Posted on 12/17/2011 5:32:02 AM PST by Kaslin
When Christopher Hitchens died this week, I trust that after he did so, something miraculous happened.
That’s what my faith tells me.
It’s not in good taste to speak ill of someone recently deceased. But in this case, I think Hitchens would approve, or at least shrug it off with indifference, many of the screeds written for or against him.
But, while reading the eulogies about Hitchens I get the feeling, more than anything else, of a life wasted on unbelief.
Everyone dies, and then…that’s it… or is it?
Is all that’s left behind for a writer like Hitchens a mass of manuscripts and his ability to endure- or not- over the generations?
Hitchens would argue so. But I would argue no.
Because I believe that the things you do in life to bolster faithfulness; the things you do in life to support belief in anything or even something are much more important, either way, than the things you stand against.
Faith is the most important part of life and probably the most neglected.
This is not merely a religious argument. It’s an argument against skepticism as an end rather than as a means to something. It’s an argument that understands that unbelief requires much more faith than faith does and provides us with little substance.
If Abraham Lincoln had merely been against the spread of slavery rather than also believing in the God-given equality of man, 45 million people could be in slavery today.
But let’s get back to Hitchens.
His view of the miraculous is a good example of how faith is the most extraordinary part of human existence.
He dismisses our existence as a mere accident of…well he doesn’t know what.
But if we are just an accident that happened, sentient beings with the ability to know right from wrong, of knowing the natural law from right here in our heart, of comprehending our own existence and even rejecting our existence, well that’s probably the greatest miracle of all.
Is more improbable that man with knowledge of natural law was created by a knowing and loving God or just on accident? It certainly would require a great deal of faith to believe that it was on accident.
I’m not a mathematician, but I’m guessing the odds of me being here, occupying this space and time, on accident, would be quite astronomical.
Reverse engineer the "Infinite Monkey" theory that says that if you have an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters that one monkey will accidentally bang out the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. This is a much-used thought experiment that deals in big number probabilities.
In Hitchens' universe, William Shakespeare was that improbable, infinite monkey, as are you. In fact, in Hitchens universe, Shakespeare is even more improbable than our infinite monkey, because our infinite monkey only accounts for the odds of creating Shakespeare's works, rather than creation of Shakespeare himself.
What atheists would have you believe is the improbable multiplied by infinity by accident.
That's why I think increasingly advances in biology and physics suggest that an accidental creation is the most improbable faith of all.
For example, the theory in quantum mechanics called the Uncertainty Principle- which so far is consistent with what has been observed in physics- increasingly suggests that everything remains only a probability until it is actually observed. Without observation, nothing actually exists.
If that’s true- Einstein rejected the possibility of the Uncertainty Principle- none of us really exist nor does the universe exists without an all-seeing being. There is just no other explanation for the universe.
In Hitchens’ universe, a universe without an all-knowing being, freed from bonds of both time and space, would suggest that our existence is only a probability, not a reality.
The awareness of our own existence, our self-consciousness therefore makes belief in a sterile universe without a Creator, an unknowable act of faith.
But instead of faith all you are left with is the certainty of doubt.
The lesson you find has the moral authority of a South Park episode.
And none of the humor.
That’s not great.
That’s an episode of The View.
I find it interesting on many of these recent hitchens posts that people like you extoll hitchens staunch disbelief and his unwavering posture.
However when christians do the exact same thing it is condemend as bigotry and intolerance.
I think you meant Ayn Rand (wonder what she, Hitchens and Mother Theresa are talking about today?)
I disbelieve in a hundred concepts of God while you disbelieve in ninety-nine, so we are closer than you might think.
Hitchens was a man of intellect who many say took a few wrong roads in life. I found him eminently readable and thought provoking whether I believed in what he was saying or bot.
I pray the he personally found whatever peace he was seeking.
Yes. Nothing brings out the Kick 'Em When They're Dead contingent of Christianity like an atheist's funeral.
Probably the same things they were talking about in 1850.
Hitchens may not have been “great”... but, he was a MUCH better writer than this guy!
And... I bet a LOT MORE fun to hang out with! :-)
Always enjoyed reading Hitchens.
And I always enjoy reading Ransom.
Hitchens was right about a lot of stuff, and when he was right, he was always right with style.
Ransom is right on this one.
Thanks Kaslin.
AIA Remembers Christopher Hitchens
Accuracy in Academia | July 2, 2004 | Sean Grindlay
Posted on 12/16/2011 9:28:58 AM PST by Academiadotorg
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2821262/posts
The writer uses the phrase “on accident”, how old is he, about 4?
On the other hand, the universe is astronomically large, so there is a finite probability that an astronomically rare event would occur by accident.
Of course when you start with strong evidence that X is here and now, and then try to reason by the method of dividing infinity by infinity, whether or not X should exist, what you are doing is pretty obviously sophistry. Asking the question whether in the vastness of the universe whether Shakespeare’s plays should exist is rather the long way around Robin Hood’s barn.
So did you drive to church on Pneuma-tic tires?
So they're talking about "The Scarlett Letter"? I guess it was quite the topic of conversation that year. :-)
Philip Larkin - Aubade
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what's really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse -- The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused -- nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear -- no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can't escape, Yet can't accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
you spend the rest of eternity eating grilled hamburgers from frozen patties, Sam’s Club potato salad, cole slaw and potato chips with a never-ending supply of Bud Lite,
yet some people would call that hell.
As Einstein said, “It’s all relative”.
That was before the mafia killed him cause he knew
too much.
Since God is the necessary precondition for all logic, reasoning and morality, that incoherence is certainly inherent in the first two, but I can't see why Judaism would be included. The Transcendent God of the Hebrew Scriptures is the same Transcendent God of the N.T.
I recently listened to the Greg Bahnsen vs. Gordon Stein debate in which Bahnsen gave the clearest, most forceful and most brilliant presentation of the argument that I have ever seen or heard.
Cordially,
Yes, I know one of them!
Anyway, the point I was trying to get at is that most people have a very naive and materialistic concept of what comes after the body's death. I'm more in tune myself with T.S. Eliot's famous lines:
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire,
beyond the language of the living.
Judaism is deficient because it denies a Trinitarian God. The rejection of Christ by the Jews has left their religion with a biune god that is illogical. While I appreciate our Jewish forefathers, modern day Judaism is far removed from old testament belief. Rejecting Christ has consequences even philosophically.
Interesting statement. "Illogical" how?
>>>No, I see the world as divided into believers and unbelievers.<<<
You and Christ both.
Congratulations.
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