I watched Christopher Hitchens' CNN interview with Anderson Cooper with gathering sympathy. He had cancer. He was going to die. Apart from that, the treatment seemed about to kill him, and he was feeling very unwell. This man who often had a cigarette or a drink close at hand sat with the quiet of a man drained of energy, and reached out a hand to take a sip of water.
He was in the hands of medicine. He was hopeful but realistic. He will come to feel increasingly like a member of the audience in the theater of his own illness. I've been there. There were times when I seemed to have nothing to do with it. One night, unable to speak, I caught the eye of a nurse through my open door and pointed to the blood leaking from my hospital gown. She pushed a panic button and my bed was surrounded by an emergency team, the duty physician pushing his fingers with great force against my carotid artery to halt the bleeding. I was hoisted on my sheet over to a gurney, and raced to the OR. "Move it, people," he shouted. "We're going to lose this man."
I was calm and completely lucid. I watched like an interested observer. The pain medication probably detached me. My wife hadn't then told me that after a previous rupture, I'd been declared dead on the operating table. Dying isn't so bad. It's getting sick and dying that's the hard part. I had radiation which made me nauseous for months. I have no reason to doubt that chemotherapy, which Hitchens is on, can be much worse.
The militant atheist mentioned to Cooper "the astonishing number of prayer groups" that were supporting him. He noted there were also groups praying for him to suffer and die. And other groups praying that he be redeemed, "so my soul gets saved even if my wretched carcass does not.""So you don't pray at all?" Cooper said. "No, that's all meaningless to me. I don't think souls or bodies can be changed by incantation." There was a catch in his voice, and the slightest hint of tears. That was the moment -- not the cancer or the dying -- that got to me. Prayer groups also prayed for me, and I was grateful and moved. It isn't the sad people in movies who make me cry, it's the good ones.
Hitchens added that if there should be reports of his deathbed conversion, they would be reports of a man "irrational and babbling with pain." As long as he retains his thinking ability, he said, there will be no conversion to belief in God. This is what I expected him to say. Deathbed conversions have always seemed to me like a Hail Mary Pass, proving nothing about religion and much about desperation.
As it happened, a day or two before I learned of Hitchens' illness, I'd finished reading his new memoir, Hitch-22. The man can write. He has lived a life. He has seen for himself, making it a point to travel regularly to dangerous and wretched nations. He has been a man of political passion, beginning first as a Trotskyite and becoming in recent years a supporter of the Neocon war in Iraq. He has said he now believes capitalism to be a more useful economic tool than socialism, yet remains a believer in the views of Trotsky and Marx. He voted for Nader in 2000, said he leaned slightly toward Bush in 2004, voted for Obama in 2008. So he actually is that rare creature, a swing voter. He takes his positions after a great deal of thought and he makes his reasons clear. I now understand more fully why an intelligent person could be a Trotskyite or a Neocon, although I continue to believe not many intelligent people are. I think it takes more conviction to be a Trotskyite, because that persuasion has always been unpopular and at times fatal.Hitchens shows himself as a man temperamentally driven to test his own opinions. He reasons instead of proselytizing. He exists as that most daring of writers, a freelance intellectual. He's a good speaker, can be funny, has bad teeth, is passably good-looking, and is at no pains to be a charmer. He's popular because he's smart. He says nothing merely to be politic, although in some situations he may keep his meaning coiled well within. Some years ago when I met him at the Telluride Film Festival, I was unaware of his fairly recent defection from the Left. I told him I read him in the Nation, which he'd by then severed his ties with. His reply was a masterpiece of irony, masked as egotism: "How clever of you."
Revised the morning of 8/13/10 to describe Hitchens' politics more accurately.
I've read his book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. I believe religion in its many forms has been the greatest single inspiration for man's inhumanity to man, but I would not agree it poisons everything. Those rare people who practice in their lives the underlying principles of their religions are most often good for themselves and others. Those who use religion as a means toward thought control and rigid conformity are twisted and deranged. Anyone who would use religion as their reason to cause unhappiness to another is guilty of a great sin. These sins are committed first against their children. They have learned nothing from their faiths. The extremists of both Christianity and Islam, for example, follow lives of violent repudiation of the beliefs of their own religions.
Hitchens' remarks on the passing of Jerry Falwell were on the mark. Interviewed during a CNN obituary of Falwell, Hitchens brought a sharp turn in the program's tone: "The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing, that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called reverend. Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September the 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God's punishmen -- if they hadn't got some kind of clerical qualification?"
Reverend Pat Robertson stepped into Falwell's shoes with his contemptible claim that the earthquake in Haiti was the result of that nation's "pact with Satan." It's shameful that churchgoers sincerely trying to live good lives are subjected to such poisonous roadblocks in their search for meaning.
As to the larger question of whether God exists, I would agree with Hitchens that we can't rule out the possibility of some indefinable first mover, although I'm sure he doesn't mean mover as a being but as a force. To hope we can learn how the universe came about is admirable; one might as well call that hope by any name. Whatever one calls it, it's by definition outside the reach not only of our knowledge, but of knowledge itself.
I was asked at lunch today who or what I worshipped. The question was asked sincerely, and in the same spirit I responded that I worshipped whatever there might be outside knowledge. I worship the void. The mystery. And the ability of our human minds to perceive an unanswerable mystery. To reduce such a thing to simplistic names is an insult to it, and to our intelligence.
Christopher Hitchens has spent his lifetime trying to figure out that small part of life the mind can comprehend. Now he's closer than most to that undiscovere'd country, from whose bourne no traveler returns. We all began that journey at the moment of our birth. We will all surely complete it. What lies beyond is no more knowable than what lay before. As a mourner in a pet cemetery in "Gates of Heaven" so truly observes, "Death is for the living and not for the dead so much."
[ The drawing is courtesy of David Hayward at www.nakedpastor.com. This entry was revised on the morning of 8/13/10 to make the description of Hitchens' politics more accurate. ]
Sigh...I have no idea to say.
Christopher Hitchens quotes numerous people in his book The Missionary Position. Here are three I really like:
Star light, star bright...we look up and we hope the stars look down, we pray that there may be stars for us to follow, stars moving across the heavens and leading up to our destiny, but it's only our vanity. We look at the galaxy and fall in love, but the universe cares less about us than we do about it, and the stars stay in their courses however much we may wish upon them to do otherwise. It's true that if you watch the sky-wheel turn for a while you'll see a meteor fall, flame and die. That's not a star worth following; it's just an unlucky rock. Our fates are here on earth. There are no guiding stars.
- Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh
Naturally, there are puzzles. I would like to know whether or not the universe is finite or infinite. I would like even better to be assured that the two words are meaningless. But excepting the sort of puzzle which makes our passage here interesting and gives incentive to our questioning games, I see no mystery at the heart of things and take comfort from Wittgenstein's profoundly unpopular dictum, 'Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us.
- Gore Vidal, Two Sisters
DEAR ANN LANDERS:
Often the simple things in life can make the most difference. For example, when someone asked Mother Teresa how people without money or power can make the world a better place, she replied, 'They should smile more.' - Prince George, B.C.
DEAR PRINCE:
What a splendid response. Thank you.
22 May 1995
Thank you for writing this. I think I am not alone in having a very complicated (and of course, one-sided) relationship with Hitchens. Loved his attack on Kissinger, thought his attack on Clinton was reeking with sanctimony. But they were of course part of the same seeking of a moral high ground.
Likewise, just as I thought he had become yet another toady to the Right, he releases a book which is so hostile to religion that one can't imagine him being given a seat at the table of the right-wing.
And now in that interview, he's facing his own mortality without the slightest trace of self-pity, and without the slightest trace of compromise.
I hope we will have him for some time to come, but when he does go, I don't think we shall see his like again. And as much as he's made my blood boil over the past 15 years, I realized in watching that interview how much I'll miss him when he's gone.
You wrote this with a obituary like feel. He isn't dead yet, and hopefully Hitch will get into more adventures and add to his already larger then life persona.
Just yesterday, I learned that my friend has Stage 3 intestinal cancer. He needs 6 months worth of treatment, a session per month, each costing about 4 times what he earns in the same period.
They removed two tumors from his stomach, one the size of his fist. Being a world away, I only saw a picture his friends took of him while he was at home resting, waiting for the news of his biopsy which he now prepares for with what surely must be great pain and uncertainty. He was looked grim.
He's a joker, one of the jolliest of sorts. The last I saw him, he kept on telling stories of his daughter, who was as old as mine is now, and how she seemed to be taking up his mischievous side. He told them to me and my wife to guide us on our own new path of parenthood. Now when I recall his tales, I can't help but cry.
He's not gone, he's still here, and I shouldn't treat him as if he's "dead man walking." But many days I can't help but worry and take pity.
Death is the great equalizer, it happens to the worst and the best. The brightest and the darkest. The ones who deserve to go to hell, and those who deserve to be canonized. We are all close to it at varying degrees, to which we will have no idea how much.
I have never really known much about Hitch, but knowing what my friend is going through, no person needs to go through this suffering. My heart is with him.
Dear Mr. Ebert
Until I read your first tweet about Mr. Hitchens I had no idea who he is. I have no become a fan.
I too was diagnosed with Esophageal Cancer. I breezed through surgery where my esophagus and 2/3 of my stomach were removed. What remained of my stomach was then pulled up into my chest and reattached at the back of my throat. It was the chemo and radiation that almost killed me.
Happily, that was 6 years ago.
Please tell Mr. Hitchens that there is light at the end of the tunnel - and he can beat this.
I am sure, that in having cancer yourself, you can also attest to the fact that there are days when it seems like the inevitable is near, but then the next day doesn't seem as bad.
It has taken me this long - 6 yrs - to recover and I still face major obstacles on a daily basis as I am sure alot of people, yourself included have come to expect and accept. The alternative sucks!
The stats on Esophageal Cancer are not good. In fact they are horrible. In the US alone, there will be approximately 14000 diagnoses this year. Of that number approximately 11,000 will sucumb to the disease. However high those numbers seem - EC is still considered an Orphan Cancer and for the most part incurable. Please pass along my good wishes to Mr. Hitchens and my continued hope for a speedy resolution for him that is uneventful and enduring.
My continual good wishes to you also for your continued good health.
Sincerely
Nancy Westacott
www.serendopeity.wordpress.com
http://twitter.com/serendopeity
Very good piece. Hitchens has impacted my life in a fairly large way and I am very grateful to have discovered his writing and debating skills when I did. I saw him on Bill Maher's show, where he quite openly and hilariously gave the finger to the audience. I was immediately shaken by his directness and his lack of need for sugar-coating his thoughts to make them more palatable for the general audience.
To quote that old fellow Oscar Wilde:
"A gentleman never offends unintentionally."
His writing and many, many fine debates with such people as Douglas Wilson, Dinesh D'Souza and others on the subject of religion have, I think added real substance to the issues that we are currently facing. Hitchens' doggedly practical attitude towards the topic, in my opinion, sets him apart from someone like Dawkins. None of "The Four Horsemen" can match his eloquence by a long mile.
Great article on Hitchens, he is a great writer, and you put his illness into perspective. Thank you for being honest about him.
Fantastically written, Roger.
But I think you mean "Death is for the living..." instead of life.
And why didn't you review The Other Guys last week? It was underwhelming, to be sure, but I was curious to get your opinion on it!
I've read Hitchens for years, and there was never a moment I didn't enjoy him, even in the instances I disagreed (as with Iraq). I always loved the way he went on news shows and would politely but vociferously disagree with the host - and there's that beautiful parting line about Falwell: "if you gave him an enema you could bury him in a matchbox."
Hitchens is the kind of man they used to built tombs for. When he goes (unfortunately close on the horizon), only his own words could do him a worthy epitaph.
Every so often I think about death – if it would be instant or slow, painful or painless, remembered or forgotten. I can only imagine the pain you went through during your struggle with cancer four years ago (and I'm glad and grateful that you've recovered since then), as I've never experienced near-death experiences and have attended three funerals of family members I knew personally so far in my life. More recently I was particularly reminiscent after reading the sensationalist article on the "methane bubble" caused by BP's gulf crisis, and contemplated what and how I would act in the last six months of my life.
At first I was terrified. The prospect of likely dying or feasibly surviving in the aftermath shook my imagination, and looking around I saw that everything was comfortable and familiar with – family, friends, buildings, nature, memoria – it would all be gone. However, after a few minutes I started thinking more calmly: since matter and energy can't be created or destroyed, invariably my mind and body will somehow cycle back into the laws of the universe. The classic "dust to dust" would apply to my body, but my conscious - when put into this logic - could very well be disintegrated into potential energy and shuffle back into another part of the universe. In a sense, I wouldn't disappear: I'd just be reassembled into something else, physically and mentally/energy wise.
Eventually I got shaken out of the doomsday mindset with some sound logic (and a nice "de-myth" piece to follow up), but my thoughts about death have stuck around with me since then. In a strange way, it's comforting to have death on my mind frequently enough: acknowledging its inevitably helps ease the anxiety, which is probably the worse part about the entire aspect to begin with. Simply the idea of matter and energy conservation - typically applied to physics and theoretical studies of it - and applying it to the concept of death almost has a sort of bizarre logic to the whole idea.
Typically most religions (or at least the Abrahamic ones) purport that there's a design and reason for everything, and that God has a plan for every one of us. I've never liked this idea personally because the "God has a plan" idea has been used often as a cop-out for human actions and motivations; instead, I like to believe that like atoms and molecules, we're all spontaneously existing with a false sense of what is "solid" – for instance, if you look at the human body at an atomic level, it would seem like our individual selves are more composed of a swarm of atoms that cluster together to form organs and tissues which invariably make up what we define as a "closed" body. In a way, our bodies really aren't any different than a swarm of bees that make up a hive: individual parts randomly clustering to create a greater being, but nonetheless random in collection and existence.
In a way, science and philosophy aren't very different at all. As you get more and more theoretical scientific postulates like quantum mechanics, it becomes more and more apparent how so much of our technology-based lives are derived from the most abstract theories imaginable, and how similar these theories are to classic philosophies like Descartes ("I think therefore I am" ~ "conscious existence is derived from potential energy").
I believe there's an old samurai philosophy stating that life is dream, and death is the true awakening once we are released from this world. I may be wrong about the source, but the philosophy is something I've kept close to me ever since I heard it years ago. I don't know much about Christopher Hitchens at this point (only wikipedia articles and tidbits about him here and there), but I don't think my reasoning and thoughts about death are too far off from his philosophy in general. It will be sad to see him go, but at the same time I like to believe he'll be released from the pains of his last days, and that his body and conscious energy will cycle back into the span of the universe that is possibly beyond our fullest comprehension.
Beautiful piece, Roger. I've admired Hitchens' masterful writing for many years, though not nearly as many years as I've admired yours. I hope both of you keep writing for years to come.
"How clever of you." That's just brilliant.
I'm pretty much with you and Hitchens here. Although I disagree with some of Hitchens' more right-wing views (supporting the War in Iraq, criticizing health care reform), I sympathize with him (and you) in religious terms. Although I fear that when I'm on my deathbed I'll probably succumb to praying, with me being a baptized Catholic and all.
You mention Gates of Heaven, which at times even inspired me to want to pay as much tribute to my late pets as it did the Harbert family, as documented by Morris' camera. Recently the film that's made me most question my feelings about religion and death is John Huston's Wise Blood (1979). I don't know if you've ever seen it, but it stirred me to the core and I think Hitchens would like it, too; it would make for a great companion piece in your Great Movies series alongside The Dead.
Really enjoyed reading this, I'd say this is your best blog yet.
Hitchens is great because he makes us think. He is absolutely a philosopher who works by reason and questioning his own stance. We need characters like this to blow the whistle on some of the hypocrisies of the world, to be down to earth to a fault.
Good luck Mr. Hitchens, you're a bad ass. You too Ebert.
No, Mr. Ebert, I would not say that religion is source of all evil and wars it's greed. Just look at ex USSR or China where religion is forbidden and how much peace they have?
And when it comes to September 11 that you mention you should rather ask the question "How is it possible to land Boing 757 in the heart of the most powerful and technologically advanced army in the world whiteout a single bullet being shot in defense?"
Ebert: Religion is not forbidden in China.
Many thousands of Boeing 757s land here every year.
"I responded that I worshipped whatever there might be outside knowledge. I worship the void. The mystery. And the ability of our human minds to perceive an unanswerable mystery. To reduce such a thing to simplistic names is an insult to it, and to our intelligence."..RE
To worship, after all, is to adore. One who believes in praying cannot but do so, specially for a person who has engaged in dialog of words, not blows, with the wish that he has more time to continue dialog. As Daisaku Ikeda said, when a wish becomes strong, it is a prayer.
That's probably my favorite quote from Gates of Heaven, a film as mysterious and amazing now as it ever was. I wonder if Mr. Hitchens has seen it.
But aren't the rituals of death also for the living? I would imagine the dead no longer care so much.
Once again Roger, your eloquent writing astounds me.
As I was reading, I was struck by the realization that science and religion share one thing in common: the ability to be used for great good and great evil. Just as the Church has its Jerry Falwell's and it's Mother Teresa's, science has its Einstein's and its Josef Mengele's. Both have the ability to be used for great good and great evil if abused.
I just want you to know that I pray for you every night. The world needs more men like you. Just know that no matter what you believe, you will always be loved.
It's so weird seeing Hitchens labeled as a Neocon, but I suppose it's true. It really muddy's the waters when you have so many fools also under the label.
Poignant and well stated, Roger. perhaps one of your finest entries to date.
One thing I'd like to commend you for is your comment in deference to the atrocious comments Pat Robertson made concerning Haiti. I remember the day that story broke.
My reaction was to call into a morning radio show which had opened up a line for people to voice their opinion on what Robertson had said. As I recall, I was so fed up that my exact words ended up being "Speaking as a Christian, I really wish Rat Robertson would just shut up and go away." This wasn't the first time he'd used a catastrophe to condemn the afflicted. After 9/11, he was one of the evangelists who pulled a similar stunt and notoriously stated that we were attacked because we had lost God's grace due to our rampant sin. I guess the guys in the planes who were members of an extremist terrorist group had no part in the matter.
Sadly, the comments about Haiti weren't so much surprising as saddening. That episode served to reinforce my adamant belief that there is a world of difference between religion and actual faith. I have the latter and men like Robertson have the former. It's a pulpit for them, not a philosophy or faith..just a soapbox which affords them power. They do not represent the truth that most down to earth Christians believe in. In fact, you pretty much nailed it- a lot of us who believe that Christ was the son of God simply make our best effort to pass through life showing compassion to others and trying to make the world a little better for our having been in it despite our inherent human frailties and myriad mistakes. The problem is that the people who use the teachings of Christ (or any other divine figure) to dominate and persecute those who think differently are better organized, have louder voices and the political pull to make those voices heard.
I have no contempt for Hitchens. I look at him and I don't see an atheist,a sinner or anything else.. see a man dying of cancer,which sucks no matter what your beliefs are.
Do I believe Hitchens is going to Heaven? Well,no obviously not if he doesn't believe in God. Does that matter? Not one damned bit. All that matters is that a human being is dying and the particular manner in which he's dying brings with it a lot of suffering. That's a cause for sorrow. Shame on anyone who prays for him to suffer and dares to engage in the charade that they are a proper representative of any faith.
You (and Hitchens, and those of his ilk) tend to completely overlook religion's anthropological value, etc. What purpose it's served. Everything serves a purpose, and especially something as large and pervasive as religion. To pretend it's just a horrible poison (cancer would have been better, but i didn't want to seem to be making an obscene joke) and yet has persisted and been at the center of so much, is simply - dishonest-seeming. Sociology talks about manifest and latent purposes, and I think the latent ones of religion are worth considering. Ivan Karamazov, a far nobler atheist than Hitchens or Dawkins could ever hope to be (for Ivan felt the absence of God painfully, as something that was not desirable; he understood that if God doesn't exist, it's a horrible thing, not something one should gloat over or be happy about), said it best: "There would have been no civilisation if they hadn't invented God." You and Hitchens and Dawkins and whomever else are horribly dishonest, or victims of a huge blind spot on the issue- everything in human civilization is load-bearing, and religion has borne perhaps the heaviest load of all.
I am not religious myself, and ultimately am probably either an atheist or an agnostic. But I am open-minded, and truly reasonable as far as I can be, and I do not pretend to be smarter than I am. And I do not look at such a huge conception as 'God' or such a gigantic, longstanding institution as religion, and write them off as stupid delusions that have caused all the evil in the world. As Ivan pointed out, as anthropologists and historians could corroborate, there would be no world, as such, if not for religion having been (and God having 'been'). And further, as already pointed out, the absence of God, the falseness of all religious beliefs, is not good, is not liberation, but desolation. And any really reasonable man would recognize this fact. There is no real basis for (true) ethics (ie, there can be a biological/sociological basis for it, but no reason for ethical behavior that is itself ethical and ultimately unmotivated by self-interest), there is no possibility of establishing an objective purpose for one's life, without God. It's as simple as that and there is no way around it. And obviously those are significant losses, and it's left to the Viktor Frankl's and Albert Camus's and Miguel de Unamuno's of the world to help us soldier on in our new condition, bereft of meaning or objective purpose. To pretend this is no loss is not only stupid and dishonest, it's offensive.
And I say this as a non-believer. It's a much more complicated issue than this set has let on. It's remarkable to me that 19th century Russian novelists (the big two) had so much more comprehensive and nuanced a view of this issue than do supposedly enlightened and well-educated men of the 21st century. But there it is.
Edward James Olmos' last line in Blade Runner sums up my feelings on death and dying: "It's too bad she won't live... but then again, who does?"
Thank you for posting this, Roger. Until I read your article and watched the video of Hitchens being waterboarded, I had an active dislike for him. I hadn't heard that he had cancer, but when I found it out from your article, it didn't intially change my feelings. I didn't wish him dead; I just still didn't like him very much. His active atheism annoys me.
Then I watched the video. Mr. Hitchens is an extremely brave man, and my respect for him has increased immensely. When I vacationed recently, I jumped into a lake from a height of about twenty feet on a bet, forgetting to hold my nose before I hit the water. The impact forced water up into my nose and down my sinuses. I fought to the surface, snorting and gasping for several minutes. I felt as close as I've ever been to drowning. I had no doubts before that experience that waterboarding is indeed torture, but feeling it--and watching Mr. Hitchens go through it--gave me the chills.
Good luck, Mr. Hitchens. I'll pray for you--not for your recovery nor your death nor your soul, but simply for God to give you the strength to get through this no matter the outcome.
"...militant atheist..."
Interesting juxtaposition. You never hear someone referring to that "ugly little charlatan" as a militant christian - although he certainly was.
May I suggest that he appears to be militant simply because he has been in a position where he was able to bluntly state his views without fear of reprisal? I am absolutely certain that if my own aversion to superstition and hypocrisy were to be made known I'd be looking for another job.
The other observation I've seen regarding comments on Hitchens' situation is the number of them that begin with "I don't agree with him..." Of course you don't. I cannot think of anyone with whom I agree 100%. I have listened to him because I'm certain that his positions have been arrived at only though a thorough rational examination of the facts. But he is wrong on Bush...
Hitchens is not a NeoCon or a right winger. He quit the left because of their tacit approval ( or lack of disapproval) of communism/totalitarian regimes and their "USA had it coming" attitude after the 9/11 attacks. He could not handle the left's incessant America bashing. He disagreed with Chomsky's wish that America had never been founded. He did not believe the George Bush was the devil. He felt there was plenty of merit to invading Iraq and kicking out the genocidal maniac Saddam Hussein. He also felt that free enterprise capitalism was mostly good and certainly " the least worst system". He otherwise is a libertarian/libertine free thinker. He in essence underwent moderation.
Ebert: I've made some changes so that my description of his politics is now more accurate.
DearER,
I just read this article of yours. As you know I do not like to call these writings as "blog"s of yours. I see these as creations of yours using this new outlet of technology.
I won't delve in the interview. I would like to take this opportunity to mention what you feel as worshiping: the void. The mystery.Here I find resonance of Upanishad, where Brahmma is the original and and the unlimited. That's the void and mystery. "Om" coming out from our deep inside is an effort to reach to the void.
Over the thousand years of human civilisation, many have worshiped and/or searched for this void. You know better. I find reflection of our thoughts in your writings. That's wonderful, for me. Inception? May be, in a way. All our mythologies, I believe, come out of that void. And it, in different forms, carries along different forms of worshiping and living as well. If we do not live, whom do we worship or don't, doesn't matter. You need to live one life to worship one, if not many.Even if you die, you must have lived. Not just "existing", "living". The worshiped ones live in the life of the livings, not in the minds of the dead.
My sympathies are with Hitchens, as they are with any human being grappling with such prolonged and serious illness. But I cannot think of him in the laudatory terms that you do.
As an atheist he is militant, obnoxious, and deliberately insulting to the people he speaks - even those who are on "his side". Worse, he is the frankest misogynist this side of Bill Maher (whose rant against breastfeeding is legend): calling Wanda Sykes "that black dyke" and heaping gendered insults on Hillary Clinton and writing articles about "Why Women Aren't Funny".
I've been to rogerebert.com more times than I can count, often in research for my own blog of thoughts on movies, occasionally for the wit, always for the insight. I do not know what brought me there this morning or how it was I clicked, half stumbling to this blog, but like other blogs this article was at the top and as such caught my eye. I can say with all honesty that I too live in the shadow of mortality, that too near my own fate I am grateful for the opportunity afforded by the little journeys that spill from your hands. It is a shame, really, the ending part. Thanks for this and all that other stuff that gives proximity a second try.
Nice post Rog. I've always admired Hitch for his honesty and his prose, even if our politics sometimes diverge.
Interesting that you say you 'worship' the void. I prefer to simply ackowledge the void, admit what we do not, and perhaps cannot ever, know, and worship or embrace the here and now. It sure feels good to be alive.
Good article, Roger. I disagree with the conclusion that knowledge of the "first mover" is beyond our capacity, though. It may be presently, but science is really just starting. I believe that we will at some point have a much better idea,if not an almost complete picture of the beginning of the universe. As for homo sapiens, I think that Stanley Miller's experiments and evolution provide the answer. I hope that Hitchens pulls through. There are too few with a wit like his.
The poor thing. I don't always agree with Christopher but I admire him tremendously because of his ability to truly speak his mind regardless of the consequences. Get well soon
First read Hitchens' book "God Is Not Great" several months ago, and found it to be an amazing piece of work, a book that excoriates religious fanaticism without necessarily denouncing those people who believe without resorting to extremism.
Had no idea he was sick. Can't wait to see the nuts who come out of the trees and claim this was God's punishment.
Any search for a prime mover is pointless and futile as it's based only on our human experience. Everything we are familiar with has a beginning and an end. The concepts of beginning and ending are fundamental to our understanding of the universe. Which is exactly the problem for our understanding of the universe. The universe has no beginning or ending. It has always been here. There was no Big Bang, there will be no Big Crunch. It's extremely difficult for a human to comprehend infinity, but the Universe is temporally infinite. Whether it is spacially infinite is another story, really a matter of definition. Once people realise the universe has always been here, will always be here, had no beginning and will have no ending, they will have one less reason to ascribe to God some sort of creation.
Anyway, on a more important note, can you think of any film where the MacGuffin DID matter? Where its nature was crucial to the story and not just a random interpolation? I think incorporating the importance of the MacGuffin into the story really makes a better film.
Roger, once again what you've written pretty much sums up my thoughts and feelings on a subject. I'm so glad for the digital age! Without it, I'd probably never have read your reviews, let alone your blogs.
Nice piece. I'm not sure that "neo-Con" describes his position at all, though. Many people have pointed out that his support for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq stem from an entirely different intellectual tradition - from the anti-totalitarian left rather than the neo-conservative right. After all, this is a man who has referred to Bush's post-invasion conduct in Iraq as "impeachable" and who, in 2004, called Ronald Reagan "dumb as a stump"!
I wrote a brief remembrance of my 2005 dinner with Hitchens in my blog, linked above.
Ebert: You're correct. He supports the neocon war but is more of a Left libertarian.
As usual, another thoughtful essay from one who has been close to the brink. You will also enjoy Hitchens' "Letters to a Young Contrarian", a really wonderful set of essays. It's the kind of book that has you writing down titles of books he references in the text, to add to you reading list.
This was a very moving read, and Hitchens' interview was nothing but what I expect from such a cogent, rational, intelligent man. He has my eternal respect (or rather, as all this reminds me, my very temporary respect).
Beautiful post. Don't really know what else to say. Need to do some thinking, I suppose.
"I think it takes more conviction to be a Trotskyite," Roger, are you declaring yourself a man of conviction?
Only joking.
As for Hitchens; I am as grateful to him as to William Buckley in helping form my political life. Not because they were both on one side or another, but each showed no matter how long you hold to one set of beliefs, you are allowed, and required, to change them if it is the right thing to do. And also demonstrating expediancy for the sake of humanity is not a sin.
Thanks for this, Roger.
I'm very fond of Hitchens, of Dawkins, and of what they've tried to do in educating people about the negatives of religion. Unfortunately, almost no one who could most benefit from such an education will read their books or be exposed to their comments; it's almost all preaching to the choir. How about this: every time someone promotes textbooks which cheerlead for intelligent design, we say "OK, as long as, to be fair, we also give the kids these Hitchens and Dawkins books..."
Religion is a tool, no more or less. As with any tool, intellectual or physical, it can be used to create and elevate or to destroy and tear down. I found it hard at times to reconcile the beneficial effects of religion in civilizing our baser instincts, and inspiring art and literature, with its detrimental effects which have razed civilization and retarded science arguably by millennia. That is, I found it hard to reconcile these opposite effects until I realized that religion is just a hammer. You can build a house, or you can bash in a skull--same tool, the difference is solely in how the user wields it.
Some of my favorite lines come from Cardinal Newman's explication of what it means to be a gentleman, in his _The Idea of a University_: "[The gentleman] is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles; he submits to pain, because it is inevitable, to bereavement, because it is irreparable, and to death, because it is his destiny.... He is a friend of religious toleration, and that, not only because his philosophy has taught him to look on all forms of faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness and effeminacy of feeling, which is the attendant on civilization."
http://www.his.com/~z/gentleman.html
Religion at its best inspires that "gentleness and effeminacy of feeling" which has given contemporary Western civilization its compassion, its "soul." Constructive use of religion (and other tools like Enlightenment humanism) helped mellow the West away from public bloodsports and flaying one's enemies, and toward equal rights and impartial secular justice. Destructive use of religion is most visible today in Islamic shariah and fundamentalism, but it poisons politics and even education here in America as well.
We don't usually need anyone to tell us not to use a hammer to hit other people, or that hitting ourselves with the hammer will hurt. Why then do so many misuse religion to hit others, or themselves?
I am not a religious person. I look around at a gorgeous world, and up toward countless billions of stars with probably at least millions of worlds like ours--and millions more different and spectacular--and that is inspiring enough. I look at the tiny few thousand years of history we have as a self-aware and introspective species, and think of where we'll be with just a few more much less a few thousand more--and that is inspiring enough. Even a great film that gives me a feeling of transcendence is enough. Personally, I see no more inspiration in the mysteries of religion than I do in the mysteries of our present existence. But to each his own--as long as he uses his hammer to build, not to strike his neighbors. :)
My second favorite living writer on my favorite living writer. What a way to start this Friday! Thanks Rog!
Dear Roger;
Bravo.
I'm a big fan of Hitchens and have watched many of his talks, and read much of his work. He claims often that he has never shifted to 'the right', and I'd absolutely agree. He has broken ties with many of the left-wing icons like Chomsky, Pilger, Fisk or Cockburn, who will claim that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are examples of U.S. imperialism, but Hitchens views the war in Iraq as a liberation effort against a dictator, and has always testified to this. He believes that interventionist foreign policy can be justified to alleviate the suffering of innocent civilians at the hand of tyranny or madness, as was done (too late) in the Balkans and (too timidly) in Rwanda. If you look into Hitchens' arguments in the early 2000s, or read Geoffrey Robertson's 'Crimes Against Humanity', it's hard to disagree.
He is far from a neo-con though. His views on religion alone should attest to that.
A very nice post about a very interesting and polarizing figure. I have nothing to add that you did not say better, except this: I don't agree that religion is specifically the greatest cause of man's inhumanity to man. Rather, I believe that any ideology that exists at least partly in order to classify a segment of humanity as 'them' in order to strengthen and unite 'us' is an extremely dangerous thing. Religion is just one example of this kind of ideology, and I believe that up until the 20th century it was certainly far and away the most prolific and destructive. However the greatest evils of the 20th century have little to do with religion and to forget about them simply because 9/11 was on the surface strongly associated with religion is to do history a great disservice.
Quite apart from those who died in war, non-military victims of human brutality are staggering. Hitler killed 11 million. Stalin killed 30 million. Mao killed 70 million. Pol Pot, the Kims of Korea, Ceaucescu, and many others add millions to those death tolls. The genocides of Africa were and are tribal/political and have basically nothing to do with the modern day great religions with the exception of Darfur.
As an atheist, I want to emphasize that it's not religion specifically I do not subscribe to. It is all ideologies that would make a good deed out of inflicting suffering or death on masses of our fellow humans. Going forward, humanity will need to embrace ideologies of unity and cooperation. The planet is too small, present day technology too dangerous, and remaining resources too few for us to continue function according to our previous paradigms of competition and conquering.
Christopher Hitchens always made drinking and smoking seem so cool.
The irony.
Great read, Roger.
While I agree that religion does not poison everything, it seems to me like it does as much harm than good. For every respectful follower I meet, there is always another who tells me that my soul needs to be saved, or who looks on me with pity when they realize that I don't believe in a god. Then I look around and notice all of the terrible crimes that are justified by religion (racism, intolerance of homosexuals, mass murder in some countries), and it just seems to me like it causes more problems than it solves. I agree there are many who worship without infringing on anyone's rights and it would be unfair to pile them in with the extremists; which is why I acknowledge that it doesn't poison everything. But sometimes I think the world would be a much better place without religion. It makes some who are normally thoughtful and well meaning people completely irrational.
All that aside, I always thought it was more meaningful and intriguing to appreciate that there are just some things we cannot know or understand than attempt to explain away all of those mysteries with an all-knowing creator. That answer seems lazy to me.
Christopher Hitchens is an extraordinary human being, one who is capable of challenging the most sapient scholars and usually coming out on top. I have had major disagreements with some of his positions, particularly political ones such as the Iraq War, but one has to admire him for his convictions and the fact that his reasons for supporting said war were in fact in large part more reasonable than the lunatic who led the U.S. into it.
I disagree also with Hitchens on his militant atheism, but I cannot fault either his logic, or his motivations and secretly, I think there might be a part of me which even admires him for his daring, for it takes a courageous human being to disavow himself from a movement which has such support from the masses and moreover for the fact that given the essential unknowability of the subject that he, of a rational mind, decided to swing in the other direction, because history bears testament to the fact that for there to be progress, the intellect needs fomentation and Hitchens is one of the ablest at doing this.
He calls shenanigans when he sees them occurring and few others have the cojones to do so. I feel fortunate to have known of this man and his life. I have read and seen a great deal of Hitchens and I hope to keep doing so for a long time to come. He is a character who has great character, is highly entertaining and most important of all, he is a formidable intellectual and the world can use as many of those as it can get.
May your journey with disease be as long and comfortable as it can be, this is my wish.
Here's to you Christopher Hitchens, you bacchanalian brainbox.
Cheers,
Induan Idiot (H.W.)
P.S. Thank you for this Roger, I have long been an admirer of Hitchens and his illness is worrisome. The world needs more people like him. Strong, independent thinkers.
Hi Roger,
I'm glad you wrote something about Hitchens.
I haven't read Hitch for as long or as deeply as you, but I've followed his columns for a handful of years -- always either agreeing so wholeheartedly that I pump my fist in the air or disagreeing so strongly that I close the on-line Window mournfully, shaking my head. Whatever my reaction to his opinion, my reaction to his writing was invariably keen amusement and envy. What polish his prose has!
I'm sure you've read his Vanity Fair column Topic of Cancer? That might be a good link for this.
Hope you're feeling fine.
Dave
This is a tragedy.
Perhaps this is a reason the religious folk have such numbers.
As an avid fan I can do nothing, yet they have some comfort in believing their prayers will alter the final outcome.
Totally misplaced and erroneous, but comfort nonetheless.
Thank you Roger for this wonderful piece. Though I don't agree with Hitchen's political bent, I do respect the man and wish him well.
As someone who is familiar with Hitchens's writings and appearances, his plight does sadden me. Although I would certainly be from one of the groups he disagrees with most. I've often been curious though Roger, having enjoyed many of your blogs - how familiar you are with the opponents of writers like Hitchens and Dawkins. I’ve watched both Dawkins and Hitchens debate John Lennox for example – an Oxford professor of Mathematics and believer in a conservative tradition of Christianity. They’ve also debated other intellectual Christians such as Alister McGrath and Alvin Plantinga. Given how often you’ve written about your beliefs and views on the world, I’ve just been curious to know if you’ve ever given any time to the more erudite and educationally accomplished defenders of faith in contrast to folks like Pat Roberston.
Back on subject, I do sincerely hope for Christopher Hitchens’ full recovery, and can’t help but wonder what his cancer means for his ongoing difficult relationship with a brother who is a fairly conservative Christian as well.
How I will miss this man. I always knew I was an atheist, but he and Dawkins showed me why. They gave me more arguments than I will ever need when confronted by the absurdity of the deeply religious apologist.
I do wish for there to be an afterlife, but not so I can forever rise and praise an almighty being. I just want to drink a few cocktails and have a smoke with Christopher Hitchens.
I appreciate the thoughts, both personal and broad, you share in writing about death, Mr. Ebert. I would take issue with a minor point of yours though, that "it takes more conviction to be a Trotskyite, because that persuasion has always been unpopular and at times fatal." Which position demands more conviction depends on the circles in which one moves -- and some people's circles are much more amenable to Trotskyism than Neoconservatism.
On a related note, Hitchens's radical swing between ideologies -- a transition many people experience in their lives -- mystify me. That is, I don't find it strange that a person should change his mind. I find it strange that, after a person has glimpsed the validity of two very divergent paradigms, such a person would not ultimately gravitate toward pluralism or moderacy.
Only the dead truly know what the living can ponder about.
Thanks for writing this.
I just finished his "Hitch-22" last month. I read his column every Monday and also enjoyed "God is Not Great" and his books on Thomas Paine and Jefferson (How clever of me). He is a national treasure and breath of fresh air; his politics are personal, informed and don't fit neatly into a conservative or a liberal box. Becuase he is not easy to classify politically it makes him the most interesting and honest pundit writing and speaking on current events.
For other reders who are fans of Hitchens check out his recent interviews with Martin Amis at the Atlantic Monthly and watch some of his God debates on You Tube with Dinesh D'Souza. Those debates are fantastic although Hitchens demolishes D'Sousza with logical arguments and wit. I'm a Christian and was rooting for Dinesh but Hitchens simply outclassed his opponent with first class debate.
I'll pray for Christopher's recovery and his salvation.
I'm sorry to hear about Christopher Hitchins. While I've rarely if ever agreed with his political or religious positions, he has a rare ability to at least make me ask myself why I disagree with him. Come to think of it, that's the same reason I continue to read your blog...
I'm a conservative Christian and I take many of Hitchens critiques very seriously. I do pray for his health, his soul, and his well being.
Here is a link to him debating his brother, who is Christian(Anglican, if you are curious).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmnVQLOd9Lg
It's 14 parts on Youtube. That is part 1. :)
Hitchens is a perfect example of my long held belief that having conservative political views does not automatically require irrational religious views to support them. I love Hitch'... Sean Hannity slams him for his anti-Christian statements, Bill Maher slams him for his support of Bush and the War on Terror. Its so refreshing to hear the opinions of someone who can't be filed into one of our lazy ideological pigeonholes ("Neocon", etc.)
What do we worship? I could say Beauty, Mystery, Unknowing ... good words, but like all words, they fall short in this case. I suppose it's Meaning, when you come right down to it, a narrative or model that makes sense of existence for the individual. Belief systems have always done that, though in more recent times, we've begun to shape our own individual systems, tailor-made ones rather than off the rack.
Like you, I'm a lapsed Catholic, one who explored other religions in my teens & 20s -- the arc for so many of us from the 1960s, of course! Yet for all the beauty & good sense & moral worth I found in most of those religions, I couldn't believe in them, not in true faith. I recognize the hunger for the Sacred -- temperamentally a Romantic, it's part of my being -- and I believe we can experience it, even if there's no divine being or power outside of ourselves. Carl Jung was a real lifesaver for me then!
What would I like to believe, though?
I'd like to believe in an afterlife, if only not to be separated from my beloved wife; I'd dearly love to see my father again, as he was before dementia took him, and say all the things I always wanted to say. (No wonder "Field of Dreams" strikes such a chord for so many men!)
I'd like to believe there is some greater purpose, some final justice, to counter the horrific pain & suffering so many endure in life. I'd like to believe there's a meaning beyond what we devise for ourselves as a way to avoid existential dread.
But I can't.
That doesn't mean I don't cherish the brief & precious beauties of everyday life. Indeed, I cherish them all the more because they're so fleeting. But is the beauty of a flower any less meaningful for being so brief? Does it have to have any more meaning than its own existence & wonder at the moment? Do we?
8 years ago I survived an unsuspected heart blockage that 17 cardiologists later said should have killed me months before, without a sign or warning. As it happened, I was taking my first stress test & collapsed right there on the treadmill, in the cardiologist's office. It was just a few minutes away from the nearest hospital. I'd been married for the first time, late in life, for just a year and a half. By all rights, I should have died then. An emergency triple bypass later, I was up & about & healthier than I'd been in years.
If there was any time for me to pray, to appeal to the divine, it was then. Yet I never felt the slightest urge ... and that surprised me a bit. I put my trust in the doctors & hoped for the best. I'm sure I was emotionally numb, in shock; but that was a good thing, frankly. When I was safe, I went through fear & did a lot of questioning.
So here I am, having seen family members & friends die, and having become much more aware of mortality in a visceral way. What does it all mean? I'm still working on that. Someone once said, "Birds build nests. Humanity builds cultures." Which is to say, system of belief & meaning. Is this search for meaning hardwired, then?
I don't know. And that seems the wisest answer to so many of the questions I still grapple with, to be honest. I don't know. Back in 1967, Arthur Lee & Love sang, "This is the only thing that I am sure of / And that's all that lives is gonna die / And there'll always be some people here to wonder why / And for every happy hello, there will be good-bye ..." I really can't do better than that.
So I focus on life, on love, on beauty. I make art, I write, I cherish my marriage, my family, my friends. That's my meaning. That's what matters. And that seems more than enough.
And I still question ...
Hitchens is a fierce intellectual who is always fun to read. I for one, always sported a huge ego but I was humbled every time I read any of his articles. Not many people are in his "weight class" when it comes to intellect. The article he wrote on "the narcissism of small differences" is nothing short of brilliant as an insight as to how we engage in hate in the first place.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/03/christopher-hitchens-the-narcissism-of-small-differences/
If he dies, he will not be easy to replace.
Well, I don't think souls or bodies can be changed by incantation either but
Why isn't this an example of Hitchens using "thinking ability" as incantation? Do they literally not deny as much reality as the other?
If nothing else, religion is like language in that they are both representative. Just as words are not interchangeable with the things they represent, what we consider true religions have references to their own deadness. The Abrahamic religions have the commandment against idolatry. Hinduism portrays the universe as theater. Buddhism has the koan -- which are riddles to demonstrate the limits of thinking ability, like Hitchen's, we can count on, but can't be all things to us -- which was heavily influenced by the Tao, which says how a finger pointing at the moon is not the moon (ie, how thinking can't be all things to us), nor bring the moon down to us (thinking's kissing-cousin, the incantation).
So if all the components of our life can't be verbalized in language -- the medium of our thoughts -- how then do we represent the experiences that are all things to us without religion? How is portraying that capability of religion as poisoning everything not in itself poisonous?
(Porn is also representative medium in this manner, with the bad acting referring to its own deadness.)
I hadn't heard about Christopher Hitchen's diagnosis until I read this. Having myself been diagnosed twice with stage 4 Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma since 2004, I can appreciate his description of how the illness impacts him and look forward to his further insights. I have not always agreed with him, particularly his neocon views, but I believe he is right on target when it comes to religion.
"It isn't the sad people in movies who make me cry, it's the good ones."
Unkindness can make me cry, mainly when visited upon others not necessarily to myself. But kindness also does me in.
It all goes back to the Golden Rule.
I will miss Hitchens if he doesn't make it - have been reading his columns in Vanity Fair. My jaw dropped when he had the gall to write about Mother Teresa but it was refreshing. It can be uncomfortable for the emperor to be revealed as naked, but it is what it is.
You and Hitchens are my favorite pundits. I was so stoked to see you writing a blog about him. I could go on, but 'nuff said.
I appreciate and respect Anderson Cooper's work, and his open-minded and sympathetic treatment of Hitchens, but the interview seemed patronizing. The whole world knows and understands Hitchens' perspective on religion and his commitment to his principles. Subjecting him to a spiritual interrogation, at this, a moment of vulnerability, feels genuinely opportunistic, either on Cooper's part or on the part of the network. I applaud C.H. for responding in such a stalwart and dignified manner.
On a side-note, I'm surprised at your statement that "Those rare people who practice in their lives the underlying principles of their religions are most often good for themselves and others." It seems a cynical view of civilized humanity in general, this assumption that honest commitment to your religious principles is a rare trait. Isn't our world full of people who, despite being thoroughly imperfect, are still doing their best to be compassionate and principled? Isn't this vast, silent majority of good-hearted religious people more representative than the extremist minority? I say this as a strict agnostic -- but as one who has a hopeful outlook on human nature.
Great post, Roger. On twitter you posted a link to America's leading True Christian™ Pastor's $1 million bounty on Hitchens - http://j.mp/9GnT8W Did you happen to read the first reply just below the soul bounty offer? I never knew such blatantly vain and corrupt 'holy' men existed. I almost found it amusing until i realized Rev. Jim Osborne must be serious, and convinced in his self-righteousness. It made me feel empty. But then I read your post here. I sincerely thank you.
Ebert wrote:
"The extremists of both Christianity and Islam, for example, follow lives of violent repudiation of the beliefs of their own religions."
Sorry Roger, but sloppy thinking and knee-jerk moral equivalency do not belong in a column about Christopher Hitchens. He is a man who has dedicated much of his life and writing to confronting Islamofascism (a term he coined) not mollycoddling it with the factually inaccurate, feel-good meme: Radical Christians are just as bad as radical Muslims.
There are thousands of violent Muslim extremists. They fly planes into buildings, blow up women and children with explosives in cafes, and behead civilians on camera. Many Muslims support terrorism.
Even the most despicable Christian leaders like the loony, redneck preacher from "God hates fags", the deranged Jeremiah Wright, the apocalyptic Pat Robertson and the race-hustling, poverty-pimp Al Sharpton have never claimed that Christ would support, let alone reward Christians for killing innocent people.
Hitchens outlines the threat Thomas Jefferson faced from Islamic terrorism two and a half centuries ago:
But one cannot get around what Jefferson heard when he went with John Adams to wait upon Tripoli’s ambassador to London in March 1785. When they inquired by what right the Barbary states preyed upon American shipping, enslaving both crews and passengers, America’s two foremost envoys were informed that “it was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
The threat Jefferson confronted and US Marines defeated at Tripoli still exists. Islam has not changed. It has never had a Reformation. To state that the most radical Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. pose a threat similar to radical Islam, is a statement unsupported by fact.
Ebert: Radical Islam is extremist Islam. It's my impression that most Muslims are peaceful and opposed to terrorism. One proof is that there are so many Muslims and so few actual acts of terrorism.
You might know something I don't know, but isn't it possible that advances in science and technology could lead to the discovery of the origins of the universe (eleventh paragraph)? Maybe far down the line ala 'The Last Question' by Isaac Asimov.
It seems a little early to call it permanently out of our reach is all I'm saying.
Ebert: The fact that we continue to search for the explanations of such matters is what makes us human. We learn so much from the journey even if the destination remains out of reach.
I adore you, Roger Ebert. I know you've heard this before, but you've not heard it from me. You are a brilliant man. Since I was young (long ago...LOL) I have been fascinated by you and your opinions. I've occasionally disagreed with you, but mostly, you and I saw eye to eye. From movies to writing to books.
Thank you for this poignant story. Thank you for all you've done and all you continue to do for forward thinking.
Much love and good vibes...
Vanessa
Hollywood, CA
Hitchens is our greatest living intellectual -- an inspiration to those who value reason and rationality. His passing would be a devestating loss to humanity, and will probably merit far less publicity than the "toad" Falwell.
Dear Roger
I would just like to share two aspects of my life in relation to your post.
Reading the part about your near-fatal cancer experience moved me. I have been following your website for perhaps over 8 years now, and have always admired you for facing life's travails with dignity and optimism. That takes a lot of courage. I hope you have a healthy and happy life (long enough to review three more Terrence Malick movies!)
As much as potentially fatal diseases like cancer would force one to think anew about their life's perspectives, the same is true for those who see their near ones suffer from it. A friend of mine succumbed to leukemia when she was 11 and I 13 (10 years back). What I do remember most was not the pain or suffering but the dignity with which she bore it all. She seemed determined to enjoy fully what little life remained with her, and did so unselfishly, with family and friends. One would never have guessed by her cheerful manner - it was the absence of hair that gave away the fact.
The other aspect is belief in God, specifically during times of distress. It is an almost universally human fact that the religious among us only genuinely turn to God when under distress. Perhaps the "hope" that someone can change things for the better is what drives us into belief.
Despite having been brought up in a conservative Indian Hindu family, where God (or gods in some cases) and religion pervaded every aspect of life, I had by the age of 17 realized I do not genuinely believe in an absolute truth, and therefore by extension in an Absolute God.
Yet a personal event, concerning the well-being of someone I dearly loved, took place when I was 19 - it was as if a prayer had been answered, that could not be explained away satisfactorily as coincidence. I am sure everyone has experienced such occurances, a blur between mere coincidence and miracle. An urge to attribute this to some higher being, perhaps in blind hope that if this higher being is supplicated, more such miracles would occur, is quite natural.
I do not believe that "God", percieved not as some life-giving, quasi-scientific life-force but as the All-Merciful and Kind Father God, has any place in rational thinking.
It is simply a matter of blind, personal faith, and that is the beauty of it.
In the preceeding centuries, it was audacious to suggest a scientific idea. The round earth, the heliocentric space, evolution all went against a religiously soaked culture. In an world increasingly given to rational thought process, it is equally audacious to take a leap of blind faith.
Thank you, Mr. Ebert, for this kind and thoughtful essay about one of my favorite writers. I was interested in what you would have to say about this fellow traveler on the cancer bus, and you didn't disappoint. You captured so well what I admire and respect about Mr. Hitchens. His clear-eyed and honest reaction to his illness makes me respect him even more. The televised interviews have been illuminating and touching, but I hope his fans also check out his remarkable piece in the latest Vanity Fair. It is one of the best insider's description of terminal disease I've ever read.
I've just started "Hitch 22." The introduction (written months before his diagnosis), in which he ponders his own death, is especially poignant.
Should I be struck with a similarly catastrophic condition, I hope I can face it with the candor, wisdom, wit and generosity with which you two have faced yours. You both continue to teach, and I am grateful.
Thank you for posting this Roger. Your admiration what tempered with honesty and a rare respect for someone who holds certain views antithetical to some of your own. It is interesting that you would respect someone you label as a recently converted neocon and yet despise a great many others, perhaps, I suspect, because they lack the sharp wit and intelligence? That calls into question of this country is divided because people are attacking opposite positions, or merely the people who hold them. But "most people" don't share Hitchens' wit and knowledge, so on that basis one might show disdain for ANY average citizen who holds an uniformed or partially informed political or other polarizing point of view on something. So it was interesting and refreshing to see you break this habit. I, for one, enjoy Hitchens for all the same reasons you cite but also because he demonstrates it is okay to subscribe to a seemingly motley set of ideas. So often I feel uncomfortable that if I believe in one thing then I am supposedly now partisan and must adhere to a laundry list of other issues as well when I do not. Nor does Hitchens, and "hallejuliah!" neither do you. Thank you.
And you are kind to devout religious followers who "do good." You did not mention that Hitchens would ague that their goodness arises DESPTE their religion, and their morals emerge from the same source available to everyone and not some holy writ.
I wish him well. Hell, I wish you well also. But is a wish but a prayer with the addressee line left blank? Wishful thinking is, after all, the propensity within us that allows religion and other faulty thinking to propagate so easily as a meme in our species. Perhaps I am simply greedy and would like both of you to stick around to provide me with more of what you do to enjoy, or be in a state that isn't so uncomfortable or incapacitating that it reduces or changes the quality of your work. I also hope Hitchens doesn't spend the rest of his days fending off the same questions ad nauseam such as have already been asked. "Have you had a hospital bed conversion yet?" "No, and would you please stop asking me that, for you betray your own wish more than any answer I might give" I would hope he says, in better prose.
This blog is worth sharing at the Richard Dawkins website, for whom I will provide a link. Take care (both of you).
Roger,
Possibly your most insightful post to date. Your blog continues to be one of the most diverse and thought provoking on the internet. Thank you for that.
As a Christian I think one of the great things we can learn is that anyone who lives by principles which celebrate human dignity is to be honored. There are atheists, Xians, Muslims, Hindus that do not do this, and the opposite can be said.
You might find the conversation accompanying the "Christopher Hitchens is Dying" cartoon to be of interest. http://www.nakedpastor.com/archives/5923
Hitchens is truly an execrable little man
I have gone from a position of confused faith to one of militant agnosticism, and then in turn to one of careful awareness of possibilities. I don't accept any religion as being true, but I believe that many people do need something, on the inside, which they can take to heart -- something primarily emotional. Science is for "out there"; religion is for "in here".
I've been faced with death before, although I was too young at the time to take away the right lesson. The next time something of that magnitude happens, I hope I'll be wise enough to respond properly.
Regarding: ... but I would not agree it poisons everything. Those rare people who practice in their lives the underlying principles of their religions are most often good for themselves and others.
If a person does good deeds in order to earn a reward in the afterlife, is she more or less moral than the person who does good deeds with no expectation of reward.
The end results are the same, but the acts aren't the same.
Religion poisons everything.
Roger,
I'm curious if you have ever read Peter Hitchens, Christopher's brother, or watched any of their debates together on youtube? I find Peter to be equally bright and compelling. I have always felt they had a most fascinating and complicated relationship, being that Peter is a deep believing Christian as well as a traditional Paleocon who strongly opposed the Iraq war (not something that easily fits into the Fox News agenda).
I was so sorry to hear about Hitchens diagnosis. I am right with him on some subjects and pretty far away from him on others (atheist but not exactly militant, leaning more Leftwards daily) but my heart goes out to anyone struggling with this illness.
I work for a very good cancer center in a research department. It's.. frustrating. There are tiny victories, but the battle seems even more enormous and endless with each one. I am fully confident that we will one day be able to treat every kind of cancer, but that day is still off in the distance. And meanwhile I see cancer patients every day suffering. We have to remember that we have come so far, that within most of our lifetimes there would have been no hope at all for these patients. Particularly the children - at one time we would have lost every one of these young patients and by now we can save most of them. Now there are so many survivors that we face a whole host of new issues having to do with the after-effects of the brutal treatments we give them. There are a lot of very smart and very dedicated people working just as hard as they can to cure each of the many kinds of cancer. But it's hard to be cheerful about it when so many are suffering.
Hang in there, Christopher Hitchens. I understand that it isn't the prayers that matter. The prayer is just a demonstration that somebody cared. I don't pray, but I care.
Nice reflection on Hitch's battle with cancer with only one serious factual error: he is not a neocon and is certainly not at the right of the right wing or anywhere on the right at all for that matter. He has remained remarkably faithful to his core principals including that of anti-totalitarianism, at least for the past almost 30 years since he first came to the US and began writing the"Minority Report" column at the Nation. It is those on the Left who turned their backs on workers and communists and other committed anti-fascist activists opposing Saddam in Iraq who have demonstrably migrated politically to the right. Long live Hitch!
Roger,
Have you read his books on Henry Kissinger & Mother Theresa? They are beautifully crafted works. Hitchens is an artist with words. It's truly amazing that he is exclusively non-fiction - but welcome; Journalism, or essays rather, could use a bit more art.
It's funny that many try to paint him as a hypocrite for his seeming shift in views while, unlike most talking heads, he can actually explain the reasoning behind his positions.
I didn't agree with him about Iraq, but he was the other necessary side of the debate. His rationale was far from the "Jesus told me to" excuse of our then president. He saw it as fight against the oppressive Hussein regime - truly a fight for the Iraqis. However, it was doomed as it was wielded by those much more cynical than Mr Hitchens.
And he has provided a most convincing basis for the larger fight against the fascism of Radical Islam.
He is a truly important chronicler of our times. I wish him the best. We need him.
I don't know enough about Hitchens to comment on him. But I can comment on faith. I choose to have faith, because I find it useful. It helps me. It helps me feel meaningful, and it helps me not drink. And that's what I need from it. And that's what I get.
Great article, I have found this essay to clearly express my religous beliefs far better than I ever could. It's absurb to claim we know the unknowable. The problem with Hitchen's atheism is that it misplaces the blame for the world's problems on religion. In reality the root of these problems is the any ideology, whether it be christianity, communism, or flying spaghetti monsterism, can be twisted and skewed to a demagogue's advantage. I'm pretty sure Stalinist Russia was not what Marx and Engels had in mind. The South Park episode "Go, God, Go" is great riff on this idea. I would highly suggest it anyone,providing they have the proper stomach for profanity.
Roger, thanks so much for your words, and the thought that you put behind them. As both a Christian and an intelligent person (I believe wholeheartedly that the two do not have to be mutually exclusive), I admit to having very mixed feelings on Christopher Hitchens. Like you, I agree completely with his attack on Jerry Falwell (although I question the good taste of its timing), but I find his criticism of Mother Teresa's legacy to be incredibly misguided and mean-spirited.
But these are my feelings on Hitchens the writer, not Hitchens the man. Hitchens the writer is intelligent, witty, and opinionated. Hitchens the man has cancer, and understandably, he is afraid of dying. It pains me that so few Christians can only see him as a writer, as an atheist, rather than a human being with fears, dreams, and beliefs.
When I watched the video of Hitchens being waterboarded, I saw it as a radical experiment in empathy. Here is an atheist who is taking the commandment to "love thy neighbor" more seriously than many Christians. More people, atheist and believer alike, would do well to follow his example.
My prayers are with Hitchens, not for his death or his salvation, but because he has cancer. When people have cancer, I pray. It's as simple as that.
Thanks for using my cartoon. I'm honored. Check out my site from whence it came, nakedpastor!! And the comments.
Ebert: I found it posted elsewhere and am immediately adding a credit line. I applaud your Creative Commons stand.
Readers: Check out this work by Hayward:
http://www.nakedpastor.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/adultery1.jpg
I feel sad for Hitchens. When I was a young college student, his writings were a joy to read. I read (book on tape actually) "god Is Not Great" and enjoyed it for its critiques of numerous faiths outside my own.
What I see is a man much like the Apostle Paul...who while on the road to actually kill Christians was blinded by God's love and voice and converted to being the New Testament's most influencial writer. So there is still hope for Mr. Hitchens. For if God could turn the "chief sinner" Paul into His own, God can still use Mr. Hitchens.
As a hospital nurse (surgical, ICU, and cardiovascular) I have seen suffering on many levels and on numerous occasions. I can only say that I feel truly inadequate to aid in the healing process of those left in my charge, often during the worst, most trying times of their lives. To be a nurse is to live day in and day out serving those stricken by illnesses that will eventually fell us all: cancer, diabetes, heart disease, infection. I am a complete stranger to those I serve, and yet I ask of them to trust that I will do the right thing for them, that I will advocate for them. I go in and knock on the doors of my patients at the beginning of every shift hoping they will trust me to help them, even if it is obvious that my skin is a different shade from theirs, that my cultural beliefs may be divergent from theirs. This instills in me a tremendous, and often overwhelming sense of responsibility and moral obligation. Sometimes I feel ill-equipped to handle such a task.
As an atheist, raised a Catholic, but always secretly an atheist, I have often been asked to pray with my patients and their families, and I do my best because I feel obligated to maintain the trust between myself and my patient. To reveal my atheism would not be appropriate and would only make it harder to care for those in my charge, but it is hard for me to pray to an idea that I don't believe in. Often being on the front lines of health care I am asked to fill many roles and step into many shoes: as a healer both psychological, spiritual, and physical. I never reveal my true atheism because I find the few times I have it has distanced me from the people I am trying to help the most. I remember once responding honestly to a gentleman who asked me if I believed in "Jesus, our savior" and I felt compelled say that no, I didn't. Despite this gentleman being my patient, and despite us having a good rapport the first half of the shift, he came to regard me suspiciously for the remaining part of the shift, as if my lack of belief in his religion made me an untrustworthy individual.
I often envy those who believe in an afterlife, because even as their beliefs run counter to my intuition, I believe they are comforted by a sense of a higher purpose. At least someone who believes in God, often believes their life is a thread in the larger tapestry of life. I have no idea what the hell is coming after I die (probably nothing), and so I cherish every second of this life and am profoundly frightened of my life ending (although I know it to be inevitable), believing that this is pretty much it - "carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero."
I read Hitchens' God is Not Great," and I admired it greatly. I found, even as his political beliefs shifted from my own sphere, that his reasoned atheism has always spoken for me. To be a dying atheist is a lonely existence, and so I wish him the knowledge that his work is deeply appreciated. Even as he wages this exhausting battle against cancer, even if he loses the fight, his work will have a lasting legacy for the community of humanist-atheists that have found his impassioned voice a calming presence in a sea of religious zealotry that postulates that to be an atheist is to be amoral and evil. His intellectual legacy is as close to an afterlife that any atheist can possibly hope for.
Ebert: It need not be lonely to die as an atheist, if you have loved ones and can feel you did the best possible under the circumstances.
For me, the Theory of Evolution is a great comfort, helping me to comprehend the great cycle of Life of which I am the fragment called Me.
In Dances With Wolves, Kicking Bird tells John Dunbar, "I was just thinking that of all the trails in this life there is one that matters most. It is the trail of a true human being. I think you are on this trail and it is good to see."
In public life, I can think of only a few individuals who I consider to have earned the title of "true human beings." My list includes Bobby Knight, Christopher Hitchens and Roger Ebert. There are others, these are just the ones who come to my mind most readily.
I found this essay particularly interesting, because it involves one of my "true human beings" observing from afar the life of one of the others. Thank you!
Roger,
Thank you for this blog post. I have grown to love Hitchens over the past few years, and I'm very sad at his prognosis. Can you think of any other popular figure who is actually lauded for erudition and intellectualism, yet who isn't just dismissed as "elitist," even by Fox News? I don't think I can. His relative popularity gives me hope that reason and debate can still make an impact on modern culture. And of course, even if people disagree with Hitch's opinions, his writing quality is unimpeachable.
By the way, Youtube has seemingly hundreds of clips from his debates online--more evidence of his popularity. One of the best channels for this (that I've found) is DailyHitchens22: http://www.youtube.com/user/DailyHitchens22 , but any search for "hitchens debate" or similar terms will bring up many great videos. You and/or your readers would love these, because Hitchens is always magnetic and funny in a debate.
"Deathbed conversions have always seemed to me like a Hail Mary Pass, proving nothing about religion and much about desperation."
I absolutely agree. This is the money right here. Deathbed conversions mean absolutely nothing, whether they are a conversion to a religion, or to another religion. They are simply acts of desperation and insanity. It's the brain doing irrational things at the throes of death.
Are such things surprising? No.
Are such things sincere? No.
Are such things proof that there are no atheists in foxholes? No.
If you are the type of person who waits to see whether or not a dying person is about to have a deathbed conversion, then I say to you: Get a life.
Death is a very private moment for all of us. To think you can judge a person's character by the last moments of that person's life is be extremely arrogant.
And it is pretty cruel, too.
Such people are sadistic spectators, who get a lot of pleasure in seeing people crumble in their dying breaths.
Oops! Mea culpa, I confused Hitchens' God is Not Great, and Dawkins' The God Delusion. Both are great works and equally valued for their arguments against religious zealotry and for secular-humanism. Regardless, I wish him strength in his battle against esophageal cancer.
Great thoughtful post as always, Mr. Ebert.
My life has gone from being raised conservative, religious, and going to seminary in a conservative, evangelical tradition, to questioning and leaving it all together. I call myself a "Progressive Christian," whatever that means.
I listened to "God is not great" while on the treadmill, and feel uncomfortable that he made more sense than anything I learned in seminary. I don't think religion poisons everything either, but a lot of poisons were created in religious history.
I am preparing a sermon right now (still fill in from time to time) but if someone were to ask "Do you believe in God?" I wouldn't give a quick answer. Whether we are people of faith or not, the undeniable truth is that God is made in our image, not vice versa. And anyone who disagreed with Constantine's orthodoxy was killed off, and the ancient books they wrote were burned. Who can be comfortable with that as your family tree?
This is why I like Spong's "Why Christianity must change or die" emphasis. Even people of faith have to be honest enough to ditch the garbage and keep the essentials: love and compassion. Hitchens book does something most of us fail to do: be honest with ourselves and the ambiguity of our existence.
That's why I greatly revere the writings he has done and the reviews you write, Mr. Ebert. They allow us to question, search, and reach into the ambiguity, realizing this may be all there is, and if "God" dams us for eternity for thinking, grasping, and seeking, then there truly is no beauty, wisdom, or truth in the universe.
Well, I'd just like to quote Paul Tillich concerning God:
Dr. Tillich: Now it is obviously difficult to answer this without the preceding argument, because in our discussion the word God was not used at all as a basic word. We used, instead, the words "ultimate concern" or "ultimate reality," or "ground of being," or something like that. And then we said that this was expressed in different ways. For some it is a theistic concept of God. Others deny that concept and are nevertheless considered proponents of proper religion, as in Buddhism. Others hold to such philosophies as humanism which are not strictly religions, but have the character of ultimate concern. So we cannot start this kind of discussion, as you have done, with any concept of God and then state that God is indefinable. Where we use symbolic terms like "ground of being" we mean that we experience something which is an object of our ultimate concern, which underlies everything that is, is its creative ground or its formative unity, and cannot be defined beyond these negative terms.
But negative definitions are nevertheless definitions, for they remove the wrong connotations of finite definitions. And on the other hand these negative statements imply, always in relation to a positive statement, that this same ground of being is not this or that, yet is at the same time all this finite world in so far as it is its "ground." We speak about what is our ultimate concern in the language of traditional religions, in positive statements referring to the "highest," the "divine," the "good," the "true," and so on. But such statements must be deprived of the finite connotations they have in our ordinary language. Now to say that these statements are really meaningless is possible only if one has no personal experience in the power of ultimate concern or of something unconditiona1and infinite to which he belongs. If one has consciously had this experience at any time — or, in quite different terminology, the experience of the unconditionally serious, or the holy — then he understands that the attempt to speak about it is an attempt to say Yes and No at the same time.
Professor: In other words, mind and definition can only point to it, but without actual experience it is not possible really to . . .
Dr. Tillich: No, it is not possible! It is the same as with color, or a concept like beauty. Although we can point to it, we can never define a color. Without the experience of redness, for instance, we cannot define red. But if we have experienced it we can put it into the context of other colors, or can describe its wave lengths, and so forth. Otherwise, all speaking about redness is, of course, meaningless. The same thing is true with respect to art or music, the aesthetic experience. If we lack it — and some people assert that they have had no actual experience of what music is, so that it is for them a noise — all that we may say about music is lost on them. Now an incapacity for musical experience may possibly exist among some individuals, but I am absolutely certain that the lack of experience of something ultimately important or serious does not exist in any human being. Therefore it must be possible to show anyone, in some way at least, what ultimacy means.
Being and Existence
Professor: Then perhaps you have already answered the student’s second question: "Nor do I understand what it means to be the ‘ground of all being.’ The word ‘being’ is itself so confusing that I would prefer to substitute the word ‘existence.’ And I know only existence, not any ground or foundation for it. Nor would I say that there is any need for any such ground."
Dr. Tillich: Yes — now, the word "need" in itself has, if it claims to be a true statement, a "ground" character, an ultimate character. What does "need" mean here? Implied already in the word is the acknowledgment of something which is usually called truth. Analysis would show that this is not a thing beside other things, but an ultimate quality of judgment, a characteristic of reality which is grasped in this judgment.
Another point raised by the questioner concerns the words "being" and "existence." "Existence" is a most unrefined alternative to the word "being," because it omits the potentialities of existence which we usually call the essences of things. And they have being, too; they are the power of being, which may become beings. For instance, even if suddenly a scourge should cause all trees to disappear, the tree, or the power of becoming a tree, would still be there; and given the right conditions, living trees might come into existence again. Here you have a clear differentiation between essence and existence, which are two types of being. And then there is of course that being which is beyond essence and existence, which, in the tradition of the classical theology of all centuries, we call God — or, if you prefer, "being itself" or "ground of being." And this "being" does not merely exist and is not merely essential but transcends that differentiation, which otherwise belongs to everything finite.
Professor: If we consider, then, that "being" is a better over-all term than "existence," since existence by definition comes out of something, why is it necessary to go beyond the term being, which is a broad inclusive term and include both the essence and the existence that has emerged? Why is it necessary to talk about a ground of being?
Dr. Tillich: It is not necessary. I would prefer to say "being itself." But I know that this term is even more disliked. And so I speak of the ground of being. I actually mean, with the classical theologians, being itself.
Professor: And you don’t use "being itself" because it has not found a place in our modern terminology? In any case, we are actually trying to reach that which has no conditions and no finite qualities.
Dr. Tillich: Yes, and we need a term in which a bit of the metaphorical element is still preserved. "Ground" is of course a metaphor. And it is a metaphor which actually points to the idea of creation, to the symbol of creation. I have used this term, now so frequently used in present-day theological discussions, because it has both logical and metaphorical power. However, if I were able to go back to the classical scholastic term esse ipsum, I would prefer that.
Professor: Being itself?
Dr. Tillich: Yes.
Deathbed conversions would seem to be a myth. I once interviewed a pair of chaplains at a hospice, and they said they had never seen one. In their experience, they said, people die the way they’ve lived. I’ve also lost two friends to cancer, both women. Neither one was a believer, and neither one became a believer when faced with her own demise.
Even though I regard myself as an atheist, I haven’t read much of the new atheist literature. Haven’t felt the need to, since I have already read what I regard as the definitive works on unbelief, “Critique of Religion and Philosophy” and “The Faith of a Heretic,” by the late, lamented Walter Kaufmann. Both books should be on your shelf, Roger, if they aren’t already. The latter has an especially inspiring chapter on one heretic's attitude toward death. Kaufmann doesn’t overreach by blaming religion for everything bad in the world. He focuses instead on the problem of suffering and the dubious methods of theology as a discipline.
Grammatical note: "Whence" means "from which," or "from where," depending on context. So if you say "from whence," you're repeating yourself.
Enough of that. I'm no E. B. White. It's interesting to me the number of formerly hard-core left-wing revolutionary types have transformed themselves into neo-cons. My take is thus: there is much less of a difference between Marx and Mussolini than there is between Trotsky and Jefferson. Both neo-cons and Marxists see themselves as the architects of a so-called New World Order - and differences in the basis of their economic outlooks notwithstanding, both will, taken to their logical conclusion, lead to totalitarian dictatorships.
Hitchens has never seemed a neo-con to me. Despite, or perhaps because of, his views on religion, I wish him a speedy recovery and a long, fruitful life.
Hi Roger. Excellent article about a fascinating man. A "freelance intellectual", you called him.
I've always thought he seemed vitally engaged on whatever topic I was watching him opine on.
I can have, and do have, sympathy for him. Not empathy as you have, and shared so eloquently. I haven't been there yet, though I likely will some day. I wish him well in his struggle.
I'll likely order "Hitch-22" for my Kindle, after reading this. (Yes, an ebook).
I'm mostly intriqued in this article by your thoughts - filtered through Hitchens' current experience - on death and dying. Two thoughts at first read:
1. I worship the void. The mystery. And the ability of our human minds to perceive an unanswerable mystery. To reduce such a thing to simplistic names is an insult to it, and to our intelligence.
I don't see it that way, in my worldview. As I've discussed on other threads, we humans seem unique among life forms on the planet and in our observable univers in this ability to "perceive an unanswerable myster". In this case, to ponder God and an afterlife.
If you see life in a purely material way, then our intellect is limited and it is unanswerable. If however, the "First Mover" is more than that and is more toward the Christian concept of the Creator, then that entity has the potential to make it known to the created. If we have a Spirit, separate from the physical processes of intellect, then we have the capability for both pondering and knowing God.
Whatever one calls it, it's by definition outside the reach not only of our knowledge, but of knowledge itself.
Well, from our intellect out yes. But that discounts revelation - from the Creator to the created. And as Christianity, and other religions, are rooted in revelation from the divine it has to be considered.
What lies beyond is no more knowable than what lay before.
Well, again, only in a purely materialistic worldview. Dicounts revelation.
Should be a lively discussion on your excellent article.
Thanks for the reflection, Roger. Those who would pray for Mr. Hitchens' suffering and death are abhorrent human beings. I would only pray for his healing, peace and joy in the midst of his sufferings. A human life is never a simple matter of black and white. Though I do not know much of Mr. Hitchens' life and work, I am certain that there is much in it "of God" (though he would disagree). No one can just write a person off as if he or she was made of cardboard... In addition, I would say that a person who disbelieves as rigorously as Hitchens does is closer to God that a person who only pays lip service to his or her belief. Any serious engagement with the spiritual life, even if it is to reject it, is to be commended.
About five years ago a friend of mine was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer which had spread to her liver. She asked her doctor if they pursued the treatment plan he was suggesting if she could be cured. He waffled, she persisted. Finally he admitted that with the extent the cancer might shrink but probably wouldn't leave. She asked how much more time treatment would buy her, he replied maybe six months. She said "so no matter what we do in all likelihood I'll be dead within a year anyway." He said "probably." So she refused treatment. Pretty much everyone around her freaked out and said she was committing suicide, but a few of us saw her point. Chemo is nasty stuff--if it wasn't going to do any good what was the point of going through with it? She was well enough for about three months after her diagnosis to get her affairs in order and take her dream trip to Paris. Once she came back she went downhill pretty rapidly and died six weeks later, but she died at her home surrounded by her loved ones. I saw her three days before she died and although she looked awful there was a peace about her. She joked that it was the drugs, but she said it was because she was facing the inevitable on her terms.
That's the biggest fear about death, I think--not the actual act of dying, but what might lead up to it, the quality of it. None of us want to suffer, or be in a situation where we see it coming and can't prevent it (that's why fear of flying is so pervasive in my opinion). We give our suffering pets painless deaths when nothing more can be done and it drives me nuts that people can't do the same for themselves. It's also extremely ironic that the ones that fight the hardest against letting people die on their own terms are the ones who believe in an afterlife. I do not want to be, as you put it, a member of the audience in the theater of my own illness. If I have a good chance of living for a longer time afterwards, maybe. If given a diagnosis like my friend? Load me up with the good drugs and go away. I'm surprised Hitchens didn't do the same.
Ebert: That's sort of my thinking.
I just looked up Christopher Hitchens on Youtube. He's my new hero!
@Daniel,
Does believing in something greater than the physical universe automatically poison everything? Does working for the greater good of that something automatically poison everything?
I agree that working for a reward is not as meritorious as working without regard for one, but not all religious people are working for the afterlife. Some of us just love the thing we call God, and are happy to be his agents in the world. Even though I consider myself religious, I have no strong belief in the afterlife - indeed, I find it superfluous.
Both you and Hitchens have a straw man there - feel free to flail away at him, but don't think you're really accomplishing anything.
As to Hitchens, I find him a man completely without empathy. That he had to undergo waterboarding before changing his stance on torture tells me everything I care to know about the man.
I don't hate him, I'm sorry he's dying in the same way I'm sorry anyone suffers, but otherwise. . .meh. The world was not made better by his being here.
Would you say you're a neo-conservative now?
"I'm not a conservative of any kind. A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can be described as many things, but not as conservative." -- Christopher Hitchens, New Statesman, 12-Jul-2010
http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2010/07/conservative-course-presidency
Why is religion blamed for every war and evil? Why isn't this Hitchens talking about Bush administration that lied on huge scale and falsified evidence to start war in Iraq that is still going on? I mean that's pretty big evil wouldn't you say? Or maybe there's a religious reason behind that as well?
But it seems Hitchens is just a big coward he can attack and bad mouth Mother Theresa because she won't do anything to him while if he starts going into real reasons behind evil in this world like lies of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq then he fears he would pay the consequences by this powerful people.
Guys like Hitchens aren't anything new. Even in Schiller's play "The Robbers" when group of robbers is planing to make money fast they have idea of writing anti christian book because then they'll have all the hype and interest of people.
The wonderful Grant Morrison--who writes comic books, of all things--had this to say when asked about religion:
"I think religion per se, is a ghastly blight on the progress of the human species towards the stars. At the same time, it, or something like it, has been an undeniable source of comfort, meaning and hope for the majority of poor bastards who have ever lived on Earth, so I’m not trying to write it off completely. I just wish that more people were educated to a standard where they could understand what religion is and how it works. Yes, it got us through the night for a while, but ultimately, it’s one of those ugly, stupid arse–over–backwards things we could probably do without now, here on the Planet of the Apes.
Religion is to spirituality what porn is to sex. It’s what the Hollywood 3–act story template is to real creative writing.
Religion creates a structure which places 'special,' privileged people (priests) between ordinary people and the divine, as if there could even be any separation: as if every moment, every thought, every action was not already an expression of dynamic 'divinity' at work.
As I've said before, the solid world is just the part of heaven we're privileged to touch and play with. You don't need a priest or a holy man to talk to 'god' on your behalf just close your eyes and say hello: 'god' is no more, no less, than the sum total of all matter, all energy, all consciousness, as experienced or conceptualized from a timeless perspective where everything ever seems to present all at once. 'God' is in everything, all the time and can be found there by looking carefully. The entire universe, including the scary, evil bits, is a thought 'God' is thinking, right now.
As far as I can figure it out from my own reading and my own experience of how the spiritual world works, Jesus was, as they say, way cool: a man who achieved a state of consciousness, which nowadays would get him a diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy (in the days of the Emperor Tiberius, he was crucified for his ideas, today he’d be laughed at, mocked or medicated)."
Dear Roger:
I watched an interview of Hitchins the other night, but I'm not sure of the network. Nevertheless I applauded him for evoking my feelings on many things, including his views on religion, the effect of prayers, etc. on curing cancer. It is terrific to have a really articulate person speak out as many cancer patients would love to do so. I feel as he does. "Battling cancer" sounds great, but in reality all we can do is hope to get the best possible medical care and try to keep our hopes up. As my wonderful late friend Nina R and I would say to each other as we sat in the Carle chemo area, as long as there is hope, keep working on staying alive (in a state satisfactory to you). As one who has had carcinoid cancer (quite rare) for over 23 years and has had major lung and liver surgery over that time, some chemotherapy, plus treatments in Switzerland (not yet approved by the FDA for the US), I've been close to death a few times but so far have been able to lead a pretty good quality of life. I've been pretty lucky not to have the kind of pain that so many cancer patients must endure. My cancer has started to grow again and we hope to be able to return to Basel (great city) for treatments this fall. If they are successful, I'll see you at Eberfest next spring. If not, thanks for showing people how to survive what can be a pretty horrific ordeal. I never realized how close you came to leaving us and making this country a poorer place. We will be flying through Heathrow and I'm hoping Jean and I can find time to "walk the walk" taken by you and Dan Curley.
Thanks for the column on Hitchins. It is great.
We are still planning on attending the next Ebertfest. Best to you and Chaz.
Hiram Paley
Great piece on a brilliant, cantankerous SOB. Every belief system should have a critic as pointed and thoughtful as Hitch.
You're wrong, though, in your belief that "religion in its many forms has been the greatest single inspiration for man's inhumanity to man."
Power, in its many forms, is what inspires inhumanity. Religion is used as a rationalization by some who seek power.
Where Stalin and Mao appealed to a utopian state to justify their murderous rule, the Franks appealed to Christianity when they went on their crusades.
Much evil has been done by those who claim the name of God. Doesn't make God evil, or those acts religious.
NPR was just playing a great recording of you and Gene Siskel at Northwestern in 1996. It was wonderful hearing you and Gene bantering back and forth again. The two of you sharing the story of Gene catching a cab ride home after he screened "Halloween" despite living within walking distance of the theater was really funny.
You and Roeper were a decent team. The two Bens were awful. AO Scott and Michael Phillips did a solid job in the short time they were together. But hearing that recording of you and Gene Siskel underscored what all of us long time fans of "At the Movies" already knew: Siskel and Ebert are the standard by which movie review shows will always be measured.
While I admire Hitchens' arguments against religion and feel pity for his current health predicament, I fall short of having respect for the man himself. His enabling of the war in Iraq is responsible for the continued deaths of thousands and thousands of Americans and innocent Iraqis. His words of encouragement to Bush and the misleading of the American public to support the war has led to millions of Iraqi refugees living in squalor in far off lands.
Granted, Hitchens has led quite the life and has a wonderful writing style. That does not exclude him from being a monster who enabled a modern travesty of biblical proportions.
I don't why I alway picture the end of Joseph K. in The Trial every time I see this kind of topics.
Thanks for this post. I have not read Hichens; I am grateful to you for informing me that he is more rational and thoughtful than the title of his book lead me to believe. However, I have to disagree with you on this point:
"The extremists of both Christianity and Islam, for example, follow lives of violent repudiation of the beliefs of their own religions."
I do not understand this claim. Where is this benevolent root of religion? Christianity, Islam and Judaism all have their origins in violence and xenophobia. Surely their respective scriptures ought to be considered the foundation of their faith - and the Torah, the Quran and the Bible contain draconian laws and tell tales of a wrathful, capricious God. Don't forget that Jesus came not to bring peace to the world, but to divide father against son, and son against father. I don't agree with Hichens that religion poisons everything - many religious leaders now and throughout history have worked to sow good in the world. But how can you ignore God's commandments to kill women and massacre cities that lie in scripture, the very heart of these religions?
Ebert: I believe religion in its many forms has been the greatest single inspiration for man's inhumanity to man.
Would you accept the proposition, Roger, that religion may in it's many forms have ALSO been the greatest single inspiration for man's humanity to man?
I think so.
Ebert: A great source, certainly, but what made us human was that humanity as expressed long before religions existed.
Worshiping the void, the mystery. You took the words right out of my head. It's so noble to strive to live with the question. Religion doesn't have all the answers, neither does science. I stand in awe of what is unknowable.
Ebert: A great source, certainly, but what made us human was that humanity as expressed long before religions existed.
Isn't religion the source for humanism? And when people say it in general terms, "religion", rather than "the distortion of the religion." That's like saying, with conservatives today, or whatever you want to call them, the particular "mutated" variety (as you've called them), that America is one of the biggest causes for man's inhumanity to man, when it really was the distortion of what America means by George W. Bush and the like.
Ebert: You're correct. He supports the neocon war but is more of a Left libertarian.
The conventional labels of Left and Right do not apply to a Libertarian (who can best be described as conservative in the purist meaning of the term).
Christopher Hitchens is drinking some brown substance; I actually thought he possibly might have been drinking during the interview as well because of that.
Christopher Hitchens is drinking some brown substance; I actually thought he possibly might have been drinking during the interview as well because of that.
Ebert: You're correct. He supports the neocon war but is more of a Left libertarian.
The conventional labels of Left and Right do not apply to a Libertarian (who can best be described as conservative in the purist meaning of the term).
I read that it's impossible to be a conservative, which I think was because then you'd just be the party of no; at some point you have to say yes, which means no one can be a conservative.
Yes, Peter Cahill, I agree.
Religions have done lots of damage, but not by intent of design. Christianity did manage to soften up a great deal of common daily brutality amongst people -- which was sanctioned by the venal local sacerdoteries in the first place. Don't hand out guff about all the heads rolled because of religion. Before then, more heads rolled for local amusement and gratification.
Tho' nowadays, I don't know who's hoping to set off a nuke war more: "dispensationalists" or those supposing they'll be happier when the population is rolled back a few billion re:
"survival of the fittest."
I don't care enough about the prosary of spielers like Hitchens to know much about him. Atheism becomes boring pretty quickly to us not obsessed with personal bugbears, and as an organization (read "sorry-ass religion") it's as irresponsible as any other gang with zealous narrow-minded convictions. Good luck to 'im. He'll live or die according to how he feels, like everybody else does. Are we s'posed to be waiting to see if Hitchens starts screaming for Jesus at the last minute? Argle argle argle. What a bunch of curious bloodsuckers, this public.
Recently cc'd Rodge an e-mail I'd sent to the one e-group I'll ever belong to (since it was set up for me in the first place). Mensa people and better ("Better" meaning smart enough to realize Mensa doesn't do much of anything for the money).
A few of the group members were pronounced dead on the operating table over the course of a year, a few years ago. A couple hours dead here, more there. Some of their kids, too, got into deep health trouble. One, my age, was given a week to live, some sort of deadly terminal cancer. My enthusiasm for Latinate science terminology fails me at the moment.
That was 2 years ago. She's been doing okay since then, despite the dead, dead, dead certainties of medical science. They're having a little party this weekend to celebrate her beating either the Grim Reaper or her doctors.
Well? She'd tried my suggestion. Compared to being dead, sounds like it worked.
I'd cc'd Rodge that note because someone from among his oceanic-wide circle of friends had just reported to me that he, too, had tried it, had just came back from the Doc's, and there wasn't a trace of cancer in his plumbing; tests had come up positive early last summer. Cautiously, he'll be going for more tests in awhile. Always err on the side of caution.
Had seen this before. A few friends also given dire medical prognoses had taken the suggestion, and wound up fairly fine, some, perfect.
Too few took it. Those who didn't went "the usual" route. Some dead, some still dragging along on expensive mizzuble treatments years later now.
It's a 5-minute self-hypnosis thing. Doesn't cost any money, no "teachers", no religious nor scientific belief required. Just once a day, then forget about it. You don't need to do it if you're not sick. In such case, try it on something else for fun, if interested.
I'm kinda sick a' telling what it's done for me for several decades. Went over all that in Rodge's vote-for-enforced-health-insurance blogs. ...except to mention that my medical expenses since 1977 have so far been $0.00; the trip to the dentist last winter to pretty up my perfectly good chompers doesn't count. So it's been a study to me, why so few, few, few will even give it a try.
What's 5 minutes out of your day concentrating (not "visualizing," please) on something you'd rather believe? Need every waking minute to concentrate on being an insignificant speck in a cold, indifferent universe of billions and billions of meaningless stars, plus credit card bills, do you?
So, here is my study so far: In general, firm-set religious OR medical science beliefs are in the way of individuals even wanting to try this. Even the haphazard medley called "new age" beliefs, what with imploring "the Universe" where the Big Man With The Beard used to be, can be in the way (case studies, folks). That's just as bad as the lodged-in idea that your body is a helpless product of a "random universe" -- or the commonly repeated meme in Roger's science-talk blogs, "Ah don't buh-leeve nuthin', Ah only accepts duh FACKS." You subscribe to all that tangled shit, you're just not gonna try it.
So, Chris Hitchens, there you are. In a way, I'm with you. I'd rather meet a Big Nothing In The Sky than the God in all those Country Western songs.
I don't know about you guys, but I plan to go gently into the night. Not kicking and screaming in the face of approaching death; what a sad display of weak hubris that would be, a final gasping of bravado. Assuming I've chosen my terms correctly? I often know what I mean and then have to figure out how to say it. :)
Pain sucks. A prolonged illness, sucks. Dying after enduring months of physical torment and misery, sucks. (My mom died of lung cancer.)
I'm thinking in terms "when it doesn't matter what you do, the writing is on the wall." And for feeling the only way to cheat death is to conquer one's fear of it.
We're all going to die. What can I do? Control "how" I die, as best I'm able.
I want a view. I want to look out across a sloping garden to where the ocean meets the land. I want nice weather. I'd like to go at Twilight - as everyone knows that's when the magic starts. Smile.
I want to be away from the city. I want to see stars appearing in the vaulted ceiling overhead. I want to smell fruit trees in the distance and lavender nearby. And hear the sound of a breeze whispering through the canopies.
I'd like to fall softly into death as if stepping into a dream. No longer afraid, any sense of panic long since gone. I'd like to reach out with senses curious and eager.
I'd like my last thought on earth to be:
"I can't wait to see what's next."
This sort of ending takes planning, and why I've thought about over the years. As you don't want to be too sick or wait too long once the end is in sight; ie: I don't want to be elderly and helpless and hooked-up to machines in a hospital unable to control my ultimate fate. Eew. Suckage.
Ie: you're going to die. It's months away. Every day you get worse. That sort of scenario. I saw my mom suffer pointlessly. I don't want that.
I don't want to be afraid of death.
I just want to avoid the part that sucks. Again, when the writing is on the wall. Like one of those inoperable brain cancers you see on HOUSE with Hugh Laurie. That sort of suckage. When it starts to get bad, you simply fall into the dream and drift away into the next adventure. And if there's no adventure, well, you won't be around to know it. You have to exist to experience the sensation of disappointment.
And knowing that has always made me smile in the face of the eventuality of Death. As I don't think I've done anything I need to worry about? And my library fines are all paid.
$1.00 a day for late DVD's! Yikes.
Note: it was "Cold Souls" (2009) a comedy written and directed by Sophie Barthes.
Mr Ebert,
A moving tribute to a man free of compromise and sentimentality. He is the closest thing I have to a personal hero.
I was fortunate enough to interview him just a few weeks before his diagnosis, and found him to be charming and polite, without any shred of the arrogance that his enemies are so quick to tar him with.
If you're interested, the resultant interview can be found at my website:
http://www.benkirby.net/index.php/interviews/christopher-hitchens
I would also dearly love the opportunity to interview you, Mr Ebert. I am the Film Editor for Cherwell, Oxford University's student newspaper, and if you would be willing to answer a few questions via email (at benjamin.kirby@trinity.ox.ac.uk) I would be hugely grateful.
Many thanks,
Ben Kirby
Beautiful, as usual, Mr. Ebert. Thank you.
Bayonet or Machine Gun?
Also, "How clever of you"? I usually "get" these but I guess I had to be there this time?
As someone bullied by atheists in high school, I was taken aback both by news of Hitchens' sickness and by news of Christians praying for him to die. The first, because he seemed arrogant in his non-religion writings and insightful in his religious writings, and because as a cultural critic and good human being I did not want him to die. The second, because although it is obvious such prayers come from anger and hate, they were not my reaction even after the two years I spent being bullied by a group of people, including my first love, who I wanted the approval of as a person.
I pray Hitchens does not suffer. I know his sickness is advanced, and although God (my word for the supreme being that runs infinity) brings miracles, I feel it is his time to go. Regardless of whether he survives this bout or not, I pray God grants him what Woody Allen termed "the most you can wish for someone in this world": a painless passing.
I think he'll find something more than a non-existence once he goes. I know that, if the being we live under is as compassionate as I believe, Hitchens will not find eternal suffering. All of this is intuition, mere guesswork.
Hitchens worked in the latter part of his life against religion as a negative force, viewing it as inherently unreliable and too powerful in its past and present use for evil more than good. If we want to honor him, we should simply do the right thing, regardless of what any real or fictitious religion tells us to. I believe that humans are inherently good, and by going back to our inherent goodness instead of following whatever path of destruction we are on now. I speak not only of religions, but of all corruptions. If we were to follow this measure, we would be honoring not only Hitchens, but all humanity.
Ebert: [Religion] A great source, certainly, but what made us human was that humanity was expressed long before religions existed.
---Rogerrrrrrr, shame! At what date did "religions" begin? Source please. No "first dere was duh fambly unit strugglin' ta survive" fairy tales, either. Date, place, evidence. Snap snap. Toot sweet.
Ebert: Humanity had to exist before it created religions. Snap.
An amazing article.
Though I think there's no getting around religion: we can never know anything to a complete certainty and so everyday we all place our faith in some things, hoping we're on the right path. Maybe the truth is that we're all just poisoned.
Which reminds me of my favorite Errol Morris quote, a gem lost to cyberspace amidst his various Twittering... but findable if you go looking for it: "Because we're all mad, we have difficulty remembering we're all mad."
But, then again, that's just what I place my faith in.
Read your story, watched the interview and then called my doctor. I've had some symptoms for a a couple of weeks. I've been me meaning to make an appointment, but it didn't happen until now. Just turned 40 so having symptoms of anything serious is new to me. It surprised me how upset I was after hanging up.
Thank you for the push. Hello middle age!
Hitchens is fun to read. That's the bottom line.
The image I get is that of a man who who pushes his limits. He seeks to identify the boundaries in his world, and then tries to walk along the cliff to see what is on the other side. And -- *and* -- he enjoys a hefty bit of British accented snark in the process. But, within that British accented snark is also that strange British accented stiff restraint. This last point is where he's different from Ebert. Smile.
From that perspective, his ideological shifts -- the most popular or infamous being his post-9/11 shift -- should not surprise. Rather, that approach to life should guarantee a life of shifts.
He seems far more honest about his atheism than his contemporary Dawkins. He relishes in his, while Dawkins seems to have a big chip on his shoulder. Still, his arguments for atheism in print and debate are clever, but largely sophomoric. The joy is in his writing itself and the joy is in his provocations. This is not meant to be an attack on him or his atheism. Rather, the point is that it is unfortunate that he's been labeled as this defacto grand master of atheism, because that compels us to choose sides and seek critique, rather than to sit back and enjoy the ride he wants to take us on.
Right now, as far as the American map of these things are concerned, I'm Muslim, intellectually liberal, socially conservative, politically moderate, altruistic (in terms of love and economics). Having gone through my own ideological shifts through the years, I know that part of the joy is in the discovery, part of the joy is in the ride, part of the joy is in the memories. Part of the joy is in the joy.
Omer M
Now imagine being waterboarded without having a safe word, or knowing that trained medical professionals are going to keep you safe. The shame of living in a country with state-sponsored torture.
Religion is to spirituality what porn is to sex.
Spoken like an adult who reads comic books.
Ebert: One gets you off and the other sees you off.
It's interesting that you posted this entry today: I just found out that my cousin passed away earlier this morning; he had terminal brain cancer, so it wasn't unexpected.
Death doesn't particularly bother me: it's as natural as life, if not more natural--most of the universe [as we know it] is "dead". The strange thing about death is the event itself: it's strange knowing that the synaptic and chemical processes that constituted X no longer function, and so X no longer exists. My naturalism doesn't give me comfort, but it [in theory] negates any trepidation; I'm simply left to neutrally accept an immutable event, but it's hard being neutral: I like life. When I think of nonexistence, I'm reminded of Thomas Nagel's essay "What Is It Like To Be A Bat": we invariably interject our consciousness into our imaginings, which makes conceptualizing other conscious experiences [or non-experiences, in the case of nonexistence] difficult, if not impossible. It's very strange.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmKKVU_X9wU
...that it's beyond the reach of knowledge itself?
Isn't that the charm of it?
Great Christopher Hitchens moment I just came across while watching and old episode of Penn&Teller's Bullshit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1Jm9PzGLB8&feature=related
Skip to 9:10 for the jackpot: both smoking and drinking scotch, Hitchens disses Mother Theresa. Classic!
Possibly a better link, with added Hitch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1Jm9PzGLB8 9:10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzhh7oJzU3o 6:45 and 9:02
Thank you for a thoughtful, interesting piece about Christopher Hitchens, who is certainly one of the most interesting thinkers of my lifetime.
My husband died last year from multiple myeloma. He was brought up in an evangelical Baptist home - and as a result, he and his brothers are all atheists.
It used to infuriate him, in the beginning when people would coo, "I'll pray for you." It wasn't the prayers that bothered him - it was the fact that the faithful had to make a big deal out of announcing that they were praying for him. He found it incredibly presumptuous. He was delighted with a study I found showing that people who knew they were being prayed for often died in higher numbers. After that when someone said, "I'm praying for you," he would respond, "Why, are you trying to kill me?"
As his illness progressed, he was kinder to those who announced they were praying for him. He would just say thank you. He didn't have the energy to care much about it at that point.
His views never changed. He never took the Hail Mary pass. He remained an atheist till the end. I expect Mr. Hitchens will do the same.
I think the problem with most religions is that they deal in vague and ominous threats while pretending to preach a message of love: accept Jesus as your savior and experience an eternity of happiness, or don't and you'll burn. It's no wonder so many nonreligious people hold their religious counterparts in great disdain: many of them believe in God simply because they've been bullied into doing so. That shouldn't be what religion is about. But it is, and it always has been, because organized religion came about in the first place as a means of controlling the masses, not as a form of enlightenment. How do you control an entire population? You scare the shit out of them. Thus all the tales of fire and brimstone and agony. And all the horrible things done in the name of God. You'd think we would've learned by now.
I do believe in a higher power, but not because anyone told me to, or because I'm scared of what would happen when I die if I didn't. It's a belief I've come to after a lot of soul searching, and I have equal respect for the people who do the same and come to the opposite belief. Anyone who says there's one absolute truth is a fool.
"He has said he now believes capitalism to be a more use economic tool than socialism"
Is the "use" in that sentence suppose to be "useful"?
Great post. Like you, I first heard of his condition a mere day or two after finishing his autobiography. It's probably one of the more unfortunate cases of free publicity that an author could hope for.
I don't always agree with Hitchens' opinions, but quite often I do, and he never fails to amuse - even when you might get the feeling that he's being contrary for the sake of being contrary (his articles on why women aren't funny and his attack on Jon Stewart and co., for example, seemed rather questionable).
I've read that the cancer has spread and he is currently facing less than a 5% chance of survival. It will be sad to lose such a talented, intelligent and entertaining writer.
"To hope we can learn how the universe came about is admirable; one might as well call that hope by any name. Whatever one calls it, it's by definition outside the reach not only of our knowledge, but of knowledge itself."
I'd be interested to know what Hitchens line of reasoning would be regarding that logic. If discovering the nature of the universe is outside of human understanding, then how can atheism be adopted with certainty? The absence of explanation requires a regression into percentages; into what is most likely versus what is unlikely; Bertrand Russell's agnostic atheism if you will. This absence of certainty automatically allows for endless speculation which then relies upon probability - there might be no God, there might be a God, Christianity might be right, Islam could be correct, space aliens playing marbles with us men in black style could be occurring
This line of reasoning would demand that an atheist could say - at most - that he is only 99.999999999% certain the Christian God does not exist. Or a fantastically deistic approach that "God" constantly creates universes is .000000000000000001% probable.
I look at it like a casino. I may know the chances of getting red or black on roulette is much better than getting three cherries on slots, but that does not mean that two individuals entering the casino and playing these two games could not shock the predictions. The man playing roulette could lose on his first bet, and the woman playing the slots could win on the first pull. This would conflict with mathematical predictions, but nevertheless, we must admit that this can certainly occur.
The moment a person accepts likely/unlikely stances based on percentages (i.e., to be an atheist makes the most sense within the modern science environment) of which can NEVER be proven, then you have to immediately accept that ANY possibility could logically occur because we cannot know the answer. Unlike the casino, there is no empirical evidence to support the probabilities of what caused everything; whether it was the .0000000001% likelihood of an evil genius or 99.9999999% likelihood of scientific processes, we will never know. The inability to ever understand the nature of our universe demands us to accept that explanation is only limited by our imaginations.
So my question is that if Hitchens admits that we could never know what created the universe (if anything), then like the casino, we must admit that any possibility COULD occur.
I personally enjoy exploring the infinite possibilities rather than betting on the house, as Christianity or Atheism appears to do.
But yet again, I'd be interested to know what he says about this.
Ebert: I think I'm with you, which explains why I embrace the mystery. I think there's an excellent chance that that our race will never learn how the universe came about, and an equally good chance that we will never tire of attempting to find out.
Mr. Ebert: Thanks for your beautiful writing on Hitchens. He is one of a kind both as a personality and writer. I don't buy some of the people saying the Hitchens has no empathy. I believe that he does, but he is frustrated by a lot of ignorance in this world by fellow humans.
My wish for Mr. Hitchens is good friends, great champagne, conversations, laughter, and a good journey on this event. I had Ovarian and survived. His cancer has a worst prognosis. A lot of people suffer in this world. Some better than others.
I grew up in a hard scrabble Bible belt with people who professed Jesus, but saw other ethnic groups as "having no soul'. It did not take me long to understand that this was beyond comprehension Sunday after Sunday. We had racism, violence, and even a pedophile in my extended family, but everyone was headed for heaven because of a magical belief.
So, you never quite get over the grossness of this existence. Thus, you turn to the beauty of the world, art, books, language, and people who have compassion. You watch movies, you watch movie reviewers, and you grow to find that sweet spot that means what it is to be you. But, a deep sadness trails you for those left in delusion and anger. It is heartbreaking.
Please dont take offense but I have a couple questions regarding your belief in a first 'force' creating a universe.
1) Are you so certain that there has to be a first mover, or force, that created the universe? Cant there be an infinite series of forces behind the universe just as there are an infinite series of numbers?
2) Its natural to find causes and reasons for the universe since we do not wish a pointless world, but is it a logical requirement? The belief that 'the universe has a purpose' isnt a tautology like 'a triangle has three sides'. Though the universe can be inexplicable, this is not an error of logic (despite that it might be an unwelcomed thought).
Ebert: No, I'm not at all certain it exists. I cannot know. I admit this instead of creating an explanation and worshiping that.
Nor can I know that such a force/entity/thing does not exist.
Ebert: The fact that we continue to search for the explanations of such matters is what makes us human. We learn so much from the journey even if the destination remains out of reach.
=================================
Wow. I couldnt pass this Modernist Rationalist Western-centric nugget up. And what is your definition of the "non?"-human societies that make up the vast majority of human history and culture, that had, and for some, have, NO interest in your fantastic "search for the explanations"?
Also, it always occurs to me, that the praising and eulogizing of the dead is born from the luxury of the living - a conspicuous consumption, if you will, expressing public regret yet privately satisfied it is him and not me.
With that said, the most honest thing I can say in tribute is that I will miss Hitch, and that he wont miss me. But he would if he could.
Ebert: As far as I know, no non-human societies, on this planet at least, ask themselves why the universe exists.
I have said an occassional prayer for Mr. Christopher Hitchens that he will get better or at least not suffer much. If there is a God then when Hitchens dies either soon but hopefully not soon, he will be in God's presence. I believe God is loving and forgiving and I believe that God will be mericiful to Hitchens. Not sure about Dawkins or Harris. LOL. No, I'm kidding. God will merciful to them, too.
It occurs to me, reading so many people who have disagreed with Hitchens without hating him (I disagree with almost 50% of what he says), that we respect him because he's not just repeating lines that he's learned. So many, on all sides, never reconsider their opinions. Hitches seems to weigh his own views with every word.
The conventional labels of Left and Right do not apply to a Libertarian (who can best be described as conservative in the purist meaning of the term).
This is nonsense. What's commonly called libertarianism in the United States is essentially aligned with the modern right, in that it's pro-capitalist, anti-government, and is made up almost exclusively of bigoted, greedy white men. Libertarians claim to be 'conservative' in the sense that they just want to conserve the way they claim things were in, say, 1776. But that's very selective, and to borrow from Pete Seeger (or was it Woody Guthrie?) it's just as possible (and as reasonable) to say, "I'm conservative, I want things to go back to how they were when there were villages of people who cared about each other and shared everything." Modern American libertarianism is a cover for greed. It's men who, because they're already favored in some way, more or less well off, want to destroy what (meager) protections are in place for the poor. The Ron Pauls of the world, who preach about pure capitalism and how it would solve everything, seem to neglect the very important fact that if it were initiated in the present environment, with so many poor and with such income disparity, life would become intolerable for the vast majority of people in a very short period of time. But libertarians- well-off white males- don't care about most people.
Left libertarianism, which is not only wonderful but probably ultimately the ideal form of 'government', tends not to call itself that anymore because of the negative associations. This is the philosophy of men such as Peter Kropotkin, and also goes under various names including social anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism, the favored system of the Zinns and Chomskys and Orwells of the world.
Both left and right libertarianism are technically libertarianism, but obviously they're distinct, or how do you explain that one of them is good and attracts all these wonderful people, and the other is evil and attracts hateful greedy racist people? I mean come on. There are four things at work here, two choices to be made, and a few possible combinations- big government or small government (totalitarianism or anarchism, at the extremes), and 'left' vs 'right' (capitalism vs socialism). Anarchism and socialism are the two ideals, and taken together you'd have a society better than you and yours deserve.
Ebert: A great source, certainly, but what made us human was that humanity as expressed long before religions existed.
Oh, yeah, what I was going to say was that religion (or God rather) might be something that is in our nature. Cro-magnons buried their dead with necklaces, and it suggest that there was a ritual--a religious ritual if you will--and these from beings that didn't have that part of the brain to be able to read or the physical part of the throat to be able to talk, only grunt. There was no way to teach it; it was just natural.
The same it seems is probably true for us. Every society has its manners and customs and people that ignore others are seen as so irritatingly annoying because they refuse to participate in the faith that holds society together, which is itself a religion. As Louis Armstong said in "What A Wonderful World": "I see friends shaking hands saying 'How do you do', They're really saying 'I love you'."
So, I guess what that means is society is a religion that is, yes, based on love or humanity etc., but is still a religion. Society is based on self-esteem which is that we all have something to give and that what we give has meaning because the world has meaning. Says who? The answer: religion. Why? Probably because that's out nature.
There's always been a ritual and there still is.
If people don't get involved in the ritual they'll make a ritual of themselves, or a religion of themselves and everyone else has to kneel at their alter. This explains the abuses of the world. Some people are left behind in the ritual and as rituals are our natures, somebodies going to have kneel at their alter and that somebody is everybody.
Thank you for taking the time to essay about another fine man and writer with whom I disagree often. I read you and Hitch both, and you are both testament to the proposition that good, clear writing can be a vehicle to helping others understand and sympathize with your POV, even where one might still disagree.
I and mine are praying for his "wholeness" -- health, recovery, comfort, &c. I hope he counts us among those that amaze him.
Great article on Hitch, Roger - but with at least one error: Hitchens famously subjected himself to a complete makeover in a hilarious three-part article in Vanity Fair magazine called "On The Limits of Self-Improvement". In it, his teeth are decribed thusly: "The fanglike teeth are what is sometimes called “British”: sturdy, if unevenly spaced, and have turned an alarming shade of yellow and brown, attributable perhaps to strong coffee as well as to nicotine, Pinot Noir, and other potations". By the end of the article, Hitchens had all his teeth capped - and they are lovely. Pictures exist as well. That man is precious...
Roger, what happened to the Movie Answer Man? It hasn't been updated for over a month.
Ebert: My bad. I'm on leave writing my memoirs, and that also explains why I'm missing some of the commercial openings. Will be back full time in September, and covering Toronto.
Here are some observations that confirmed my belief in God. If you think carefully, there is too much coordination and too many benefits bewstowed upon humans for there not to be a God.Once I realized all the benefits humans have I came to the conclusion that it can't be mere chance that we came into being.
A couple of examples. If everything is indeed a random occurence then there would have been an equal probability that every human that was born would be born sick and remain sick and in pain throughout their lives. Most humans live reasonably healthy lives for a good part of their lives.Now people will say that's just humans adapting to their environment.However, if everything is random, humans could have been made without the ability to adapt at all. There is an equal chance that we all could have been born and forced to live in pain(physical) throughout our whole lives. Another example, most humans like the food we eat.Again, if everything is a random occurence the situation could've been that we hate what we eat but have to eat it to survive. One more example. If everything was random we could've been born with everyone speaking a different language and no two humans being able to communicate with one another.. Think about it, a totally random start to existence could have meant that no matter how hard we try, humans would not be able to learn any other language.If everything is random, these situations would have been just as probable as the situation we find ourselves in. There are so many other examples.All this structure and coordination prves to me at least that it cannot be mere chance that we are here and that there is indeed a God.
Ebert: The Theory of Evolution explains why most people are not born sick and stay that way. Not many of them would live long enough to reproduce.
Many foods (fruits, for example) taste good because as we animals eat them we scatter their pits or seeds. We like many foods we eat because we cultivated those that seemed palatable and filling. We do not cultivate foods we cannot eat.
Nobody is born speaking any language. They are all learned. We can learn them because of the nature of our minds.
The body of Hitchens' work isn't so much a commentary on religion as the human brain's need to demonize something and human need to scapegoat external forces for our own human shortcomings. Even taking a skeptical view, religion is nothing more than social system just like government or philosophy. Obviously wrongs have been done in the name of religion such as the bombing of the Twin Towers, apartheid in Israel, the serfdom of Tibetan peasants, caste discrimination in India etc but to blame human failings on religion is as insipid as to lay all the wrongs on the world on the fact that governments exist. Certainly more wars, genocide, persecution and evil has been perpetrated by governments than any other body in human history. Shall we declare all government evil and promote the rise of anarchy?
Simply religion exists because the alternative for humanity is much much worse. As a non-religious man of African origins it baffles me the amount of hand-wringing and posturing that Liberal white Americans endure over the "question" of religion. Religion is a basic human expression, just as art, commerce or government, the amount of angst from certain quarters over it is truly puzzling.
There's a brief but brilliant line, toward the end of the movie "Agora," that's highly relevant to this discussion. It's when Hypatia says "You don't question what you believe. You cannot. I must."
Maybe I'm still too young, but I've never heard of a preaching atheist dying peacefully.
My husband died from cancer. He suffered greatly. I would not wish that on anyone. I did not know much of Hitchens before I read this blog. However, reading it has made me want to know more about him and to read some of his work. (Which is what Roger's writing always inspires in me.)
I agree with the poster above who said that it is possible not to believe in God, but to still mourn its loss.
"So you don't pray at all?" Cooper said.
Hitchens: "No, that's all meaningless to me. I don't think souls or bodies can be changed by incantation."
OK, I see a lot of people showing respect for Militant Atheism... which is great... the idea that remaining silent about the problems of religion does more harm than good.
But until you understand.... let's say there's a village in a remote part of the world, and the people have never seen a freeway, or a shopping center, and they have no idea that Western civilization exists.
What they have... the only thing they have other than dirt and suffering... is their religion.
Let's start with Demonic Possession. If a man goes into convulsions, is that the result of a demon tormenting him?
Religion says: Until science can explain each detail, if indeed it ever can, one cannot dismiss the possibility that demonic possession is a real and true phenomenon.
Before there was Islam, primitive people believed in a race of non-humans called the Jinn.
Religion says: The jinn live all over earth on a separate plane of existence from man and cannot easily be seen, though they are often thought to take the shape of snakes and black dogs. Bad jinn are forever looking for ways to interfere with humans. According to Islam, men are supposed to abstain from having sex with their wives when they are menstruating, as this can let in evil spirits, and a child conceived at this time will be sterile and considered a child of the jinn
Religion says: Let me describe the case of a female Jinnee named Seeta who had possessed a girl for almost seven years. It wasn’t a voluntary possession rather a case of black magic.
A young woman who believes she is a Jinnee named Seeta: "I am evil and I have done many evil actions. I cannot change now."
Religion says: Haven’t you seen the angels when you go up on the heavens and tried to listen to their conversations?
A Jinnee named Seeta: Yes. They throw stones at us. I’ve been hit by them many times. My right arm was broken because of that!!
Religion says: Up above those heavens, stern guards of Allah, the angels, are protecting the skies with meteor, exactly how it is described in the Qur’an:
“And we have sought to reach the heaven; but found it filled with stern guards... (end of Religion says)
Until you understand that, not only is it nonsense, but millions and millions of primitive people believe in these Jinn and demons and satanic spirits...
... to the point where they would look blank and confused if you tried to tell them otherwise...
... maybe you understand why a Militant Atheist is justified in saying, "It's time to get rid of religion and move on."
Sure, you can take a small, narrow issue like "What happens when I die?" and listen to meaningful debate on both side. But if you simply consider "religion" in general terms, it hurts mankind by making its victims believe nonsense that, well, I call delusional.
So, Militant Atheism is Good.
I attended a debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Michael Shermer at Cal Tech. Dinesh attended Jesuit school in India, and he has never grasped the fact that Jesuits are teaching nonsense. If you think stories about possession by the Jinn are nonsense, then you might understand that Militant Atheists consider a Christmas Mass to be equal nonsense.
Beyond our knowledge? Yes. But my conscience points to Christianity
Reading these comments, I am moved to recommend three books by the late Ernest Becker, whom I discovered just this summer and for whom I have become something of a stuttering evangelist. To paraphrase just one of his themes, we created God earnestly and honestly in a bid to serve our deepest needs; "killed" him when science and self-knowledge came up to speed; and now must knowingly create him again, each of us individually and according to taste, to satisfy those still-vital needs. This is the gist of the first book, "The Birth and Death of Reason."
Next comes "The Denial of Death," the Pulitzer Prize-winning exploration of how the terror of death is at the root of all human behavior. And finally, "Escape from Evil," which sadly shows how evils like war are born of our need to ERADICATE evil. Or more accurately, endorse our own belief system as THE system capable of delivering immortality.
These books have been life-changers for me, and I can't recommend them highly enough. As an atheist, I resisted Becker's premise that psychology and religion inevitably merge, yet he makes a most convincing case. We need to feel our lives have cosmic significance, but that transcendence project is no longer a rock-bound function of our culture. We are left to choose our own role and embrace it as final truth, and not a story we've fashioned to save our sanity. In short, we're in quite a bind. But I'm grateful and intrigued to have this understanding.
As to Christopher Hitchens, I think he is a national treasure, and hope he will be well enough soon to carry on his brilliant battle against ignorance. Many's the night our household has been bright with conversation after reading or seeing his latest exploits. Our best wishes to him and his family.
The Void, the mystery, the nameless force that drives the universe and cannot truly be spoken of, for to speak of it confines it and makes it something other than what it is. Heh. Forget the Abrahamic faiths, Mr. Ebert. You sound like a Taoist.
道可道非常道
名可名e非常名
'The Way that can be told of is not the unvarying way, the names that can be named are not unvarying names.'
(Pardon the above if you don't have Chinese character fonts installed.)
What fascinates me is how little attention is paid to how obsolescent so many religions seem today. The miracles that were widely read and perhaps awed our ancestors into faith seem so incredibly trite today. Walking on water? Turning water to wine? Healing the blind? All incredible stuff, I'm sure, for an audience in ancient Palestine. And I'm sure I'd applaud if it were a magician's show or something today. I'd probably do more than that for the raising of a dead man.
But for God?
Today the God we envision must be capable of forging a universe so infinitely vast that our minds are utterly incapable of conceiving of it beyond a sort of mathematical abstraction. It must envision our single galaxy with 100 billion + stars, each and every one one of them with distances measured from us in light years, often thousands or millions or billions of light years. The boundary of the observable universe is said to be 46.5 billion light years in any direction. Can anyone really wrap their brains around the idea of a single light year? Of travelling 6 trillion miles? When you enter the realm of such distances, you begin to understand Taoism's point and see how attaching names and numbers to some concepts, while quite useful to physicists and astronomers and mathematicians, is completely useless to truly grasping them on a human level. The mind's only response is a sort of vague awe at the big number.
If the Son of God or the Prophet of God or the Messiah or whatever such figure were ever to arrive on earth, my thinking is he would not need parlor tricks to convince us of who he is, and in fact even if such things were to prove he were something 'supernatural' such a petty display of power should only weaken the impression that he was the divine creator in a universe so grand. The comparison itself diminishes such a potential unknowable entity, but a God making magical fish and bread appear is like Leonardo Da Vinci proving his status by giving us his latest work of finger painting.
If a God figure could, without effort, without so much as lifting a hand, give us one tiny glimpse at the full scale of the universe, truly make us understand for even a fraction of a second, I suspect all doubt would vanish instantly. Those should have been the miracles of the Bible; not shaping course material like a magician, but opening a pathway to true understand for but a moment.
Likewise, I marvel when atheists like Christopher Hitchens are accused of being 'arrogant'. His typical opponents believe that all of the above is apparently just a big meaningless show for us put on by a God who is completely fixated on us, who made us in his image, who sent his son to die for us, who will presumably end the universe for us, who has nothing to say whatsoever beyond this single planet, etc. with everything revolving around us. By contrast, Hitchens believes in a universe that whirls along quite nicely with or without us, a universe in which we are very likely an inconceivably tiny spot in a grand design so enormous we cannot even really understand it. When we are all gone, and our world has been rendered barren and lifeless or destroyed altogether when our sun expands into a red giant, the universe will continue on its way just as well for many trillions of years, almost as if we had never been. Who is arrogant and who is humble?
The simple reality is that the fundamentals of one of these popular views was formulated by a small desert tribe with scarcely any understanding of the broader universe beyond their lands, who likely trembled at the sight of an eclipse and wondered at the tiny dots of light in the sky, and lived short lives huddling in the darkness from the many things they could not understand. The other view takes into account the rather vast advances in understanding that have been made since then. We still largely live in darkness, but we no longer hide there, and strive fiercely and constantly to understand more, to the limits of our ability. The vision of what God is dreamt of by the former must by necessity be a different thing altogether from the vision dreamt of by the latter, and if God is to have future relevance for us our vision of what he is...if he can even be called a 'he' or a 'she' or even an 'it' without essentially undermining what God is...must change with the times.
@Ebert:
Excellent piece. More reasons to admire Hitchens! I disagree with some of his beliefs and politics, but have nothing but respect for him as a writer/thinker/human being.
On a topic related by issues of religion, I'm curious what your thoughts are about President Obama's vocal support of the "Ground Zero Mosque" (as some in the media term it).
While I fully support Obama and the right of the Muslims to build a mosque anywhere they want to in this country, it still strikes me as remarkably insensitive to build a mosque in this particular location (and yes, I know the area well--and it really is an odd location for a mosque, to be quite honest).
I fear this will blow up in Obama's face. I also fear that the mosque will be sabotaged/attacked. Yet I also feel badly for the victims of 9/11, many of whom have spoken out against the mosque. It seems bitterly unfair for them in some ways to have to swallow this. I have also heard that Muslims often erect mosques near (or on) conquered sites and battlegrounds--although to be honest, I'm not sure if this is actually true, or merely racist propaganda.
Do you think the people behind the construction of the mosque have positive or negative intentions? Is it intended to be a place of worship (and possibly even healing and reconciliation)? Or a place cannily designed to cause maximum conflict? Or is it all just a non-issue that the media and the Right has blown out of proportion?
I'm not sure how I feel about it myself. It seems like it's going to become a flashpoint for all kinds of negativity and intolerance (from every side).
If you get a chance, I'd be interested in your views, as you tend to take a common sense approach to these things which can be instructive to read. And of course if you've already written about the "Ground Zero Mosque" (a truly awful, inflammatory term) then I must have missed it and I need to go back and read it!
So sorry, the name of the first Ernest Becker book in my previous post should be "The Birth and Death of Meaning." You're welcome to edit it to make the correction!
"I worship the void. The mystery. And the ability of our human minds to perceive an unanswerable mystery. To reduce such a thing to simplistic names is an insult to it, and to our intelligence."
Ebert, good sir, you are a Taoist, and an eloquent one at that.
I appreciate what you wrote here. Hitchens is a polarizing character that has had me at times railing against him and other times cheering him on. To see him written about in a level headed balanced fashion is a good thing and I thank you for doing it.
I am a devout Christian with a very personal walk with God (though it feels very one sided at times). I disdain most churches and despise preachers that politicize what should always be very personal conversations / decisions. I felt that Hitchens, like most atheists miss the point: when Christians fail they do it just as epically as any other person and sometimes, when combined with religious fervor manage to hurt more than the non-Christian. The kicker is: God will let them fail, that's the way it is. It says it right in the Bible: life is hard and then you die.
Anyway, two of my closest friends are atheists. One died a few years ago. I miss him dearly. I especially miss the long drawn out arguments we had, the shots we would take at each other, the one liners about each other's beliefs, and never, and I mean never did things get heated or too emotional. If Bob was alive today he would mourn Hitchen's illness and feel a sense of loss that atheism and "intelligent thought" (yeah, Bob, that was a shot) was gonna lose one of its front line fighters.
Well, in honor of Bob and other kind hearted atheists I know, let me say that I hope Kitchen's journey into the Great Beyond is as painless as possible. And if, by some mixture of pain killers and pure oxygen Hitchens does manage a bedside conversion, well, I hope it brings him a moment of peace.
I for one would find the after life a tad boring if not for the Bobs and Hitchens of the world. Here's to hoping God thinks the same way.
Incidentally, on the subject of politics, Christopher Hitchen's past stance as a Trotskyist has always struck me as interesting, especially in the wake of my own dawning realization that my politics lay less with traditional Liberalism and more with full-blown Anarchism (or, if the label has too negative a connotation for you, Libertarian Socialism/Left Libertarianism/etc.)
I still hesitate to fully label myself as such in many cases, however, for all the various limitations I find with that philosophy of government...or non-government, as it were. In fact, I tend to take the view that wholly accepting any such labels of 'who you are' politically is somewhat of a notch against an individual's intelligence. A scientific theory is held until such time as the facts can no longer support it, after which (though many scientists of course may be loath to do so) it is abandoned. A political theory, by contrast, is apparently held against everything, every fact or figure or gigantic hint from the Real World that the methodology underlying it may be deeply flawed in some way. People will cling to their political beliefs far beyond the point of rationality. If they do abandon or modify their beliefs, it usually won't be because of objective fact finding, but rather because of some more personal change, more like breaking up with an old love than objectively determining the effectiveness of one's proposed policies.
And of course religious belief actually takes such unquestioning faith as one of its underlying premises; however contrary the facts to your views, if you just have faith you can ignore them and keep on going. It's all rather crazed when you think about it.
Hitchens as the Neo-Con ex-Trotsykite militant Atheist, and others with such political views that apparently have been assembled as if from a buffet at a Chinese restaurant, thus seem almost more sane than most. Hitchens does not accept one particular political theory or ideological leaning wholesale. He takes what he likes and throws out the rest, his support for the Iraq War no more necessitating traditional right-wing support for religion than his past fascination with Trotsky and Orwell the unapologetic socialists prevents him from leaning more towards capitalism.
When asked, Leonard Cohen replied he was not afraid of death, merely the preliminaries. I am in agreement with both you and Mr. Cohen.
Our lives are so short in relation to the inexorable passage of time that has gone by and is yet to come that it seems life is very abstract. When ones existence is merely a binary state it seems all so insignificant. Like us, everything we leave behind is also impermanent.
I guess the only comfort I draw from our existence is that the universe seems to be cyclical in nature and that perhaps nothing is truly destroyed but merely transformed. What wonders await us after death. Inevitable as it is, perhaps it is something to look forward to.
Thanks for using my cartoon in your post! There are some excellent comments happening on my blog concerning this issue. Check out my nakedpastor blog.
You don't have to be religious to bless someone or have positive, healing hopes and intentions towards them... I think once all the BS of religion is removed, you're left with that basic human impulse to love others and to wish them the best in life, through hardships, and in their passage to their next life, whatever form it may take. If Christopher Hitchens has a bedside conversion, it wouldn't be so much a "conversion" (what does that MEAN anyway? Signing a paper which officially makes you "religious?") as a return to what is within all human hearts before ideas and symbols and politics and all that other crap distracts us... A very basic, intimate connection with oneself and the greater mysterious consciousness or energy or, maybe nothing, from which we all come, and to which we will all return. To call it God would be to offend those atheists out there. So let's just leave it unnamed and recognize that no human will ever be separate from it... they will only try to forget about it until it suddenly becomes the most important thing in their life.
"As to the larger question of whether God exists, I would agree with Hitchens that we can't rule out the possibility of some indefinable first mover, although I'm sure he doesn't mean mover as a being but as a force. To hope we can learn how the universe came about is admirable; one might as well call that hope by any name. Whatever one calls it, it's by definition outside the reach not only of our knowledge, but of knowledge itself."
You've asserted that finding out how the universe came about is both outside our knowledge and outside some "transcendental" definition of knowledge as well.
Yet you make this claim with no evidence. How can you claim to know that something is unknowable? I am not arguing that knowing how the universe came into being necessarily will be found out by mankind but to flat out state that it is outside of our knowledge is a massive fallacy, akin to me saying that science will never find a wholesale cure for cancer or that we will never encounter extra-terrestial life.
Ebert: Then the information about its means of creation is within the universe, which suggests it bootstrapped itself.
"And the ability of our human minds to perceive an unanswerable mystery. To reduce such a thing to simplistic names is an insult to it, and to our intelligence."
Another remarkable post, Roger, but if you don't mind my asking: What does this statement say about Jesus? He taught his disciples to say, "Our Father, Who art in heaven," right? "Hallowed by THY NAME." (emphasis mine)
I've been asking this question of another film blogger recently (he refuses to answer me): What do you think of Jesus? I've read your earlier posts, so I have some idea of your answer, but thought it was worth asking now, in light of your statement I quoted. Essentially, you're saying: Jesus insulted God. Right? I'm just looking for clarification. I don't want to put words in your mouth. I'm drawing an inference, perhaps incorrectly. But I wonder, when people write stuff about religion that contradicts things said by Christ, what that says about the person writing. The person rarely comes out and directly engages with the words of Christ. Usually, he or she has to dismiss the words as recorded, because the implications of those words are quite challenging.
Basically, my conclusion is that it's harder to ACCEPT those words, as given, than it is to REJECT them, and yet those who reject the words are often held up as intellectually more rigorous than those who submit to the teachings.
I have no problem admitting that Jesus' teachings aren't as simple as many of his followers make them out to be, but neither are they so difficult that only scholars can understand them. And yet, I get the sense that you, and others, haven't really GRAPPLED with the teachings lately. I hope that's not unfair, but I read your posts, and others, and while they're thoughtful in many ways, in other ways they skate right past some important considerations about this person Jesus.
I'm interested in any comment you have on this. Thank you.
Christopher Hitchens is a man of rare integrity and wit. I admire his stand against the corrosive influence of religion, and his passion for language and irony and reason. Get well, Hitch. The world needs you.
Thanks for writing this post, Roger. You do your audience a great favor by exposing them to Hitchens. I'm very glad to see that one writer I hold in high regard shares my respect for another.
Great post Roger. Hitchens is a hero to many who value reason and reject superstition. When he goes, as we all will go someday, they will say "He stomped on the Terra."
America needs more public figures like Roger Ebert and Christopher Hitchens: people who, whether you agree with them or not, have thoughtful things to say.
A relevant quote:
"The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God." -Martin Buber
Just a major point about doing good or evil, dear Roger Ebert, you are confusing - as is so often done, not always accidentally - belief and religion. The former may help some people to get through hard times and be [in general] good; the latter, OTOH, is an organised, often hierarchical system exploiting people's beliefs in some supernatural entity or phenomenon, usually to gain power.
In my experience good people are good not because of their faith but despite of it. Just as evil people need not be religious at all [or atheist, as I am] to do evil.
Mr. Ebert,
For many years I watched "Siskel & Ebert", which gave me many moments of laughter, puzzlement, and intrigue. There were times I thought you were both out to lunch on your review of a particular movie!
Today I still enjoy reading your reviews...
Upon just reading this post, knowing what you were going to face, if given the choice, would you have chosen death as opposed to living life as you know it now? Science made that choice for you/doctors, they kept you alive.
If it were me in your shoes, I would have chosen to die. However, I do appreciate the miracle that you are still here sharing your knowledge and love of movies with us. Just sometimes, I can't phantom being in your shoes.
Sincerely,
Shirley
Hey guys, Tom Dark found a way to hypnose away all diseases. Odd how such an effective treatment has not caught on yet. (eye roll) Anyways...
I just want to chime in on a theme through some posts that there is an equivalent choice between science and religion. They are not comparable. Science is a PROCESS used to discover knowledge. Religion is not a process. It is a belief system that requires faith, which by the definition of the word, is not based on evidence.
I suppose it's tasteless to criticize a dying man, but then Hitchens would certainly have no compunction against doing so. I have never been a fan of Hitchens, even when I agreed with his political positions. He has a sharp intelligence, but it is facile. After 9/11 he gave into fear, and pushed for illegal war, made apologies for torture and so on. That's not something I'm willing to forget.
Of course, I wish him the best in his struggle against cancer, as I would virtually anyone. But I find very little that is admirable in the man.
I get so aggravated with the Does God Exist debate. If you define God as a man with a long white beard and our fate in his hands, no wonder people like Hitchens are so quick to distance themselves from religion. If instead, you look with wonder and awe at the universe...if you read William James and are honestly open to religious experience, it is much harder to deny God. I will pray that Hitchens has a humbling, awe-inspiring religious experience before he dies. It is a shame to come to an intellectual conclusion using the ordinary rational mind and then close yourself off to a bigger, more complicated notion of God. Thank you for quoting Hitchens' Jerry Falwell obit!
Really enjoyed reading this post.
Will have to do research on Mr. Hitchens. He sounds like someone who will make me think!
Religion does have a purpose. It allows people who need the fear of God to be good, to have a reason to be good. People who claim they are religious not for this reason are probably confusing religion and spirituality. What I wonder is when the adjective God-fearing became a good thing. All it means is that the person needed the fear of God to be a good human being, which one should be regardless. It is an insult if you ask me. In any case, thank goodness for religion because if people can act the way they do in this world while fearing God, have you ever imagined what they would do if they believed their actions had no consequences because there is no God?
Charlie Rose broadcast an extraordinary interview with Hitchens recorded in the last day or so at his home in Washington. It is not to be missed. Since it was on PBS I am sure it will be aired several times and of course will be available on on Rose's website. I must say I've never seen anything quite like it. No subject was too sensitive or seemingly too personal.
I have spent more time watching Christopher Hitchens youtube videos than I care to admit. I have read several of his books and articles, though I have not begun his memoir yet. Being a great fan of Hitchens I can hardly believe all of the ironies present in his sickness. Hitchens loves the ironic and writes that the love of irony is what separates the rational from the radically pious. So perhaps the irony is fitting, if incredibly sad.
Hitchens often joked that the timing of Falwell's death was very beneficial to his "God is not Great" book sales. I would imagine his own sickness is probably going to make his memoirs just as big a success. And it is so interesting, looking back, that when he was promoting his memoir (before the diagnosis) that he noted often that it would be better to write it too early than to delay in writing it before it was too late. I myself thought it odd that he had written a memoir; when I first heard that he had written one I remember thinking that he should have held it off for another ten years or so...
Life is full of great ironies, and we have many lessons to learn from it; that life itself ends and that we will not know when is probably the most important lesson that we should cling to. We should not always presume that we will have time to do things later. Even in this unfortunate act of falling ill Hitchens shows himself a great teacher.
That he has shown fortitude in this ordeal is no surprise. I thank Hitchens for his attitude, for his thoughts, his ideas, for his love of irony and rationality and his disdain for faith. He calls faith the most overrated of virtues. I retain hope that Hitchens will have many more years left, but I know that it is unlikely. I know that it is unlikely, which is why it is hope and not faith. And if he does not have long to live at least he lived a life that had great value, which is all we can really strive for. He is a great thinker in an age not known for great thinkers (and, yes, I include Roger in Hitchens' company as one of the rare great thinkers of our day.)
Roger,
Wonderful post. I thoroughly enjoy Hitchens' work, even though I have come to very different conclusions.
I highly recommend the documentary 'Collision: Christopher Hitchens vs. Douglas Wilson' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1572150/). I believe they also ended up co-authoring a book. I don't know if it changes anyone's mind, but it is wonderful to see two men grow to respect each other even though they are opposed to each other in the world of beliefs and ideas. The editing/camera work is a bit annoying, but the content is terrific. It was the best kind of debate...two men working at the same level, neither with an advantage in intelligence, skill, etc.
I've also found it impossible to fully understand Christopher without also reading his brother Peter. Peter shares the same fierce independence of mind (it is quite obvious they are brothers), but he came to entirely different conclusions also: Orthodox Christian beliefs, conservative, opponent of the Iraq War, etc. 'God Is Not Great' was a good read and so is Peter's new book 'The Rage Against God'. Nice bookends...
My only quibble is with this statement, 'I now understand more fully why an intelligent person could be a Trotskyite or a Neocon, although I continue to believe not many intelligent people are.'
Sorry, but that is quite a narrow-minded thing to say (and I'm not a neo-con or a trotskyite), revealing a pretty serious lack of contemplation and imagination. I've come to the conclusion lately that those on the left are much more narrow-minded than they let on...at least as narrow-minded as any other group, probably more so than some. It reminds me of Harry Reid being unable to imagine how a hispanic could be anything but a democrat. Needless to say, there are quite a few intelligent people among any of the major political/ideological groups you could name. If you can't understand this, try not being so narrow-minded and use your imagination a little...
As always, enjoy your work!
One of the comments remarked that (paraphrasing here) this was rather like an premature obituary. I think Christopher Hitchens might like that, knowing full well that he won't be reading it posthumously.
He would also probably eviscerate Roger Ebert for parts of this commentary, while being privately delighted by others. I find this to be a respectful and thoughtful tribute to a remarkable, if sometimes irrascible, man. The afterlife? I concur with Mr. Hitchens. The life Mr. Hitchens has lived/is living? Mr. Ebert is "spot on."
Thank you for everything you taught me. You'll be missed. If you find yourself in an afterlife, let us know eh? Use that wonderfully strong will of yours, and come around? If anyone could... hugs to you
I may be the only one on here who respects both Hitchens and Falwell. Both estimable men.
Dude, way to testify intolerance works.
Ebert: The Theory of Evolution explains why most people are not born sick and stay that way. Not many of them would live long enough to reproduce.
Many foods (fruits, for example) taste good because as we animals eat them we scatter their pits or seeds. We like many foods we eat because we cultivated those that seemed palatable and filling. We do not cultivate foods we cannot eat.
Nobody is born speaking any language. They are all learned. We can learn them because of the nature of our minds.
I agree, but if everything is a random occurrence, then there could have been a vastly different situation-one that could have been more chaotic than our present situation.
For example, you say we learn languages due to the nature of our minds. I agree. However, humans could have come into existence with a different physiological/biological structure altogether-one that cannot learn any language and one that gives humans the ability to speak a random language from birth. If humans did indeed come into being by pure chance this situation would have been equally likely as our current one. Same situation in terms of eating. You mention cultivation and I agree with you once again. However, once more this could have been different. It could have been the Earth is composed of only one source of food(grass for example) and that although we hate its taste we are forced to eat it to live.
These are but a few examples of the incredible structure that is present. I can accept one aspect of this structure coming about from randomness.Maybe two or three aspects. Past a certain point I conclude that there has to be a God who has implemented this coordination and structure.
Ebert: The Theory of Evolution quiets your qualms. Living beings by default desire the nutrition they require. Whether a beetle "likes" manure is beside the point. For that matter, even the word "desire" requires an unnecessary level of consciousness. It's their food and they eat it. Very simple.
We are born with the potential to speak. We are not born with the ability to speak evolved languages. Crying, barking, etc., are speech. Some primates use sign language. Whales communicate by sounds. Languages are learned from the environment, although some linguists such as Chomsky believe that basic elements for speech exist alrteady in the mind -- hard-wired, perhaps, by evolution. Speech doesn't require or suggest a Creator.
I can tell you have a theoretical mind and much curiosity. I suggest River Out of Eden, by Richard Dawkins. No, it's not an atheist tract.
You might know something I don't know, but isn't it possible that advances in science and technology could lead to the discovery of the origins of the universe (eleventh paragraph)? Maybe far down the line ala 'The Last Question' by Isaac Asimov.
It seems a little early to call it permanently out of our reach is all I'm saying.
Ebert: The fact that we continue to search for the explanations of such matters is what makes us human. We learn so much from the journey even if the destination remains out of reach.
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Well, read again what I originally responded within the complete context above, that you responded to. Clearly the above exchange is well within the paradigm of Western Rationalism, complete even with liberal teleology.
"The fact that we continue to search for the explanations of such matters is what makes us human."
Hence, my previous response - "Really?!".
We must have much different understandings of human civilizations - the vast majority did not ponder such questions as expressed in the above quote. Nor did they "seek" to know. More than that, the pursuit of knowledge, for its own sake, is very much a Western phenomenon, a very modern and recent one at that (post-ancient Greek, which is to say, post-Aristotle). Many reasons, one being that most human civilizations did not share the same concept of time that we have (eg the concept of "history" is very recent). Another is that prescribed explanations were much part of maintaining (or changing) established power structures (somebody mentioned religion?).
Humankind typically does not ponder nor search for answers to such universal, unfathomable questions (again, I think someone mentioned religion?), neither "then" nor "now".
While writing this response, another thought occurs to me -- you sound as though you might suggest that religion and mythology are synonymous, and that both are/were interested in "discovering" such questions as universal origins etc. But that would be wrong, wouldn't it.
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Ebert: As far as I know, no non-human societies, on this planet at least, ask themselves why the universe exists.
That gave me a chuckle.. :) I see, so you were merely responding to the opportunity to point out yet another way how humans differ from say fruits or vegetables. But thanks for pointing that out - I shall likely never look at a celery stalk the same way again.
Allow me then to introduce a different, perhaps more rewarding, approach to the subject matter: Human societies, present one included, say why the universe exists, they did not, and most of us that comprise our current society do not, "ask" why the universe exists, we say why it exists, even how it exists and predict the conditions and circumstance for when it will no longer exist (I think someone mentioned religion?). Have you been paying attention to this and previous blogs?? Seems to me thats what such discussions have been about, no? Those that do not ask but rather say, based on their receiving the prescribed explanations peculiar to their faiths. Maybe I missed something.
What comes after death is a partial mystery. Consider the out-of-body near-death experience phenomena. I had a friend who eventually died from cancer, and he had such an experience during his first operation. He no longer feared death when 5 years later his cancer returned and claimed his life.
Roger,
It only seems fair the thoughts of Christopher's brother, Peter Hitchens, be added as a counterweight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io1sNfw9-TA
I recall Frank Zappa unrepentantly smoking as he gave his final tv interview, describing tobacco as his "vegetable of choice". His prostrate cancer went undetected, despite his frequent prostrate tests and decades-long urinary tract problems, the medics failed to detect it until it was inoperable. He was not impressed when they told him. He saw religion as a type of mind control, he saw the music business as a kind of mind control, politics and government as well.
We can still listen to his records but with his death something is missing. What endures - what meaning does life have that death does not take away? That question nearly drove Tolstoy to suicide.
I'll bet that incident where you were declared dead on the operating table was in 2006 when your carotid artery ruptured and that ended your TV career and made you miss many films, although some of them you did see at festivals, which makes me ask this question. How come you didn't just paste together reviews of those films from the festivals? Here are some I'm talking about, to clarify:
Little Miss Sunshine
The Night Listener
This Film is Not Yet Rated
Fast Food Nation
Taxedermia
The Wind that Shakes the Barley
Come Early Morning
In fact, why didn't you just write a review then? Why bother to see the film twice, unless it is something that got changed like Brown Bunny. Just been wondering about this when I saw in the 2007 Yearbook the Festival coverage, knowing what would happen to you later that year.
Ebert: Like many a newspaperman, I write on deadline and let future deadlines take their chances.
Joshua, in an ignorance that might seem profound to anyone with an IQ under 90, sneers:
Hey guys, Tom Dark found a way to hypnose away all diseases. Odd how such an effective treatment has not caught on yet. (eye roll) Anyways...
---Been wondering how I'd handle a lame-o sneer from a bumpkin like this. Ya know what else hasn't caught on yet, Josh? Especially for you? A hesitance to criticize things you don't know jack poop about. While those smart-ass eyes of yours are wobbling around, keep an eye out for signs of a brain. You might need it badly one day.
---Some years back I did some research for one of Andrew Weill's hand-picked doctors writing a book of his own. Made the suggestion to him, in the course of the project.
---Let's see, that was in 1999. It took 'til 2007, I think it was, for Weill to suggest it himself in a column. He'd figured a way to work a paycheck into the deal.
---Weill's main motive, stated in his original address to the AMA, was the concern that the profession was... quote: "Gentlemen, we are pricing ourselves out of existence."
---Weill's "Integrative Medicine" caught on with a lot of people, sold a lot of books, TV appearances & such. I think Keith Carrizosa here is among its supporters.
---The guy I did the research with joined Weill because he'd participated in placebo experiments and saw that sugar pills were just as good as fancy expensive pills in curing anybody. That meant what's operating is simple power of suggestion. It works, whether Joshua wants to know about it or not. Weill, however, likely doesn't want to be priced out of existence by patients who've got the balls to try a little experiment.
---Recently armed FDA officers raided Weill's main warehouse and confiscated a stockpile of perfectly harmless legal herb, and ordered Weill to pay back every single customer. The herb had been tested and showed decent results, the article said. Weill would be bankrupted by the FDA action, if he hasn't been already.
---Another thing people like Joshua ben Know-Nothing don't seem to have noticed is that the AMA stats say approved prescription pills are killing 225,000 patients a year. That is, the pills themselves are making people dead. Not the ailment. They're being poisoned to death by FDA approved pharmaceuticals.
---What I do works for me and for everybody who's taken the suggestion. Science fact, if one must yet bow to the idol of its iffy social authority, says the body heals itself of just about everything, 85% of the time. You'll not likely hear that on a pill or flu commercial, but it's there.
---Religions used to provide the medicine, which was, pretty obviously, the power of suggestion. The ceremonies and fetishes and nostrums said meaningful things to people. They don't say the same things any more. They were hypnotic sessions. The patient simply hypnotized himself out of his ailment. I say they work. The ceremonies aren't necessary. However, the ceremony of pills is killing people by the hundred thousands.
---There you go, Josh. Next time you roll your eyes at something you're actually frigging afraid of, look around for that brain and try slipping some of this in. Just a suggestion.
Hey Rog, just another Christian who distances himself from Falwell, Roberts, et al.
Love reading your stuff, bro.
Mr. Ebert, first, let me thank you for the kind words you offered me when I mentioned during the great Huck Finn or video games debate that I was about to be treated for thyroid cancer and was taking a copy of Life on the Mississipi with me.
You were right, the RAI Therapy has been fairly painless, though I have been exhausted physically, I assume that's from being hypothyroid.
Which brings up Mr. Hitchens.
I am deeply saddened to see what he is going through, and at the same time, grateful that my own cancer treatment is nothing like his; the suffering he's going through, and for that matter, the suffering you went through, is something I have so far avoided.
I'm currently in self imposed exile so as not to contaminate my family; but if the hardest part is holing up in a hotel, this is nothing.
To watch someone as well spoken, intelligent, and clear thinking as Hitchens suffer is painful. His hatred of the Clintons (including his book No One Left To Lie To) and his hatred of Religion truly makes him an unusual sort of man, truly choosing positions based on his own values.
He's not passed on yet, but I will miss him when he does.
Ebert: Not to worry. Your energy level will be fine after you figure out the right dose of Synthroid or whatever the doctor prescribes.
Ebert: Humanity had to exist before it created religions. Snap.
---Ever since I overheard a conversation in the hallway of the Illinis Hotel last April, I've been hoping and hoping to use the phrase "smartin' off" on somebody. Hadn't heard it since I was among the Homo Midwesterni as a kid. Our own soon-to-be-bestselling Memoirist Roger Ebert has provided me this opportunity. This guy just can't lose with me. I'm grateful to proceed.
---You smartin' off at me, Ebert? I'm surrounded by smart-offers here! Nope, humans didn't have to exist first THEN doff funny hats and intone in strange languages just so you and your smarty friends could pick on me about what "religion" is.
---Even in your favored evolutionary (poke, poke) terms, the impulse that only eventually grew funny hats and Vaticans would have been biologically built in from the start. Humanity is simultaneous with its religious impulses.
---I suspect, only a suspicion, now, that us people who love solitude "evolved" much later. After hearing all that howling, prob'ly.
Ebert: The phrase "smartin' off" is sadly under-employed.
The way I look at it, there are two basic possibilities that can explain why people believe in a higher power:
1) Fear. People are terrified of their own insignificance, and the idea that there's no light at the end of the tunnel after all the shit they've been through is too much for them to handle; i.e. it's a form of denial.
2) We can feel it. Deep down in every person there's a voice that tells us there's more to life than just what we can see, hear, and touch. You can mold that voice into any religion you wish, or you can ignore it altogether. Regardless of what you do with it, it's there.
Now, I know from reading the above which one sounds the most logical. But I also know which one feels right.
Personally, I don't care what anyone believes or doesn't believe in - just don't be a dick about it. If you're a Christian and you're about to go on a rant about non-believers burning in Hell, do everyone a favor and walk in traffic first - if God spares you, then go for it. If you're an atheist who's about to condescendingly lecture a religious person on why God is a fairy tale, do the same - if chance spares you, go get 'em. And if, perchance, you both get hit by trucks, well, that's okay, too. What matters is that you tried.
In other words, even if you can't handle the truth, try it some time.
Says the man who in the same post disingenuously says Hitler was Catholic.
And before you rush in to explain that he technically was, please know that you're fooling no one. When in the context of this discussion, in the context of your argument, you say "Hitler was Catholic", it implies certain things - things which in this case are simply untrue (such as that Hitler was a practicing Catholic as an adult, or that Hitler believed in God [Catholic or otherwise]).
You are a bigot and a liar and a hypocrite. How dare you lecture anyone on "the truth".
I was recently diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer, had a total thyroidectomy, and am currently in isolation after taking a radioactive iodine pill to kill any remaining cancer cells. Thyroid cancer is, according to all my doctors, the "best" cancer one can get, and apart from some discomfort (nausea, cramps, lethargy, etc.), I've managed pretty well over the past weeks and months. In fact, I feel a little silly using my diagnosis to inject myself into this discussion, but in the end, I guess I'm a "survivor", too, whatever that means. Hitchens has always been a hero of mine (even when we disagree), and that catch in his voice you mentioned caught me by surprise. That "catch", I think, is why he's wrong about the whole "battle" analogy. The "catch" IS the battle, in microcosm. He's never been more heroic, in my book. And speaking of books, Roger, there was only one at my bedside in the hospital, and it wasn't Dickens, Shelley, or Keats. It was your 2010 Movie Yearbook. You're one of my heroes, too. Thanks, more than you'll ever know, for everything.
Ebert: Gosh.
I had a total thyroidectomy, took the iodine, and have been on Synthroid ever since. Your doctor is right. Chances are, your thyroid cancer is outta here. It was a different kind of cancer that led to my current troubles. Both may however may have been related to radiation treatments as a child.
Hitchens was interviewed on Charlie Rose last night. An excellent interview :
http://www.charlierose.com/
Ebert: Humanity had to exist before it created religions. Snap.
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Not to quibble (though thats not beneath me) but I think you are perhaps looking at the phenomenon of religion as though it were an object, like the chair you are sitting on currently - or, like a Plato-ist seeking to describe why things exist. To suggest that humans had to exist before religion (or chairs, or Plato) doesnt really tell us anything meaningful or useful. More useful would be to examine what exactly is it that comprise religion - in other words, ask: what are the primary ingredients that desire/require the phenomenon of religion (think, perhaps, in sociopolitical contexts). Then, ask not if those contributors preexisted humanity (um, obviously not Roger) but whether humanity ever preexisted those contributors. I would bet prolly not.
Ebert: I believe our sense of the mystery of the universe caused us to need to imagine the supernatural. We had to be human to imagine. Or imagination is what made us human. Your call.
I am angry. I have not seen one damned thing in print - by Hitch or anyone else - that addresses Hitchens' inexplicable inattention to his health. By this I mean monitoring his health in light of the extraordinarily heavy smoking habit he was so apparently fond of acknowledging. That he contracted cancer because of it was a foregone conclusion to all who knew him, the implication being that it was not a matter of if, but when. Hitch himself is "bored" at the idea of rage against the pronouncement. The question I have is: How could this cancer have gotten such a foothold? It is so well-metastasized that you can actually SEE a tumor in his collarbone? Why did he not see a doctor sooner - at least yearly - for a simple %@#$& physical exam/chest x-ray? For all his honesty, I have yet to hear Hitch explain (nor anybody else ask) why he could not be bothered to obtain even the simplest preventive medical exam - which would have caught the cancer at an earlier stage. Like myself with my own mother, I am certain his children/loved ones begged him to quit - or at the very, very least begged him to see the doctor regularly. Please answer me this Christopher: Why? I am angry...
Ebert: Why inded. Why did I have radiation before surgery, against doctor's advice, and set myself up for bleeding and failed restorations? Because I hoped I could avoid surgery that way. Trying to protect my appearance and voice, I lost them. We think we're so smart. Cancer doesn't issue IQ tests.
That's the biggest fear about death, I think--not the actual act of dying, but what might lead up to it, the quality of it. None of us want to suffer, or be in a situation where we see it coming and can't prevent it (that's why fear of flying is so pervasive in my opinion). We give our suffering pets painless deaths when nothing more can be done and it drives me nuts that people can't do the same for themselves.
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Why not?
Also, Roger, I appreciate that you let anyone comment here, and are very tolerant (and I think this respect shown to your readers/commentors has the effect of increasing their willingness to eschew anonymity, or even if they remain anonymous, be civil and responsible in posting), but I also know that you must approve every comment here, ie read every comment (or someone, maybe your web editor [Emerson?], must read it).
It's one thing where you let 'conservative' hate speech alone, and approve it without comment. Considering the readership your blog draws, it's likely that to post it at all is to comment on it - it's assured of being met with deserved derision, and of outing the person who made it as a bigot, an idiot, etc. But the last comment by Bill Hays is quite different, because considering the context of his post, and the politics of your readership, I'm not at all sure it will be automatically met with the proper derision. Therefore I think it's somewhat irresponsible of you (or whomever) to approve his comment and let it pass, when he's being horribly bigoted against Christianity, and bullying a particular completely inoffensive Christian reader for no reason. If I were that Christian reader I would lose my trust in the blogger who would allow me to be thus attacked and ridiculed (ie, unfairly, mean-spiritedly, by a bigot whose politics on this particular issue mean he's unlikely to be called on it by any other reader). We here have come to expect better than that last post by Bill Hays, and certainly better than your having posted it without comment in a place where it's likely to be met with approval by everyone, despite its scumminess and meanness.
Ebert: I posted it assuming it spoke for itself. I've deleted it. What a sleight-of-hand he pulls in saying Hitler was a Catholic and is used to bully atheists, when in fact Hitler was an atheist, and he's using him to bully Catholics.
Bill has been warned before he's on thin ice. Now he seems dangerous close to open water.
When he gets off religion, his posts can be quite readable.
P.S. I vet all the comments on my blog, and Emerson on his. Sometimes when I'm internet-challenged, the trustworthy Marie Haws comes to my rescue. She often rolls her eyes at a comment and flags it for me.
You're on leave writing your memoirs? Well, when you come back, you should really see "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World." It's the most inventive, funniest movie I've seen this year. I'm curious to see if you'll 'get it' because of it's heavy influences on the younger generation--video games, hipster music, etc. But hell, even Armond White liked it!
I muse a lot these days about what it means to be "intelligent". Especially about how different it can be from "clever".
Are we "intelligent" if we are able to take in great deals of information (meaningful and meaningless), then go over them endlessly in deep articulate thought, surrender to our sense of "reason", and come to a vastly elaborate or overly simplistic conclusion?
If that ever so elusive yet supposedly universal human trait called "common sense" brings us to a quicker more enlightening conclusion based upon less but only meaningful information (a lot of it based on true memory/experience/history), then is it the same thing?
If we can do the latter but not the former are we "intelligent"?
If it's the other way round, then according to the current standards of society we surely are.
To me, Christopher Hitchens is a man with such a quality. A prime example of what's wrong with the American intellectual class. A man who for all his knowledge cannot understand the simple facts of life. For example - "if you hit someone without a good reason, there's a good chance they'll hit you back".
Injustice breeds terrorism like nothing else. If you carry out injustice against an overwhelmed population they will create any form of extremism required to fight back. Tamil tigers, IRA, Naxalites - did these terrorists require religion? No but they had some twisted ideology, just like Al-Qaeda does. Each used the one they found most useful.
A more general note about religion. Injustice requires coercion. Coercion requires that people be divided. Division requires incitement of prejudice. All this stems simply from man's desire for power, and can be achieved using many tools. If religion didn't work as such a tool, would man not have found some other way? Without religion would man have had no thirst for power?
Every time I think about the irony of the term "intelligence" and it's relation to the "anti-theists" I just picture that poster from the Atheist-Bus Campaign of the Twin Towers still standing with the caption - "Imagine a world without religion".
Oh, how I would like to imagine a world without vanity.
I wish Christopher Hitchins well. I'm not writing him off yet, and hope he kicks this.
I like it when the same person with whom I strongly agree on some issues (e.g., religion) strongly disagrees with me on others (e.g., Iraq). Makes for lively imaginary arguments.
And for some reason I'm reminded of the variously-attributed sentiment: "Let us strangle the last king with the entrails of the last priest."
That's the biggest fear about death, I think--not the actual act of dying, but what might lead up to it, the quality of it. None of us want to suffer, or be in a situation where we see it coming and can't prevent it (that's why fear of flying is so pervasive in my opinion). We give our suffering pets painless deaths when nothing more can be done and it drives me nuts that people can't do the same for themselves.
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Why not?
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To answer my question then..
I have known people lying in cancer hospices when, the pain became simply beyond a question of enduring, requested, in agreement with family, for their doctor to administer the life-ending medication that would allow them to sleep.
I have known others who, when in relatively good health, claim that, should they ever reach a state where they could neither care for themselves, or the quality of life had been sufficiently robbed via sickness, they would take matters into their own hands - I suppose in a Hemingway-ist fashion. Yet, when the worst happened and the time seemed appropriate, they fought to the very end.
Myself, I would hope to be in the former camp. But my point is that perhaps none of us truly know how we will react if circumstances should lead to the necessity of choice. In other words, it is not a matter of rationality or convenience. It is who we are that makes that decision. Thus, I think it somewhat disingenuous for one to cast blame on social forces for the inability to end their own life rather than prolong suffering from irreversible sickness. People do it all the time.
Ebert: We've evolved to want to live. We can override that with our minds. When illness or drugs deprive us of the override mechanism, the default setting takes over.
There is apparently a law (i wont bother to look it up) that states all forum threads must eventually (i suppose if they last long enough?) dissolve to invocations of "Hitler" and/or Naziism.
In fairness, a very common, almost inevitable, tactic by religion apologists is to "defend" religion by claiming that some of the biggest mass-murderers (Stalin etc) in modern history were "atheists". An exchange between Dawkins and O'Reilly went something like
O - some of the biggest mass-murderers were atheists.. Stalin etc etc (see above law)
D - Stalin also had a mustache. Thats like saying people with mustaches are among the biggest mass-murderers. Hitler was a catholic (assuming to play along by suggesting that catholicism was not a major contributor to being a mass-murderer and therefore perhaps neither is atheism)
O - no, he was born a catholic but he gave that up
Anyway, ye shall know the zealots by their lack of humour. I think their central nervous systems get so bored with their humourless (not so much in terms of wit, though there is that too, but - the French probably have a word or phrase for this - a sense of bon what? - self-effacing good spirit?), one-note song that the only dynamic left them is obnoxiousness.
I suppose the ominous question is - in the century to come, who will replace Hitler and Naziism for invocation by webforum goofs?
Perhaps a colloquialism will emerge in which, years from now, a webforum means of identifying and flaming a troll will be to say "that is so Hitler" meaning that the argument is so stale and predictable that it predates even the contemporary villain of the law of webforum threads.
Ebert: We've evolved to want to live. We can override that with our minds. When illness or drugs deprive us of the override mechanism, the default setting takes over.
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True. Though I would suggest we have simply evolved to live; I dont see how desire is involved, until it is contrasted with a growing awareness of desiring not to live. We live out of habit. Great and unrelenting angst awaits those that would live, 24/7, purely out of conscious choice.
"For the first time it has been shown that a COX-2 inhibitor may boost th effectiveness of chemotherapy in the treatment of cancer, according to physician-scientists at NewYork Weill Cornell Medical Center"
http://nyp.org/news/hospital/altorki-celecoxib-chemo.html
Nevergive up. Never give in.
---The guy I did the research with joined Weill because he'd participated in placebo experiments and saw that sugar pills were just as good as fancy expensive pills in curing anybody. That meant what's operating is simple power of suggestion. It works, whether Joshua wants to know about it or not. Weill, however, likely doesn't want to be priced out of existence by patients who've got the balls to try a little experiment.
================================================
This is certainly supported by research in sports physiology and supplementation. Many of the results of taking brand name supplementation, legitimate enough (the results that is) stems from the placebo effect. A study was once done in which a group of college male athletes were given pills the researchers said were a steroid. They were placebos. Yet, the group achieved much better results from weight training than did the group not offered pills. Any athlete accustomed to hard training and performance will tell you that the mind wants to give out before the body. Much of strength training, at least near the beginning, is pushing back the fear factor and pushing the mind to where the body is capable of going.
Ebert: I believe our sense of the mystery of the universe caused us to need to imagine the supernatural. We had to be human to imagine. Or imagination is what made us human. Your call.
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Right. So it isn't either/or, is it. In other words, the real question is - is it possible for humanity to not be religious? To answer that in the affirmative would require locating where the difference occurs that separates post-religious man from the bulk of history. I responded to another post (unfortunately I do not see it anywhere) in which you seem to echo this progressive historicism - liberal teleology, nothing more - in which humanity supposedly is on a quest for knowledge. It is not, despite such things as space programs and cell research, not if you look at the bulk of human history, even to the present day. And religion has absolutely nothing to do with searching for truth or mystery or even much to do with the supernatural. Religion is truth. Religion doesn't seek, it explains, but it explains not for scientific reasons (pursuit of knowledge for its own sake) which you to be implying. But I think you know this already.
I'd love to see the Hitch pull through but I can already see the obituaries. I mean I already see the obituaries.
I still hope he lives. And I hope you live to be 100 and still writing.
By the way Hitch can deliver some memorable zingers on TV and in public. He's a great debater and gifted writer and downright entertaining. But you're a great writer and debater too and I love your reviews. Never miss 'em. And I think you are a much wiser and more compassionate man. Concerning moral issues, politics...the world is surely better off if there were more like Roger Ebert than like Christopher Hitchens. A part of the Hitch's popularity isn't just that he's smart but that he's a big bombastic jerk. Sort of a thinking man's Rush. His fans sometimes barely sound a step above your common Dittohead.
EBERT: "Hitchens shows himself as a man temperamentally driven to test his own opinions. He reasons instead of proselytizing...
Hitchens added that if there should be reports of his deathbed conversion, they would be reports of a man "irrational and babbling with pain." As long as he retains his thinking ability, he said, there will be no conversion to belief in God...
Deathbed conversions have always seemed to me like a Hail Mary Pass, proving nothing about religion and much about desperation."
Ebert, You and many others praise Hitchens for his rationality. I say his own words betray his irrationality and close-mindedness, a fundamentalist who has his mind made up regardless of what the future holds. If God did exist, and God were to visit Christopher Hitchens on his deathbed, either enlightening him through some sort of rational insight that could potentially change his mind (like Anthony Flew, who of course was vilified as losing his mind-a typical way to discredit the rational decision of another person), or by revealing to him some intimate knowledge of the divine presence (testified to by many throughout history-even if Hitchens doesn't believe the testimony of these others now), Hitchens has already predetermined that belief in God would be because of irrationality and pain. How irrational to say that he could not, under any circumstances, come to think differently about the existence of God in the future. No one knows what the future holds, and Hitchens has closed the possibility of a new discovery from the outset. A person committed to reason should not write off the possibility that he may make a rational decision in the future which contradicts his current belief, however unlikely it may be.
Thank you, Mr Hitchens for your years polishing the human comedy into accessible high hilarity.
But your ice-clear speech - just after 9/11 - permanently sticks in memory.
You embraced and declared who we are, Americans.
I bless you
Hitchens--like most of the so-called "New Atheists"--is no philosopher, so I take his views with a grain of salt. I don't understand why the media throws people like Flew and Hitchens into the spotlight when they are near death when there are atheist intellectuals who are taken much more seriously in the philosophical community by both theists and atheists alike. Take for instance the recently deceased Jordon Howard Sobel: William Lane Craig referred to his philosophy of religion magnum opus as an "acid bath for theists." By putting people like Dawkins and Hitchens in the spotlight, the media gives the public (whether religious or atheistic) the wrong idea.
Nonetheless, one cannot help but have empathy for Hitchens. There's an old saying: there are no atheists in foxholes. I suppose that's because it's much easier to face death with the comfort of prayer, the miraculous, and the hope of an afterlife. Hitchens has not allowed fear to change his mind. He has no prayer to bring him comfort; he has only statistics--and chemo--to torment him.
Of course, one could look at it a different way: Hitchens is stubborn and has yet to realize the flaws in his reasoning. But isn't it better for one to stick with his views if he doesn't see the flaws in those views than to abandon them just because it's convenient? I think so.
No longer having the comfort of prayer, I wish both Hitchens and Ebert the best.
Religion does have a purpose. It allows people who need the fear of God to be good, to have a reason to be good. People who claim they are religious not for this reason are probably confusing religion and spirituality. What I wonder is when the adjective God-fearing became a good thing. All it means is that the person needed the fear of God to be a good human being, which one should be regardless. It is an insult if you ask me. In any case, thank goodness for religion because if people can act the way they do in this world while fearing God, have you ever imagined what they would do if they believed their actions had no consequences because there is no God?
This post is typical and would be funny if it weren't so sad-making. You thought you were being very smart here, and showing how you were very good - much better, and much smarter, than those stupid religious idiots who without God wouldn't know up from down, much less right from wrong. But hey- say there IS no God- what ultimate consequences DO your actions have? You will die and come to nothing. Anyone who could remember will you do likewise. The entire earth will be nothing in five billion years or some such, and by that time for all we know 'man' and 'morality' may long since ceased to exist at all. So what are you defining 'good' human being by? By conventional morality? By "I just know it"? The hell you do. You have no higher moral instinct, even now (you attack the religious, after all, in defense of your tribe of non-religious - hardly higher morality, really pretty typical of morality from 2500 years ago).
Social convention- ie, sociological, anthropological, practical morality- is ultimately every bit as practical, as self-interested, as quid pro quo as some anti-religionists claim religious morality is - even if you're too biased to recognize it's so, or to recognize that your 'enlightened' non-religious morality is in fact strictly practical, brought up in the race and maintained for strictly practical reasons. You aren't better than the religious person, and you aren't smarter.
So it's that- strictly practical morality, strictly practical meaning, mere biology at work, or else religion, less practical-minded, potentially more universal - or else it's a makeshift such as existentialism serving as the basis for one's goodness. But to pretend that 'knowing right from wrong' based purely on social convention, which is based strictly on practical ancient survival concerns the vast majority of people aren't even aware of, makes you somehow smarter or better than the religious straw-man you set up - again, it's wrong and it's despicable. Your arrogance, as most arrogance, is unwarranted.
Ebert: One should be good from within oneself. Goodness is attributed to God by countless people who are speaking only for themselves.
I've had several folks I knew die from cigarette related cancers. All neglected trips to the dr. A shame.
Reply to: Ebert: I've deleted it. What a sleight-of-hand he pulls in saying Hitler was a Catholic and is used to bully atheists, when in fact Hitler was an atheist, and he's using him to bully Catholics.
Of course you deleted it.
It's all right for a Christian to say he was bullied by atheists, but as we've all learned here, Agnostics are by far a greater number.
specifically, people who have no clear opinion on whether God exists.
Such people are NOT atheists
(2) Hitler was not an Atheist.
Roger, for someone who claims to be a Journalist, you've never learned how to check facts. On this blog, posted by people other than myself, we've read and debated statements issued by Hitler about his religious faith.
"The time is fulfilled for the German people of Hitler. It is because of Hitler that Christ, God the helper and redeemer, has become effective among us. … Hitler is the way of the Spirit and the will of God for the German people to enter the Church of Christ. -
- Christian spokesman Herman Gruner, soon after December 20, 1933 when Protestant youth organizations were incorporated into the Hitler youth."
Hitler started Hitler youth to train the young people of Germany in HIS beliefs. If Hitler had wanted to instruct them in atheism, he could have, but the idea that "God does not exist" was 180 degrees from from the beliefs of Hitler.
Reply to: Ebert: Bill has been warned before he's on thin ice. Now he seems dangerous close to open water.
Roger, you choose the topics.
The topic here is a personal study of a Militant Atheist.
Some people think this would be an excellent time to ban the ONLY person who has identified himself as a Militant Atheist.
They don't want Atheists spoiling their enjoyment of a good blog.
I was watching the last episode of "At The Movies,' and they showed early clips of you and Gene. It was great to see you sitting there, having someone smarter and more insightful make fun of the way you don't get certain things.
Go back and look at those clips. Look at yourself. I make allowances that you were raised in a Catholic environment and you don't really understand what a man like Hitchens is talking about.
But you CAN check the facts.
http://www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm
SITE: (1) The Deutsche Christen (DC) became the voice of Nazi ideology within the Evangelical Church (the Religious Right of their day) and approved by Hitler. They proposed a church "Aryan paragraph" to prevent "non-Aryans" from becoming ministers or religious teachers. Most church leaders solidly supported the "Judenmission." Only a very few number of Christians opposed Nazism
(2) Hitler had problems with the Catholic Church and eventually wanted to replace Catholicism with his brand of Christianity,
http://catholicexchange.com/2002/11/21/82810/
SITE: The question is not whether Hitler was a Catholic, but whether he practiced the Catholic faith and if his lifestyle accurately represented Catholicism. Clearly, the answer to that question is “no.” Hitler was not a faithful son of the Church, docile to her teaching, but rather looked at the Church in a way that served his own ends.
Hitler proclaimed himself a Catholic.
His personal agenda was that God, or providence, had appointed him to a mission, to restore the greatness of Germany after a devastaing defeat in World War I.
Hitler believes that he had been saved from several assassination attempts in order to complete this mission.
http://www.trivia-library.com/a/assassination-attempts-adolf-hitler-chancellor-of-nazi-germany-part-1.htm
SITE: For several years a large-scale conspiracy within the German Army had been trying to eliminate the Fuhrer. Time bombs were placed in his plane, but they failed to explode. Three young officers, who were modeling the latest in Nazi uniforms, volunteered to carry bombs under their coats and blow themselves up in Hitler's presence. Hitler, however, departed before the bombs were set to go off. A similar plan to hide time bombs in new military packs was developed, but this, too, failed. A conspirator once showed up at a high-level conference with a bomb in his briefcase--Hitler failed to appear. Yet another suicidal attempt involved a scheme to kill the Fuhrer in an art gallery; again, he left early
OK, let's start with a simple one. If Hitler sent teams out to find ancient religious relics, and believed that a supernatural power had given him a mission to restore Germany, and further believed that this supernatural power had intervened to save his life when bombs went off, how could Hitler be a person who "believes God does not exist"??
http://www.nobeliefs.com/speeches.htm
A speech by Adolf Hitler:
My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited.
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922
What I'm saying is, you are a product of your environment, and there are certain ideas that you don't grasp. If I try to state what they are, of course you're going to try to cut me off.
I find it extremely unlikely that 'atheists' bullied any christians in school. There just aren't enough Atheists for that to make sense, statistically speaking.
But I know that many Fellowships that are trying to recruit high school and college students choose "atheists" as their target.
Reply to: Ebert: When he gets off religion, his posts can be quite readable.
I'm reminded of the Limerick contest, when you were quite certain that the 'winner' had stolen his entry. when he showed up to claim his prize, he explained exactly where it came from, and you relented. go back and check MY posts, if you can't remember. i was the ONLY one who defended him, and I defended him because my logic told me he was legit, without actually knowing.
If you're going to post an entry about a Militant Atheist, you have to respect the thinking.... or you're just using Hitchens.
Is there anything new to be said about Death? Here's something that's over a hundred years old:
Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
Nor weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes;
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well.
That's from "Garden of Proserpine" by Algernon Swinburne, which ends
Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.
I'll answer my question: Yes. There is something new to be said about Death. Charles Bukowski said something new about Love with the title "Love is a dog from Hell." It may not have been true, but it was new; and one wonders if it spawned the ultimately-skinitching horde of phrases ending with "from Hell."
So here's something new & haikuish about Death.
you'll turn inside out
and you may be fine at last
but there's no telling
I don't know about discovering the beginning of the universe being admirable or hopeless.
When science becomes a religion, then it's not admirable. People want to discover the truths about the universe because it's fun, for various reasons. I find it fun and I'm sure all the scientists out there are doing it mainly because it's fun, because people do what they love to do and you of all people should be understanding of that. What if when you became a critic very influential people told you "You know, it's pretty hopeless that people will care about these foreign films and European-type films?" Why, you'd probably say, "Yeah, but I'm not just doing it for them."
Here's just another thought on the universe:
I think that it's nature might be a vacuum: a perpetual vacuum, say. Right now, the whole universe is being sucked into the outside of the universe (the outside of the expansion) and then maybe eventually the vacuum will shift towards the center of the universe and it will close in on itself and then create another big bang from kind of imploding; the universe may be just imploding and exploding over and over again by way of a vacuum cycle. Just a thought.
"What a sleight-of-hand he pulls in saying Hitler was a Catholic and is used to bully atheists, when in fact Hitler was an atheist, and he's using him to bully Catholics."
I'm curious about this statement, Roger. I agree with your statement that some on both sides try to label Hitler as one or the other as an indirect means of attacking the other side. But my understanding is that Hitler (as an adult) belonged to neither side; that he left Catholicism in his youth but that he retained a belief in God or Providence. Where did you read that he was an atheist?
Thanks. I love your work.
Ebert: I stand corrected. Hitler was not an Atheist. I guess that demotes him to Sinner.
What IF... an atheist like Hitchens encountered Scott Roeder on a message board or blog, and Roeder was explaining why George Tiller deserved to die.
By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 1, 2009
George R. Tiller, the nation's most prominent provider of controversial late-term abortions, was shot and killed yesterday in the lobby of his Lutheran church in Wichita, where he was serving as an usher. Tiller was shot in both arms in 1993 by abortion protester Rachelle "Shelley" Shannon, who remains in prison for the crime. Tiller received protection from federal marshals for a time.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/28/scott-roeder-abortion-doctor-killer
Guardian: Roeder told the jury he was born again in 1992 after watching an evangelical TV show, the 700 Club. "That day I knelt down and I did accept Christ as my saviour," he said. Under cross-examination, Roeder said he had begun thinking about killing Tiller from as early as 1993.
(So, there was an extended period of 16 years when Roeder might have discussed his plans on the Internet. Not saying it actually happened.)
Guardian: Asked by the prosecution whether he had a long-standing belief that Tiller needed to die, he replied: "It took many years, yes." He considered different methods: shooting him at his clinic, using a sniper rifle from a nearby church, or chopping off his hands with a sword. In the end he decided that severing Tiller's hands would not stop him, as he could train others. He had to be killed, he admitted.
Despite prosecution objections, the judge allowed Roeder to offer his view that abortion was murder. "It is not man's job to take life – it's our Heavenly Father's. It's never up to man to take life, except in defence of self or others," Roeder said. He talked of foetuses "torn limb from limb", and said foetuses in later stages of pregnancy "feel more pain". Both claims drew prosecution protests. Roeder did not even approve of abortions for rape or incest, as "two wrongs don't make a right".
Roeder's lawyer, Mark Rudy, said that shortly before the killing, Roeder had been "astonished, upset and distraught" when a jury found Tiller not guilty of breaking abortion laws. "He came to the view that he was going to act himself." (end of quote from Guardian article)
Have you ever seen a picket line outside an abortion clinic?
Scott Roeder wasn't unique. I've met and talked to at least 50 people who share his views. As I look out my window, I can see a bumper sticker on a neighbor's car, with similar views.
It would take an extreme case for an Atheist to bully someone... but it could happen when encountering a group of Christians planning to murder a doctor who performs abortions as a symbol of their faith.
While I love to read this blog every week, I hesitate to comment. I do not feel myself to be the intellectual equal of many of you here. I suppose I wanted to comment on faith and the journey to know God. Twenty years ago, I had a "religious experience" , for want of a better word to describe it. Before this experience, I felt much the way all of you do. I was not religious and spent virtually no time thinking about God. I was living a lifestyle not at all compatible with Christianity. Then one day God revealed himself to me. He set me on a path to knowing Him. These past twenty years that I have been on this path, I have grown closer to Him. I feel His presence closely, sometimes so closely that the rest of the world fades away. I have learned so much from Him about loving and living with my fellow men. I have truly learned about loving my enemies. My life is much better for having been placed on this path toward God. The sad part is that I cannot show this to you. It is foolishness to you because you have not had the same experience and you cannot see it. You have not leaned upon this faith during times of extreme pain and had it hold you up. You have not felt the love of God so keenly that it moved you to tears. You have only seen people act in terrible ways in the name of religion. It is very sad that I cannot show you this faith that I have. Even the small glimpses of God that we see "through a glass darkly" are so beautiful, so much more beautiful than anything here. I wish you all could see but a small glimpse of the glory of God. His purity, holiness and love. I hope that many of you will not be angry with me. I know that men throughout the ages have said and done countless evil things, siting God as their reason, but these acts were not of God, but of men, who did not know Him or understand Him at all.
I quote the Bible here because it is the story of God and how he relates to people, not a self help book or a book of doctrine, it is meant to be a narrative, a narrative with a beautiful ending.
For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
"The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing, that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called reverend. Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September the 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God's punishmen -- if they hadn't got some kind of clerical qualification?" - Christopher Hitchens on Jerry Falwell
Charlatan: A person who makes elaborate, fraudulent, and often voluble claims to skill or knowledge; a quack or fraud. [French, from Italian ciarlatano, ...
Would this statement count as bullying?
Because, in my way of thinking, Hitchens is doing what a Militant Atheist has to do.
Point out that any one who claims to speak for God is pulling a fraud, (ie, a charlatan) because there is no such thing as a God.
Sometimes I answer with a hypothetical. ie, I know you're wrong, but even if you were right...
I've got to stop doing that. People aren't able to understand that the first part of the answer... IS the answer.
I don't think there are enough atheists to "bully" Christians.
I think Christians spend a lot of time in a controlled environment, and they never hear any criticism of Christianity, and when someone like Hitchens speaks the Absolute Truth, they say "You're attacking me and my beliefs."
Which is just part of being an Atheist.
but... in school, what you have are a lot of teenagers who haven't formed an adult opinion... yet.
When they bully, they are likely to bully because they don't like you.... or because they just got dumped by their girlfriend... or they think you're weak.... but hardly ever because they're Atheists.
it just doesn't happen.
You are welcome to remove all the hypothetical after "As an expert on the subject of Atheism, I seriously doubt you were bullied by Atheists."
And add, "I think you're so wrapped up in belief, you're confus