Christopher Hitchens... belief in what?

[Gail]

The headline for this blog article (from Reuters) says it well:

"Hitchens was an atheist who believed"

Quote:

By James Ledbetter

The opinions expressed are his own.

It seems entirely possible that Christopher Hitchens will be primarily remembered in America for his public atheism. I suspect Hitchens himself was surprised at how wildly popular God Is Not Great became, giving much-needed voice and ammunition to thousands of godless heathens in the land of the drive-through church.

Yet it’s an inadequate way to remember the man, and not because Hitchens did little more in that book than to lay some tracing paper on the Enlightenment’s best thinkers and draw giddily (though with acidic and often very funny ink), or because—this is not an exaggeration—the American public regards atheists on about the same level as rapists.

The problem is that splitting the atheism away from the body of Hitchens’s work debases it into a kind of rascally parlor trick—“Uncle Christopher, say the mean thing about Mother Teresa again!”—and distracts from the thorny paradox at the heart of Hitchens’s thinking. Which is: While certainly an enemy of superstition and an eager chronicler of the sins and idiocies of the world’s religions, Hitchens was actually a lifelong believer, if strictly in man-made gods. It is impossible to contemplate his prodigious and passionate writing without recognizing that it was always animated by crusades, holy men, and devils.

Indeed, the Hitchens universe was long populated by notions of absolute good and evil, stretching back to his days as a student Trotskyite. This tendency was tempered by a love of literature and the cocoon of irony that writers wrap around themselves. But Hitchens himself spoke of the struggle between the literal and ironic minds, and it is an aptly Hitchensian contradiction that the episode, I think, that created his own brand of fundamentalist was in defense of the ironic mind—in 1989, when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on Salman Rushdie for the supposed blasphemy of The Satanic Verses.

The importance of the Rushdie saga on Hitchens’s thinking cannot be overstated. “I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me,” he wrote in his splendid memoir, Hitch-22. “It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved.” This is of course a functional definition of evil and good. And there were obviously implications for the future, once Hitchens learned that among the Western left, it is entirely possible for well-meaning people, in the name of multicultural “understanding” or “tolerance” of non-Western societies, to overlook and even excuse atrocities and barbarism that would never be acceptable if perpetrated, say, by the Republican Party and its allies.

Few today would find fault with Hitchens’s stance or actions on behalf of Rushdie. But he began to apply the moral purity he derived from it to situations where the good-versus-evil ledger was not so neatly visible. From the mid- to late-’90s on, when the books on Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, and Henry Kissinger were published, the absolutism had pretty much taken over his work.

The fervent animosity of Crusader Hitchens could produce searing and hilarious prose. Of Bill Clinton he wrote: “His prolixity remains stubborn and incurable, yet it remains a fact that in all his decades of logorrhea Clinton has failed to make a single remark (absent some lame catch phrases like ‘New Covenant’ and of course the imperishable ‘It all depends on what the meaning of “is” is’) that could possibly adhere to the cortex of a thinking human being.”

But the crusading mind-set also created a moral measuring tape that could trip or even strangle Hitchens’s later views. The most obvious example is that the war in Iraq produced crimes and tragedies at least as venal as those that make up Hitchens’s persuasive indictment of Henry Kissinger. And yet on such subjects—Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Haditha, etc.—Hitchens was either silent or tortuously defensive. Double standards are hardly unique to him, but perhaps they sting more because the strength of his rhetoric provided such succor to those who wanted to believe he was right.

Including himself. Writing about Iraq in Vanity Fair in 2003, Hitchens predicted that “it will emerge that Saddam always intended to reconstitute his WMD program.” That this prediction did not come true does not mean that Hitchens was wrong, exactly. But then in the memoir published last year, he wrote: “If I was ever naïve about anything having to do with Iraqi WMD, it was in believing that the production of evidence like that, or indeed any other kind of evidence, would make even the most limited impression on the heavily armored certainties of the faithful.” By “the faithful,” he meant supporters of radical Islam. But when Hitchens was in holy-warrior mode, belief in the absence of evidence was a trait he shared with his sworn foes.

I liked the last sentence...

I have a question: How responsible are we as Christians for what atheists throw at us? I think of Ghandi, who exclaimed that he would become a Christian had it not been for Christians.

[Gibs]

Gail,

It isn't easy witnessing to Atheists. Most of them seem to think they have all wisdom that is needed or even above others.

I've had several tell me "you can't prove God". I simply tell them if you can't look at all the creation of complex things and man being the highest but not the prettiest then and not see there is a great creator with infinete wisdom then there isn't much use in me trying. I have told some that have read the Bible a bit that His prophecy does if you can interpret it. One was a pastors son and that one stymied him as he knew of Isaiah chapter 53 that it was the first gospel writen far in advance. I told him to read that and he said he had and kinda hung his head.

The chapter is only 12 verses long and a prophecy any one can see and needs no interpretation.

I know a website you can witness on that most are Atheists and they are extremely smutty and it is allowed there as the administrator is Atheist. It has a forum for "religion/spirituality" and I have posted there a lot in times past and just occasionally now.

Like the ole horse, you'll need your blinders on and look straight ahead and not read the smut you get back. PM me if you would like to give it a shot.

What does Hitchens believe in? Probably in himseself and his own opinion and what wisdom he has. I have met and talked to many Atheists.

1Jo 4:4 ¶ Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.

[CoAspen]

Quote:

It isn't easy witnessing to Atheists. Most of them seem to think they have all wisdom that is needed or even above others.

The above quote should be a strong indicator of the issue you present. You could put 'Christians' in stead of 'Atheists' in the above statement and have a true statement of how any 'unbeliever' is treated by some christians. When any two persons approach any subject with the above attitudes, all is lost. The whole post I quoted from is just the approach that is wrong. Christianity should show a spirit of humility when sharing, living or even talking to other christians. When a belief of superiority is shown in any conversation, any subject matter, then the listener is turned off and no words penetrate the mind. We are supposed to be the person God speaks through, not little gods ourselves. Too often we project that image when we speak to others of our beliefs. We have to remember we do not speak for God, but....we do represent Him by our words and actions.

(my 2-cents)

[Gibs]

We witness by our lives and actions and we are given a mouth to speak.

Isa 44:8 Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have not I told thee from that time, and have declared it? ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any.

Isa 43:10 Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.

Isa 43:12 I have declared, and have saved, and I have shewed, when there was no strange god among you: therefore ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, that I am God

1Jo 4:4 ¶ Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.