory for Galloway, its just the people of Bradford west either not voting or saying they’ve had enough with the current political parties and recent cuts, which as a nation we all have.
Some interesting articles here regarding George Galloway;
The Commentator
The Telegraph has articles here and here
The Independant
Hitch Slaps
There’s lots of good videos on YouTube I could post on here but I don’t really want it to be that type of blog, an endless stream of videos of other people. However when I stumble on good ones I’ll add them. The late Christopher Hitchens was a very big influence on me (still is, and always will be!) so it is only fitting I should share this compilation of what are termed ‘Hitch Slaps’ of the great man in debate with others.
