Classic Hitchens

For the first 97,000-98,000 (years) of this, heaven watches with indifference. ‘Oh, there they go again. That whole civilization’s just died out. Eh, what are you gonna do? They’re raping each other again. They think that the other tribe has poisoned the wells, so they’re going to kill all their children.’ Just watch all that. Three thousand years ago it’s decided that, ‘No, we’ve got to intervene now.’

You have to believe it. You have to believe it, and revelation must be personal. It has to appear. So, we’ll pick the most backward, the most barbaric, the most illiterate, the most superstitious and the most savage people we can find in the most stony area of the world. We won’t appear to the Chinese, who can already read. … No, we’ll appear to this brutal, enslaved, hopeless, superstitious crowd, and we’ll force them to cut their way through all of their neighbors with slaughter, genocide and racism and settle on the only part of the Middle East where’s there’s no oil. And all subsequent revelations occur in the same district and without this, we wouldn’t know right from wrong.

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Hitchens: ‘The utter arrogance of absolute power’

Probably my favorite Christopher Hitchens debate clip:

This is the story to which Hitchens is referring: “Dungeon dad admits abuse,” in which Freed Elisabeth Fritzl was kept in a basement for 24 years, while her father, Josef Fritzl, took sexual liberties and fathered seven children with her. Three of the children were kept in the basement 24-7.

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Hitchens vs. Wilson

Enjoy Hitchens in this video, but on the other side, this is just a pathetic display from Douglas Wilson.

Wilson seriously makes an argument about who carries the burden of proof, implying that atheists do? Really? Yet, Wilson admits outright that the “self evident” fact that God exists is “self evident” only to believers. So, in essence, he has said nothing and is wasting our time. Hitchens, of course, can be counted on to make light of Wilson’s “almost beautiful circularity” in his reasoning.

Wilson then goes on to affirm his belief in the ark and animals talking in Genesis:

I’m a Christian, so I believe the Bible.

The interviewer:

It sounds like you’re too intelligent to believe that literally. I understand your faith, but all those animals were on the boat. Come on.

Wilson:

Come on. We’re animals. And we talk.

WTF kind of embarrassing response is that? And this is the best Wilson can do. Stunning … or not.

Here is the full interview:

Hitchens’ final essay

Since this stunning portrayal of Christopher Hitchens’ final days by friend, Ian McEwan, I have been waiting for the great contrarian’s final published essay to be released.

Here it is: The Reactionary. This will be available in the March 2012 edition of The Atlantic.

Word of warning: unless you are an expert on post-Victorian British literature (I certainly am not), you may want to research a little beforehand. Hitchens, though lucid as ever, even to the last and apparently napping a little in between paragraphs, seems splendidly incomprehensible in his book reviews unless one is generally familiar with the topic at hand.