Christopher Hitchens the brilliant writer and polemicist, after a noted public battle with cancer has passed away at 62
- Christopher Hitchens | Culture | Vanity Fair
- Richard Dawkins: Illness made Hitchens a symbol of the honesty and dignity of atheism – Commentators – Opinion – The Independent
- The Blog : Hitch : Sam Harris
- A lesson from Hitch: When rudeness is called for – – The Washington Post
- Christopher Hitchens Is Dead at 62 — Obituary – NYTimes.com
…He also threw himself into the defense of his friend Mr. Rushdie. “It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved,” he wrote in his memoir. “In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual and the defense of free expression.”
- Christopher Hitchens, RIP | Entertainment | TIME.com
…Stewart [Jon Stewart], playing devil’s advocate–which in this case means God’s advocate–asks whether religion isn’t justified as a comfort, because “we are a species that knows we are going to die.” Hitchens rejects that idea, just as he would reject that comfort for himself when he was later diagnosed with terminal cancer–as much as, he wryly confesses here, he wishes that “an exception would be made in my case.” Self-awarely, he acknowledges to Stewart: “But I must look like an asshole to you when I say that.” Indeed. A pugnacious, eloquent, brilliant asshole. RIP
- Hitchens’s Eulogists and Detractors | Camels With Hammers
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- Christopher Hitchens, militant pundit, dies at 62 – Boston.com
- Christopher Hitchens: the moral power of polemical fury | Mail Online
- Hitch RIP – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast
- Christopher Hitchens obituary | Books | guardian.co.uk
- BBC News – Christopher Hitchens dies at 62 after suffering cancer
- Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011 | Greta Christina’s Blog
- RIP Christopher Hitchens | Dispatches from the Culture Wars
- Christopher HItchens 1949 – 2011
- We Lost Hitch. That Is All | Token Skeptic
- Hitch is not in heaven | Pharyngula
- Christopher Hitchens, a Vanity Fair Writer, was a religious skeptic and acerbic master of the contrarian essay – The Washington Post
- Christopher Hitchens dies at 62 – Associated Press – POLITICO.com
- The 20 Best Christopher Hitchens Quotes | Unreasonable Faith
- Raise a glass to Christopher Hitchens | Lousy Canuck
- Ian McEwan on Hitchens
- Reactions to Hitch’s Death | Dispatches from the Culture Wars
- We Have Lost Christopher Hitchens | Camels With Hammers
- Hitchens Must Die | Almost Diamonds
- To those praying for Hitchens | The Crommunist Manifesto
- Ratio Primoris (Reason Foremost): Christopher Hitchens: The Best Of The Hitchslap
- The dark side of Hitchens | Pharyngula
- via Hitchens on Mother Theresa, Hitler, and Immorality | Camels With Hammers
In another post on another Freethought Blog; It’s a poisoned chalice | Butterflies and Wheels which featured a cut from this speech Peter Nothnagle gives us Hitchens’ remarks here…I’ll close on the implied question, “why don’t you accept this wonderful offer?” [of Salvation, I suppose] Wouldn’t you like to meet Shakespeare, for example. I don’t know if you really think that when you die, you can be corporeally reassembled, and have conversations with authors from previous epochs — it’s not necessary that you believe that in Christian theology, and I must say it sounds like a complete fairy tale to me. The only reason I want to meet Shakespeare, or might want to, is because I can meet him any time, because he is immortal in the work’s he’s left behind. If you’ve read those, meeting the author would almost certainly be a disappointment!
But when Socrates was sentenced to death for his philosophical investigations, and for blasphemy, for challenging the gods of the city, and he accepted his death, he did say, if we are lucky, perhaps we’ll be able to hold conversation with other great thinkers and doubters too. In other words, the discussion about what is good, what is beautiful, what is noble, what is pure, and what is true, could always go on. Why is that important? Why would I like to do that? Because that’s the only conversation worth having. And whether it goes on or not after I did, I don’t know. But I do know it’s the conversation I want to have while I’m still alive.
Which means that, to me, the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is the offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don’t know enough yet. That I haven’t read enough, that I can’t know enough, that I’m always operating hungrily on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn’t have it any other way, and I’d urge you to look at those of you who tell you, those people who tell you at your age, that you’re dead until you believe as they do. What a terrible thing to be telling to children. [Applause] And that you can only live by accepting an absolute authority. Don’t think of that as a gift — think of it as a poisoned chalice, push it aside however tempting it is, take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way. Thank you.
- God Sent Christopher Hitchens to Hell Because He Loved Him – Bryan Fischer – Focal Point – RichardDawkins.net
- Hypocritchens
- Why Honesty About Hitchens’ Addictions Matters « The Reality-Based Community