Posted on 01/15/2012 2:18:32 PM PST by rhema
The death of Christopher Hitchens on December 15 was not unexpected, and that seemed only to add to the tragedy. His fight against cancer had been lived, like almost every other aspect of his colorful life, in full public view. He had told numerous interviewers that he wanted to die in an active, not a passive sense. Then again, there may never have been a truly passive moment in Christopher Hitchens’ life.
Long before he was known as one of the world’s most ardent atheists, he was known as a world-class essayist and a hard-driving public intellectual. Born in England, he had made his home in Washington, D.C. for three decades. His range of interests was almost unprecedented. He wrote books on subjects as varied as Thomas Paine and the Elgin Marbles. He was a predictable man of the Left when he began his journalistic career in Britain, and he remained a staunch defender of civil liberties throughout his life. Nevertheless, he broke with liberals in the United States and Britain when he affirmed the Bush Administration’s decision to wage war against terrorism in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
He could write eloquent prose, but he could also write savagely. He was a self-described contrarian, even writing a book entitled, Letter to a Young Contrarian. In that book, he described this contrarian stance as “a disposition against arbitrary authority or witless mass opinion.” In practice, for Hitchens it seemed to mean the right to attack any idea, any place, any time, no matter who might hold it.
In 2007 he launched a full assault upon theism and belief in God. In God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Hitchens declared himself to be the implacable and determined foe of all religious belief. Along with Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris, he became part of the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism.
Actually, his atheism had already been announced. In Letters to a Young Contrarian, published in 2001, Hitchens had written that he was “not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.” Hitchens did not want to be confused with amateur atheists or with “the generalized agnosticism of our culture.” No, he was the enemy of religious faith and any claim of belief in God.
God is Not Great became a best-seller — a manifesto of the New Atheism and its aggressive public presence. Hitchens distilled the New Atheism to its essence. He asserted that belief in God is not only without intellectual integrity, it is also morally corrupting. He blamed belief in God for everything from ethnic strife and genocide to opposition to science and a hatred of sexuality. Along with the other New Atheists, he delivered a broadside against all theistic belief and religious expression. Whereas the older atheists had soft-pedaled attacks on Jesus Christ, Hitchens rejected any effort to sentimentalize Christ. He wrote that the New Testament was no less violent than the Old Testament and he lambasted any claim of divine revelation. He argued that religious indoctrination is a form of child abuse and denied that belief in God is necessary to morality.
At the end of his life, fighting against the cancer that had robbed him of his voice even before it stilled his pen, Hitchens pointedly asked Christians not to pray for him, and then allowed that believers might pray for him — if it made them feel better. He also warned against any claims that he might have converted at the end of his struggle. “Suppose I ditch the principles I have held for a lifetime, in the hope of gaining favor at the last minute?” he wrote. “I hope and trust that no serious person would be at all impressed by such a hucksterish choice.” He told others that, if such reports did emerge, they should be attributed to the influence of drugs, and the loss of his mental faculties.
With all that in mind, how can I claim that evangelical Christians should learn from Christopher Hitchens? Well, consider these lessons:
1. Hitchens understood the power of ideas, and he never left a field of intellectual combat without giving his best.
Even as a boy, Christopher Hitchens understood that ideas matter. This conviction was only deepened as he was educated at Oxford University and then, as both journalist and public intellectual, entered the fray of public debate. He never ran from an idea, nor from the responsibility to defend and refine that idea in the combat of intellectual engagement. In his view, ideas rule the world, and he was determined to give his all to the cause of making certain that the superior ideas, in his view, triumphed over the inferior ideas. He never surrendered an idea with a shrug, though he was, on some issues, ready to change his mind, and to stand against his former intellectual allies.
2. Hitchens committed his life to the production of words, believing that the printed and spoken word can change the world.
As a writer and essayist, Hitchens is often compared to George Orwell, the subject of one of his many books. Hitchens’ literary production was, by any measure, prodigious. As some of his friends noted, he seemed to write faster than they could read. He wrote books, essays, and seemingly countless articles. He was a public speaker, a conversationalist, and a commentator. He wrote books and essays that aggravated, assaulted, aggrieved, and irritated. He could be eloquent, and he could be crude. He believed that the power of language drove the world of ideas, and that ideas require verbal expression. He was hardly ever quiet, and the force of his arguments was expanded and extended in time through his writings. Though Hitchens is now dead, his books remain in print and widely available, and will be so for years to come.
3. Hitchens was a man of passion and personal intensity, and he made friends across ideological boundaries.
He was, as Tom Wolfe might describe him, a man in full. His passions were fully in view, if sometimes too much so. He delighted in human company, and made friends around the world. He had a host of Christian friends, including many who had debated him. He was never boring, always interesting, and just about everyone who knew him seems to recall his personal warmth and conviviality. At the very least, even when he attacked Christianity, he did not cut himself off from all Christians.
4. Hitchens did not hide behind intellectual scorn and he did not fear the open exchange of ideas.
Generally, the New Atheists are known for their unwillingness to debate Christians, especially Christian apologists. Richard Dawkins, in particular, has brought disrepute upon his own intellectual confidence by his steadfast and condescending refusal to debate Christian apologists and intellectuals. The same could not be said of Hitchens, who was willing to debate evangelical Christians and to allow the debates to be publicized and published. He did not attempt to shut down debate by insulting his ideological and theological opponents.
5. Hitchens revealed the danger of cultural Christianity and exposure to tepid, lifeless, superficial Christian teaching.
In his childhood, Hitchens was exposed to the mild Christianity of his father and the Hitchens home. (Later in life, he discovered that his mother was, in fact, partly Jewish.) As a schoolboy, Hitchens received the customary dose of tame religious instruction. In God is Not Great, he wrote of Mrs. Jean Watts, “a good, sincere, simple woman, of stable and decent faith,” who taught him religion at his school near Dartmoor. Even as a boy, Hitchens was not impressed by her emotivist expressions of doctrine and her answers to his questions. He wrote also of a school headmaster, who seemed, among other failings, to believe that belief in God served a mainly therapeutic function. Hitchens described himself then as “quite the insufferable little intellectual,” but the damage was done. Unlike others who, as he wrote, might have rejected belief in God because of abuse or “brutish indoctrination,” Hitchens simply developed indignant contempt for a belief system that seemed so superficial and fraudulent. An exposure to tepid, lifeless, thoughtless, and intellectually formless Christianity can be deadly.
The death of Christopher Hitchens is a tragedy. That much is affirmed by virtually all the countless individuals who knew him, or knew of him. But Christians experienced the death of Christopher Hitchens with a special sense of tragedy, for we could not think of his death merely on his terms. We have no choice but to believe that Christopher Hitchens, with all of his amazing gifts, will have to face the very God he so aggressively dismissed and denied. As for that deathbed change of heart he warned us all not to hope for — we have every reason to hope that it happened in spite of himself.
For that matter, every single believer in Christ has come to believe and be saved by grace alone — in spite of ourselves.
There are important lessons to be learned from the life and career of Christopher Hitchens, and they are lessons we must not fail to contemplate. In the final analysis, Christians have far less to fear from atheists or antitheists as we do from what Hitchens called “the generalized agnosticism of our culture.” We agree with him that the question of the existence and identity of God is nothing less than the most powerful and urgent question humanity will ever confront.
For this central reason, the death of Christopher Hitchens is an absolute tragedy. And, as is often the case with such a tragedy, we dare not miss the lessons with which we are left.
Hitchens' eisegesis notwithstanding, the parable of the good Samaritan does not suggest and was not intended to suggest that "morality comes from us".
Mr. Hitchens' presumed to know what blind, impersonal, omnipotent matter wants us to do; that is, what we ought to do and what we ought not do. Of course, the idea of moral incumbency, which entails the notion of something not functioning as it 'ought' to function, in in a purposeless, accidental universe, is inchoherent and unintelligible.
The problem of the existence of abstract, universal invariants is something that was apparently way over Hitchens' head. He could never seem to grasp that the raising of this metaphysical problem was not a challenge to his nature as a moral being, or an accusation of immorality against him, but was simply the observation that If his own presuppositions were actually followed to their logical conclusion then his moral indignation was, quite literally, groundless and absurd.
Cordially,
Let me give you some pointers on how human conversation usually works:
When you describe someone as a "dishonest man" (as you described Hitchens), people who challenge you on that assumption are not claiming that that person never, ever told a lie, or didn't at some point say or do something in their life that could be classified as "dishonest". What they are doing is challenging your classification of that person as a "dishonest man/woman", as opposed to someone who is an "honest person".
When I said that Hitchens was never dishonest, most people would understand that I was referring to the fact that I haven't seen Hitchens utilize dishonest means to further his point of view, even though there's many things I disagree with him on.
And I still haven't seen example one from you to back up any of your claims that he was dishonest in any of the arguments or causes he supported.
So again, please feel free to cite some examples. Otherwise, find someone else to play semantic parlor games with.
Thanks for your reply. I still admire Hitch for playing “Devil’s Advocate” at the Vatican. How many people have that on their resume, lol?!
Lovely post. Hitchens was often the loyal opposition in American politics and literature. He kept a lot of us honest in our thinking. Or at least we had to try harder to be honest with ourselves.
Lots of words;very little substance. Most people would simply admit that claiming Hitchens was “never dishonest” was just hyperbolic exuberance, and let it go.
Bless your heart.
It wasn't hyperbole; it was a true observation. I never saw any examples of Hitchens being dishonest in his public, professional life.
Of course, you could prove me wrong if you had the testicular fortitude to back up your libelous accusations, but it's quite clear that you lack stones, the evidence, or both.
That's not to say that there aren't some great things she accomplished, as well as great and noble women in her order, but there's more to her story than we've been sold by the media.
Not at all, GunRunner. I had not seen your post here when I posted my #61, but there I try to make it clear that my point has nothing whatever to do with whether Hitchens had ever done anything undesirable or morally unacceptable in his life. I happen to agree with you that Mother Teresa should have returned the money, but I was attempting to make a point about a philosophical system, not the personality who adhered to it.
Cordially,
How many people can write well? In my experience, very few.
So true. There is a moral obligation to listen the contrary argument and Hitchens demonstrated such a willingness to challenge his own biases. I usually disagreed with him but I always loved listening to his arguments.
Understood. I mistook your comments as an excuse. As long as you are willing to admit that the money should have been returned, I have no argument with you.
Christopher Hitchens is in heaven now.
I’ve never seen so much sputtering over an obviously indefensible proposition. But, if you want to continue to believe that Hitchens was “never dishonest,” I won’t dispute it further. In fact, I’ll double down: just in case the Easter Bunny palys a major role in your belief system, I’ll leave that one alone too.
All you have to do is stop fellating yourself for two seconds and provide us with an example of Hitchens' dishonesty. Then you would succeed in proving that you have you have a valid argument, and dispel the apparent impression that you're nothing but a self-sodomozing moron.
So put up or shut up, then you can go back to tossing your own salad.
He was a thief who railroaded many decent people out of their savings.
Appreciate the context of this parable, it comes as a reply to the question, “Who is my neighbor?”, after Christ had just taught to “LOVE THY NEIGHBOR” In the Holy land in the time of Christ, Samaritan was a dirty word. What made this Samaritan good, was his courageous, selfless help to the robbed and injured man, including paying for his lodging and food. Christ is using a fictional character to illustrate a spiritual truth, about how God loves us, even through the help of our fellow man. To understand this story in Modern terms, substitute,
“Hamas Cleric” for Samaritan. We do not associate selfless acts of kindness to Jews with Hamas Clerics, neither did first century Jews associate Samaritans with such selfless acts. We do not know if there was a specific true act of a Samaritan to which THIS Christ parable refers. It has been the tradition of commentators over the ages, to postulate that there was no true basis for this story.
The fact that this parable relates an improbable act, makes the illustration of God’s love more pronounced.
In the centuries since this parable was first recorded, we have come to associate Samaritan with “good.” This was not the case in the time of Christ.
From this post I would surmise that in real life you are either Chrissie Matthews or someone who has an advanced degree from the Chrissie Matthews School of Analysis.
Apart from the obscene invective, I notice that you are resorting to one of Hitchens’ favorite forms of intellectual dishonesty: attributing a strawman argument to an opponent. You know that the guffawing on FR about your claim that “Hitchens was NEVER dishonest” has nothing to do with a belief that Hitchens had an avocational interest in shoplifting at Walmart.
Your hero-worship of Hitchens is misplaced. In fact, hero-worship is never a good thing. To say that Hitchens sometimes wrote perceptively and accurately or that he sometimes swerved into the truth would be accepted by virtually everyone. To say he was “never dishonest” is ridiculous and doesn’t merit a book review or an analysis of his debates with Douglas Wilson and others.
You could have admitted to having posted in a moment of “irrational exuberance”, and no one would have thought the worse of you for it. As it is, you seem not to have learned the first law of holes: when you find yourself in a hole; stop digging.
I’m looking forward to your next post, which undoubtedly will, like your last, display the temperment of an outraged bonobo.
This is pathetic. I’ve never seen anyone run away from backing up their claims in such a silly fashion. The fact that you won’t provide evidence for your claim that Hitchens was a “dishonest man”, proves that you are a liar and a coward.
Trying to change the subject again, I see. As a refresher, the issue was your absurd claim that Hitchens was “never dishonest”. This is a claim that spans his entire career as a “public intellectual”. It also involves a multitude of intellectual sins.
You evidently have no idea that Hitchens was once a Marxist and a Trotskyite. If you had any familiarity with those systems of thought, you would know that adherents have a “novel” concept of truth; namely, the “truth” is whatever serves the struggle, which is to say that they completely reject “bourgeouis” conceptions of “truth.”
What is your concept of truth? If you think a Marxist theory of “truth” is legitimate, then that might partly explain your postings. Of course, Hitchens later moved to some degree toward a more bourgeouis theory of truth, raproachment with capitalism, and abandonment of anti-colonialism, much to the consternation of his Marxist friends who accused Hitchens of selling out for fame and fortune.
That apart, here is Hitchens from his intellectually dishonest God is Not Great: ““Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith.”
Here Hitchens is mainly taking a swipe at Christianity, his bete noir. The statement is obviously false with respect to Christianity, and Hitchens knows it to be false. The authors of the NT, for example, again and again state clearly that they are presenting evidence so that others may believe. Hitchens was entitled to reject the evidence, but he is not entitled to say that Christianity ASKS us to believe things without evidence.
This sort of distortion, along with omissions, exaggerations, and smears were a great deal of Hitchens’ stock-in-trade. For those familiar with his ideological haunts, the techniques are obviously the residue of his Marxist/Leninist allegiances.
While Hitchens gave up on socialism as an economic system about 10 years ago, he never, to my knowledge, stopped admiring Marxist theory or stopped thinking of Lenin and Trotsky as “great” men.
I can’t wait to hear from you again. I am coming to enjoy your spittle-flecked rants.
Bless your heart.
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