Death of an Atheist

   Christopher Hitchens passed away on Dec. 15, after a battle with esophageal cancer. Hitchens was a well-known author and journalist. He was 62

Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

   His passing was more significant to me than it otherwise might have been as I'd just recently finished reading his book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything".
   This book was published in 2007 and only enhanced Hitchens' literary reputation. As a matter of fact, so great is this reputation that in 2005 he was voted the world's "fifth top public intellectual".
   Essentially the book details how organized religion has been the cause of much strife to the peoples of the world, almost since the beginning of history.
   He presents a fairly endless list of examples of how religion has played a leading role in sectarian violence, terrorism, slavery, misogyny, racism, and genocide. Above and beyond all that he points out how the church systematically and needlessly instills guilt and fear into many of its adherents. As an example of this he refers to the way the church presents an everlasting and fiery hell as the final punishment for a life of sin and what longlasting effect this must have had on children who were indoctrinated this way in their formative years. 
   Because of much of this, Chris Hitchens was an atheist. He was also at the vanguard of what has been termed the "New Atheism". This is a recent movement which has been driven by a group of atheist writers whose assertion is that wherever religion exerts its influence it should be countered and exposed with clear-thinking and rational argument.
   His point of view is straight-forward; how can reasonable people act on and put such blind faith in the edicts of an unseen and unprovable deity, particularly in the face of modern science. Throughout history there are constant examples of human belief, things that were a "given", which later were proved to be simply untrue. How many thousands of years did people believe the earth was flat and the sun revolved around it? They believed this with a certainty and there was undeniableness to their belief. And they were certainly and undeniably wrong.
   Hitchens thought that belief in a God, any kind of god, falls into this same category. Were any other person or entity to come before us and begin to make a host of miraculous claims and promises we would assuredly stop dead in our tracks and and ask for proof. Yet we don't do this with God and are quite willing to follow all sorts of destructive paths, in His name. How polarizing were the 9/11 attacks, how much death and destruction arose out of them, and how many times were God's and Allah's names invoked by both sides after them?

   In his book, Hitchens is unrelenting in his criticism. Not even Gandhi and Mother Teresa escape his wrath (you need to read the book). He spends time talking about some of the great people who espoused atheism but, under certain circumstances, wavered in this. Of all the people he admired, the only one he speaks about who did not waver was Einstein, a scientist.
   People who argue against atheism are quick to present the church (whatever church) as a place where "good" is performed, at least, regardless of how strongly its members might actually believe in God.
   Hitchens, however, offered up the opinion that there was nothing wrong with groups of like-minded individuals gathering together to serve their communities but why all this under the guise of serving a God as well?

   Ironically, we who remain in this world are free to debate the existence of God and offer up our own arguments as to his existence all at the same time that Christopher Hitchens now knows the answer. Hard to say, as death approached, whether me might have done any "bet-hedging", just in case. Myself, I'd have been tempted. It could very well be that he is now somewhere saying, "I told you so" and is supremely happy being there!