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Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Our Favorite Atheist I



The official favorite atheist of this blog is the very very witty and sophisticated Christopher Hitchens, who recently completed his book tour promoting God is not Great. Awesome. I picked up Hitchen’s reflections on his tour in the September edition of Vanity Fair, and really enjoyed Hitchen’s apropos blasé’ and elitist critiques of our faith. I also got to learn all about the new places and people who seem to be re rigeur for sophisticated name dropping (thank Heaven). But, Hitchens is an absolute doll, as they say, and we provincials probably could benefit from his breezy heckling, so I will be posting selections from the article for our audience throughout the next few weeks. Enjoy, fellow ignoramii. Respondez- si’il vous plaiz, see you at Per Se, etc.

"You hear all the time that America is an intensely religious nation, but what you don’t hear is that there are almost as many religions as there are believers. Moreover, many ostensible believers are quite unsure of they actually believe…

Could there be a change in the Zeitgeist going on? I think it’s possible. A 2001 study found that those without affiliation are the fastest-growing minority in the United States. A generation ago the words “American atheist” conjured up the image of the slightly cultish and loopy Madalyn Murray O-Hair. But in the last two years there have been five atheist best-sellers, one each from Professor Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett and two from the neuroscientist Sam Harris."

Daunting… ?

posted by MM at 9:42 AM

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

A rebuttal of my favorite atheist

I'll have to admit a certain weakness for the writing of the notorious atheist Christopher Hitchens, even as I disagree with him. His wit and writing style are always amusing (my favorite is his take on the ten commandments). Anyway, he's written a new book against religious belief, which is reviewed here.

The kicker is that the reviewer is Hitchens' brother, who happens to be a Christian. Nothing like a little Cain and Abel action on the world wide web...

posted by Lux Intellectus at 7:50 AM

Friday, October 12, 2007

Our Favorite Atheist II


Washington DC: It's been weeks on the road, and after a grueling swing through Canada I am finally home. I tell the wife and daughter that's it: no more god talk for a bit- let's get lunch in the fashionable cafe' Milano in Georgetown. Signor Franco leads us to a nice table outside and I sit down- right next to the Archbishop of Canterbury. OK then, this must have been meant to happen.

I lean over. "My Lord Archbishop? It's Christopher Hitchens." "Good gracious," he responds, gesturing at his guest- "we were just discussing your book."

The archbishop's church is about to undergo a schism. More than 10 conservative congregations in Virginia have seceded, along with some African bishops, to protest the ordination of a gay bishop in New England.

I ask him how it's going. "Well-" he lowers his voice- "I'm rather trying to keep my head down."

Well, why in that case, I want to reply, did you seek a job that supposedly involves moral leadership? But I let it go. What do I care what some Bronze Age text says about sexuality? And there's something hopelessly innocent about the archbishop: he looks much more like a sheep than a shepherd.

From Vanity Fair, September 2007.

posted by MM at 6:52 AM

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

The Loser Letters

Everyone is probably familiar with C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, where he writes as if he was a demon attempting to turn Christians away from there faith. Well, there is a hilarious and interesting sendup of the Letters, where a fictional atheist writes to the New Atheists (Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins, etc.) giving them suggestions about how to make their case stronger and what to avoid, and of course in the process she totally attacks their arguments. The letters are written by Mary Eberstadt, and she is producing one a week, with three completed so far. Here are links to letter one (dealing with why atheist teachings about sex are wrong), two (dealing with why atheism is rife with illogic), and three (dealing with how faith leads to good works).

My favorite passage from all the letters:

"Take what some Brights have been making of the fact that there are lots of different religions in the world saying plenty of different things. Many of You have been right out front, going on and on about how all this religious diversity somehow “proves” that not one of those religions can be correct. But of course this is what’s called a fallacious inference. The presence of other religions doesn’t affect the truth value of any one of them — any more than having twelve answers to a math problem tells you which one is right, say, or having ten pairs of Manolo Blahniks tells you which ones to wear with a cheetah leather skirt."
Anyway, the letters are very entertaining and I'd highly recommend reading them all.

posted by Lux Intellectus at 12:07 PM