RIP Christopher Hitchens

[kalm]

No, it was the actions of a crazy few who took control. ******* transcend belief or lack thereof.

George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

So if I asked you what created the evil in these instances would your answer be atheism?

[JoltinJoe]

George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

So if I asked you what created the evil in these instances would your answer be atheism?

State atheism.

[Vidav]

No, it was the actions of a crazy few who took control. Assholes transcend belief or lack thereof.

I believe this.

Douche1Bag does not. In D1B's mind If they're atheist mass murderers, that's ok. If they follow any religion and are mass murderers, they're the devil.

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg

[kalm]

So if I asked you what created the evil in these instances would your answer be atheism?

State atheism.

Cop out.

[JoltinJoe]

I believe this.

Douche1Bag does not. In D1B's mind If they're atheist mass murderers, that's ok. If they follow any religion and are mass murderers, they're the devil.

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg

He should stick to physics. I wonder how much theology he's actually read.

[D1B]

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg

He should stick to physics. I wonder how much theology he's actually read.

Cop out.

Lay off on the farts Joe and get some fresh air.

[JoltinJoe]

He should stick to physics. I wonder how much theology he's actually read.

Cop out.

Lay off on the farts Joe and get some fresh air.

This conversation is way over your head. Let kalm and vidav handle your side of the argument. They're much better at defending your side.

[D1B]

There are a lot of holes in that opinion piece, most significantly that it does not distinguish individual atheism from collective (state) atheism.

Your next door neighbor can be atheist and be a fine, moral person and even enjoyable to be around because he doesn't drone on endlessly about how smarter, better, or whatever he is than you because he is an atheist. There are even a number of such fine moral persons on this board. That this atheist doesn't question the source of his morality too extensively may be even inconsequential. He's there when a giving hand is needed because, for some reason, it is the right thing to do.

What concerned Dostoyevsky, however, when he questioned whether without God, doesn't anything become possible, isn't that Dostoyevsky himself believed that anything could become possible. Instead, he was troubled that some nihilists would come to that conclusion, that being, without God as an objective source for morality, something else could take over and become that source for right or wrong.

He feared that if state communism ever took root, the atheist government would position itself as the center for what is right or wrong, and it would do so at the expense of the individual's right to dissent (because disloyalty to the state contravened what the atheist state declared to be "right"), the individual's right to practice religion (because the state would impose atheism), and would oppress anyone who did not conform to the state's dictation of what was right.

Dostoyevsky wrote in the late 1800s and he chillingly foresaw Stalin, Mao, et al. In his book The Possessed a/k/a The Demons, he wrote that, if state atheism ever removed God as the objective source of right or wrong, he feared 100,000,000 deaths in the coming century.

So I've got nothing against the individual atheist, but I will fight back when some posters here say that society should cast away religion as some superstitious remnant of a less reasoned era. History tells us that state atheism must be feared and defeated.

Moreover, it is a critical failure of the contemporary atheist that he refuses to deal with the brutal and repressive nature of state atheism. Witness the effort here to try to disassociate atheism from the horrendous deeds of Stalin and Mao. This is precisely why modern atheism is largely a dead philosophical movement.

Classic "Farting Joe" = Bustin out the Russian Fatalists and the dead movement!

[D1B]

Cop out.

Lay off on the farts Joe and get some fresh air.

This conversation is way over your head. Let kalm and vidav handle your side of the argument. They're much better at defending your side.

They're killing you too. You have nothing Joe, except your own farts (and AZ ) to console you.

[AZGrizFan]

I believe this.

Douche1Bag does not. In D1B's mind If they're atheist mass murderers, that's ok. If they follow any religion and are mass murderers, they're the devil.

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg

Sounds suspiciously like the democrats' view on family values. "We don't HAVE to have family values, because we don't run on a family values platform!"

[AZGrizFan]

This conversation is way over your head. Let kalm and vidav handle your side of the argument. They're much better at defending your side.

They're killing you too. You have nothing Joe, except your own farts (and AZ ) to console you.

I don't have a dog in this fight, D.

[D1B]

The entire premise of the opinion letter is bogus. I don't think people hate athiests in general and those that do don't hate them because they think they are nihilists. The people that hate atheists hate them because some atheists like to paint people of faith as blind sheep, brainwashed or infantile.

I hate atheists because some atheists go to great lengths to cram their hatred of all religion down other people's throats at every opportunity.

Told you a thousand times, asshole, DON'T READ MY FUCKING THREADS. Are you an idiot?

[AZGrizFan]

I hate atheists because some atheists go to great lengths to cram their hatred of all religion down other people's throats at every opportunity.

Told you a thousand times, asshole, DON'T READ MY FUCKING THREADS. Are you an idiot?

This isn't your thread. It's about the death of Christopher Hitchens. The fact that YOU make every thread into a religion-bashing thread wouldn't leave me much to read if I followed your ill-advised plan.

[D1B]

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg

Sounds suspiciously like the democrats' view on family values. "We don't HAVE to have family values, because we don't run on a family values platform!"

[AZGrizFan]

Sounds suspiciously like the democrats' view on family values. "We don't HAVE to have family values, because we don't run on a family values platform!"

I concur. You are a dunce.

[D1B]

Told you a thousand times, asshole, DON'T READ MY FUCKING THREADS. Are you an idiot?

This isn't your thread. It's about the death of Christopher Hitchens. The fact that YOU make every thread into a religion-bashing thread wouldn't leave me much to read if I followed your ill-advised plan.

Really? I turn a thread about a religion basher into a religion bashing thread and you're all pissed off!?

Stop the wars and terrorism and strife in the middle east, stop religious fueled bigotry against gays, stop the catholic pedophile homosexual meat grinder, the frauds, the religious backed neo-cons who bankrupted our nation through war and thievery, then I'll shut up. Until then, you see DIB, in glorious pink font - stay the fuck away.

[D1B]

I concur. You are a dunce.

Ohhh, the double-dunce!

[AZGrizFan]

I concur. You are a dunce.

Ohhh, the double-dunce!

You keep up this shit, and I'll break out the TRIPLE DUNCE, pal.

[D1B]

Cop out.

Lay off on the farts Joe and get some fresh air.

This conversation is way over your head. Let kalm and vidav handle your side of the argument. They're much better at defending your side.

How bout we let Hitch chime in:

[youtube][/youtube]

Hitler was Catholic - Fact.

[D1B]

Ohhh, the double-dunce!

You keep up this shit, and I'll break out the TRIPLE DUNCE, pal.

Bet you have a pile of em at home.

[D1B]

Cop out.

Lay off on the farts Joe and get some fresh air.

This conversation is way over your head. Let kalm and vidav handle your side of the argument. They're much better at defending your side.

Joe, you ready for another Hitchslap? Here's Hitch on Stalin (a seminarian in the church)

[youtube][/youtube]

Stalin was deeply religious.

[D1B]

The role of the United States in propping up Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.


From Wikipedia

U.S Involvement

In 1973, right before Pol Pot's complete rule over Cambodia, the Khmer Republican Government, with the help from US assistance, "dropped about half a million tons of bombs on Cambodia." Many of those who lost family members and close friends joined the Khmer Rouge's revolution. Those bombings may have killed as many as 300,000 people.[21]

It is said that the US sided with Cambodia but the efforts were to overthrow the Vietnamese; it was all part of the anti-Vietnamese and anti-Soviet attitudes that prevailed, especially in the midst of the Sino-Soviet Split, since the People's Republic of China also supported the Khmer Rouge. The United States aided Khmer Rouge guerrillas who fled to Thailand after the Vietnamese invaded Cambodian territory. The U.S. sided with China in supporting the Khmer Rouge in order to destabilize the Hun Sen Government in Cambodia and its Vietnamese allies.[22]

Steven Barry (on US and China working against the Soviets with disastrous results for humanity)

The Khmer Rouge were trying to create a classless, non-capita­list society. Some carnage was inevitable­, but most of it was induced by the USA. America carpet bombed Democratic Kampuchea illegally as part of its capitalist Vietnam War. The masses willingly took up the communist cause and toppled the American puppet regime of Lon Nol. America, China and the UK knew about Khmer Rouge activities in fashioning a new society and aided and abetted them. The USA under Nixon had a rapproachm­ent with Mao's China and China had split with Khrushchev­'s phoney-com­munistic social-imp­erialist USSR. China provided arms and material support, the UK provided training and America lent its political imprimateu­r to the arrangemen­t. American approval rested on the fact that the Khmer Rouge had split with USSR aligned Vietnam. With the Vietnam War raging and the Cold War at high tide, the Khmer Rouge was a useful tool. After the Vietnamese toppled Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge camped near the border of Thailand - until just recently in fact. The USA, UK and China supported them and recognized them as the legitimate government of Democratic Kampuchea for many years. The Khmer Rouge kept its seat in the UN because of this support. To try them now is hypocritic­al. Anyone in Cambodia today over the age of 45 is either a survivor or was a participan­t. That and the explicit support of the West caused sufficient embarrassm­ent to delay the trials for over 30 years. Capitalist cynicism at its worst.

[JoltinJoe]

Well, DumB has chased away the intelligent discussion with his usual idiocy.

"Hitler was a Catholic."

"Stalin was deeply religious."

You Tube cites to some stupid alcoholic dead guy (wow, that's scholarship).

[JoltinJoe]

State atheism.

Cop out.

No, the cop out is the BS line that they killed because there were communists.

Communism is an amoral economic and political system which advocates a centralized economy controlled by a strong government said, to represent the "people." As political system, it differs from ours in that we assert that government here derives its authority from the consent of the governed. Communists asserted that the government was a collection of the interests of the people themselves.

The moral values of the communist were informed by his atheism. They didn't kill because they were communists, they killed because they possessed a morality that licensed such actions.

[JoltinJoe]

This conversation is way over your head. Let kalm and vidav handle your side of the argument. They're much better at defending your side.

Joe, you ready for another Hitchslap? Here's Hitch on Stalin (a seminarian in the church)

[youtube][/youtube]

Stalin was deeply religious.

Hitches at his worst.

First, it is an outright lie that the Russian people viewed the czar as a "supernatural" authority. Since this formed Hitchens's premise of a "servile" people ripe for manipulation by Stalin, Hitchens's entire case deflates because it was based on his lying premise.

The Russian Orthodox Church was the prevailing Church in Russia prior the Bolshevik Revolution. Its theology, quite obviously, expressly forbids declaring any man a "God."

Second, watch how Hitchens blames the victims. He asserts that Russian was traditionally a deeply religious society, which made the Russian people servile and susceptible to accepting a totalitarianism devoid of reasoning -- because it was already a society devoid of reasoning.

Hitchens ignores, however, that the victims of Stalin's purges were the religious. In his mind, the religious were responsible for the purges of Stalin because it was their lack of reason which fostered a society susceptible to Stalin's totalitarianism.

So Hitchens is asserting that the victims of the purges are culpable for the purges. When you put his "reasoning" under a microscope, it completely fails tests of logic and rationality. Hitchens blames the victims.

Moreover, Hitchens fails the history test too. Far from being servile, the religious in Russia refused to accede to the totalitarian state. They fought the atheists' imposition of state atheism, tens of millions of them accepting prison, starvation and death even as the state systematically shut their churches.

Yet Hitchens dismisses these brave and courageous souls as "servile." Not only is this offensive, let me say that the religious in Russia who stood boldly and bravely against the atheist state were far more courageous than Hitchens -- a soft, alcoholic doughboy who whored his great intellect for celebrity and wealth.

So here's a posthumous Hitch slap on Hitchens -- a guy who ironically only appealed to the servile and unthinking.