Hitchens Getting It Exactly Right
Not to beat a horse until it is well past dead, but Christopher Hitchens today wrote in Slate the best response-to-the-response-to-Virginia-Tech that I have read thus far. I strongly encourage you to read it. It is provocative, honest, as cynical as Hitchens always is, and absolutely correct. An awfully long excerpt to get your attention:
The grisly events at Virginia Tech involved no struggle, no sacrifice, no great principle. They were random and pointless. Those who died were not soldiers in any cause. They were not murdered by our enemies. They were not martyrs. But—just to take one example from the exhausting national sob fest of the past few days—here is how the bells were tolled for them at another national seat of learning. The president of Cornell University, David J. Skorton, ordered the chimes on his campus to be rung 33 times before addressing a memorial gathering. Thirty-three times? Yes. “We are here,” announced the head of an institution of higher learning:
for all of those who are gone, for all 33. We are here for the 32 who have passed from the immediate to another place, not by their own choice. We are also here for the one who has also passed. We are one.For an academic president to have equated 32 of his fellow humans with their murderer in an orgy of “one-ness” was probably the stupidest thing that happened last week, but not by a very wide margin. Almost everybody in the country seems to have taken this non-event as permission to talk the starkest nonsense. And why not? Since the slaughter raised no real issues, it was a blank slate on which anyone could doodle. Try this, from the eighth straight day of breathless coverage in the New York Times. The person being quoted is the Rev. Susan Verbrugge of Blacksburg Presbyterian Church, addressing her congregation in an attempt, in the silly argot of the day, “to make sense of the senseless”:
Ms. Verbrugge recounted breaking through the previous week’s numbness as she stopped on a morning walk and found herself yelling at the mountains and at God. Though her shouts were initially met with silence, she said, she soon was reassured by the simplest of things, the chirping of birds.“God was doing something about the world,” she said. “Starting with my own heart, I could see good.”
Yes, it’s always about you, isn’t it? (By the way, I’d watch that habit of yelling at mountains and God in the greater Blacksburg area if I were you. Some idiot might take it for a “warning sign.”) When piffle like this gets respectful treatment from the media, we can guess that it’s not because of the profundity of the emotion but rather because of its extreme shallowness. Those birds were singing just as loudly and just as sweetly when the bullets were finding their targets…
[big snip]
…One should express a decent sympathy for the families and friends of the murdered, a decent sympathy that ought to be accompanied by a decent reticence. Because Virginia Tech—alas for poor humanity—was a calamity with no implications beyond itself.
Comment by tet on 25 April 2007 at 2:12 pm:
Fuck Christopher Hitchens.
You remember the other day when I said that atheists could not possibly say anything to console those who were grieving?
Here’s that miserable son-of-a-bitch telling everyone else in the country that they have an obligation not to do so either, since he is unable due to his spiritual and intellectual handicap.
I spit in his general direction. He is not worth the derision of the minister he quoted.
I find it less than amusing that at the time when it is critical in my mind to confront evil with spirituality, Slate chooses to print three excerpts from Hitchen’s book, “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”
Why is that crap not considered “hate speech?” Anyone?
[Not that I consider hate speech a valid concept. I just want to hear how someone who feels that folks should not refer to one another in a degrading manner justifies one of their icons doing that to billions of people worldwide.]
Tom
Comment by Brian on 25 April 2007 at 2:43 pm:
Tom,
Because religion is a chosen belief, presumably based on some thought process on the part of the believer, making it perfectly acceptable to both criticize and defend in a marketplace of ideas. Also because differences in religion are not arbitrary or meaningless - they affect what people think, say, and do. Alternatively, things like race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, disability, age, etc. (1) are not choices, and (2) are, by and large, arbitrary distinctions between people that have little or no meaningful affect on who they are as human beings.
That doesn’t mean hatred of certain religious sects is defensible. But Hitchens doesn’t preach hatred of religious belief, he argues against its rationality and benefit to mankind. Which obviously you can and do disagree with, but it’s not hateful.
Comment by Brian on 25 April 2007 at 2:59 pm:
I should say, I don’t know that what Hitchens says is hateful. I haven’t read what he’s written on the subject. Having read other things he’s written, I could easily imagine him saying things that I would at the very least call insensitive to religious followers, even perhaps genuinely hateful. He’s a provocative guy. He wrote an essay called “Why Women Aren’t Funny.” He goes a little too far sometimes. So I don’t want to commit myself to a position of defending him on this issue. BUT, I’m very reluctant to call criticism of religion from an atheist perspective hateful. Usually the hatred comes out when one religious sect criticizes another. Most atheist essays I have read have been attempts to lure religious believers into the realm of rational thought and force them to defend their ideas, which I wholeheartedly endorse and would never label “hateful.”
Comment by tet on 25 April 2007 at 3:12 pm:
Brian, your logic is flawed. In today’s world, gender and nationality are most certainly matters of choice and Timothy Leary proved in the mid-1960s that metaprogramming could change sexual orientation if one wished it. An increasingly large number of mixed-race individuals can choose the race that they consider themselves.
On the other hand, it can be argued that when God reaches out and grabs you, personally, by the scruff of the neck, you have no choice in the matter whatsoever.
In addition, anyone who believes that racial differences are arbitrary and meaningless has never suffered from Sickle-cell anemia.
Let me give you a few quotes from Hitchens:
“There are four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, (emphasis mine) and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking.”
“We do not believe in heaven or hell, yet no statistic will ever find that without these blandishments and threats we commit more crimes of greed or violence than the faithful. (In fact, if a proper statistical inquiry could ever be made, I am sure the evidence would be the other way.)”
The first quote calls the religious ignorant and dangerous perverts (although neither has ever slowed me down at being a respected scientist), the second accuses us of being greedy, violent criminals even though the statistics on violent criminals shows the opposite. As far as greed goes, the religious are statistically much more likely to donate their money than atheists or agnostics because of moral imperatives.
Tom
Comment by tet on 25 April 2007 at 3:16 pm:
Oh, I was saving the best for last:
“…religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.”
So, we’re also whoremongers and murderers and there’s a lot of us who are that way.
This man is not doing atheism any service, Brian. He is an unmitigated dick.
Tom
Comment by Brandon on 25 April 2007 at 7:08 pm:
Tom -
1) As for the atheism-crime link that’s disproven by the numbers. The percentage of self-identified atheists in prisons is much lower than the percentage in the general populous.
2) “In today’s world, gender and nationality are most certainly matters of choice and Timothy Leary proved in the mid-1960s that metaprogramming could change sexual orientation if one wished it. An increasingly large number of mixed-race individuals can choose the race that they consider themselves.”
Where to begin? As for gender. Well that’s ascribed until you take affirmative steps to change it. A person can take on another role, but in this particular usage, “gender” tends to hold the double meaning of gender and biological sex. Biological sex is changeable, but it’s really fucking expensive.
As for metaprogramming, NFC.
As one of the few people here who can speak to the mixed race thing, the answer is sort of. You can choose how you identify yourself, but you can’t choose your phenotypes. I have friends who are black biracial and they’re black for all intents and purposes. It’s really hard for them to say they’re white. My brother has a really hard time saying he’s white because he looks very…well Persian, but he’s Latino. If it weren’t for my name and Spanish I’d never pass for Latino. I mean you can call yourself a chicken, but if people don’t see feathers they don’t have to buy it.
Comment by J. Prescott on 25 April 2007 at 7:34 pm:
Brandon-
Just a clarifying point. When they ask people in prison what religion they are, or are atheist, do they talk about what religion they are NOW or what their beliefs were AT THE TIME THEY COMMITTED THE CRIME? There generally is a significant “conversion” factor in prison, because I hear, that evidently, prison is not fun. Unfortunately they don’t ask those questions generally. Also, its one thing to claim a religion, but its another to be of faith. Plenty of people could claim to be Christian, but whether they are is another matter.
Those “empirical” tests. They can bite you in the ass.
Comment by Karen Pierce on 25 April 2007 at 8:37 pm:
Tom,
You seem so defensive about religion. You seem so angry with unreligious people.
That Cho guy, as well as the two guys from your story, were mentally ill. Religion or lack of religion had nothing to do with their crimes. The second guy in your story was treated with medication and therapy, not religion.
I work with atheists, agnostics, moderately religious people, and born again Christians. We all behave pretty much the same and live by the same moral codes.
I just don’t think religion or lack of religion is the reason for mass murder (or other evils). I think mental illness is the reason. Whether it’s Stalin or bin Laden, their religion or ideology is their excuse, but not the cause.
Comment by tet on 26 April 2007 at 6:56 am:
No anger at non-religious people per se whatsoever. I just watch my back because their moral codes can change at their whim when they read a new book. I reserve my readlanger for assholes.
Another quote from Chris Hitchens:
“I would be quite content to go to their children’s bar mitzvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to “respect” their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclusively in Arabic, to an illiterate merchant, or to interest myself in Wicca and Hindu and Jain consolations. And as it happens, I will continue to do this without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition—which is that they in turn leave me alone. But this, religion is ultimately incapable of doing. As I write these words, and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments that I have touched upon. Religion poisons everything.” (emphasis mine)
Doesn’t sound like I’m the angry and paranoid one to me at all. I’m just speaking up out of self-preservation before this fucking barbarian tries to take us all out.
Tom
Comment by Brandon on 26 April 2007 at 7:32 am:
“There generally is a significant “conversion” factor in prison, because I hear, that evidently, prison is not fun.”
The classic “no atheists in fox holes” line of argumentation. Honestly, it’s entirely possible that that accounts for some of it. I think the most logical explanation has nothing to do with religion whatsoever, but with socio-economics. I can’t find the numbers right now, but I am aware that people become less religious with education and college graduates are more likely to be atheists. Don’t see many college graduates in prison, so logical extraolation is that there’s probably not many atheists in prison because people in prison tend to be below the median in education while atheists tend to be above.
“people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments that I have touched upon. Religion poisons everything”
I hear similar things from the Jerry Falwell’s and Pat Robertson’s of the Religious world all the time. And to a certain extent they’re all correct. Each side challenges the fundamental beliefs of the others in some respects and in doing so (at least in the eyes of the believers) attacks their beliefs. The very existence of a group that believes the polar opposite on the very foundations of society means that some level of conflict is almost inevitable. Perhaps not you, but many other religious people would be happy to either convert, change, or simply remove atheists from the country. Not I, but other non-theists would be happy to “enlighten” all the theists with science and convert, change, or otherwise get rid of them. There are sophists on both sides, but I sincerely doubt you have much to fear from the atheist sophists. For one thing we don’t exactly go to a central meeting place to enforce our beliefs, so there’s no reinforcing structure, and secondly, being a bit more educated than the average population, we tend to use our bullshit meters a bit more. Add to that the fact that numbers are small and the threat of destroying religion is slight. I wish I could say the same for religion, but numerosity, reaffirmation, and centralized power structures make easy mobs.
Comment by tet on 26 April 2007 at 7:45 am:
Bah, Brandon. Since the government of the United States is secular, it is constantly being used to combat religion. Hell, wives and mothers had been forbidden until the other day to have a pentacle on our fallen soldiers’ tombstones.
Take a look at HR 1592, which is up for a vote this week in the House. A nearly identical Pennsylvanian law was used to arrest two little old ladies at a Gay Rights Demonstration who had signs that said homosexuality was forbidden by the bible. It’s a “thought crimes” bill.
Religious individuals in the United States have killed about three thousand people in the last few decades, the vast majority of them in one day. Governments have shown in the past century that they can kill millions of the religious if they so desire.
Hell, if you believe, as some do, that babies are alive within the womb, the non-religious have killed 46 million people in the US since 1973.
I don’t think that atheists have comparably much to fear.
Tom
Comment by Brandon on 26 April 2007 at 8:02 am:
“Hell, if you believe, as some do, that babies are alive within the womb, the non-religious have killed 46 million people in the US since 1973.”
That’s flagrantly dishonest Tom and you know it. You’re saying only the non-religious could abort a fetus when you know very well that is not the case.
“Hell, wives and mothers had been forbidden until the other day to have a pentacle on our fallen soldiers’ tombstones.”
If anything I’d think it’d be the Christians not wanting a pagan symbol on tombstones.
Comment by tet on 26 April 2007 at 8:17 am:
The secular government made abortion legal, Brandon.
The teachings of about 80% of the religious congregations in the country forbid it. While there will always be hypocrites within a religion who will go against its teachings (because of the war between good and evil within each human soul), it is the government, not the religions involved that enabled it to occur.
As far as the pentacle goes, Brandon, the Christians may not like it, but it’s the government that forbade it.
Only a government has the ability to efficiently wipe out Jews or Mormons or Baha’i or Catholics within their population.
In any case, off to write. Keep my seat warm.
Tom
Comment by Brian on 26 April 2007 at 9:15 am:
Tom, you have hijacked this post to start another debate about religion! Curse you!
But I’ll still engage.
“I just watch my back because their moral codes can change at their whim when they read a new book.”
That my moral compass is flexible to change when I learn new things as opposed to remaining in stubborn adherence to an ancient religious text or doctrine (however strictly or arbitrarily I choose to interpret it) is a source of pride for me, Tom, not shame.
It seems to me there in a fundamental doublestandard in your view of religion vs. atheism, Tom. You seem to argue that religion is good mainly because it is useful in that it motivates people to abide by a certain moral standard (rarely have you attempted an argument in favor of religion based on some kind of “because it’s true” formula). You perceive atheists as having no objective, external moral force guiding them. You then argue that if you draw the atheist moral view to its logical, ultimate conclusion it will end in people being nihilistic.
I disagree with you (obviously, not being a nihilist myself), but let’s say for a moment that it’s true. Every single atheist on this blog has not reached the logical, ultimate conclusion you think we should come to if we evaluated our beliefs honestly. Validly or invalidly, we have managed to create moral compasses for ourselves that lead us to being reasonably good people, or at least not outright bad people.
And yet, you apply to atheists a different standard than you do believers. You do not insist that religious adherents follow their beliefs to their ultimate, logical conclusion. I would argue that conclusion is that there is almost certainly no God but for now I’ll just argue that it is that they have absolutely no way of knowing whether there is or is not a God. At the very least, most religious adherents’ beliefs are riddled with contradictions, a result of picking and choosing which parts of their religions they want to believe in and which they don’t.
Why the contradiction? Why do you insist that atheist must and will follow their beliefs to what you perceive (I believe incorrectly) to be their logical conclusion (nihilism), but you don’t insist the same thing for religious adherents? It can’t be that religious adherents’ beliefs are more useful since whatever logical contradiction you think allows people like Brandon and myself to be atheists and decent people at the same time makes us just as useful and moral as the logical contradictions embraced by the religious.
Comment by tet on 26 April 2007 at 12:11 pm:
I did not hijack the thread. The reason that Hitchens cannot successfully empathize with the people murdered at VT or offer an explanation is because he is an atheist and therefore his virulent attacks on religion are relevant to the understanding of his point of view.
I hold that there’s a delay of about two generations between the time that a society rejects religious teachings and the time that it collapses into despotic, power-hungry despotism.
The reason that you and Brandon still have a shred of decency is that it’s left over from the three thousand years of religious teachings that formed this society in the first place.
This explains why, except for sex, I expect your moral codes are virtually indistinguishable from those of the Judeo-Christian society into which you were both born. Your codes are derivative, whether you wish to acknowledge that or not.
Within each of us there is a war going on between good and evil. When the evil side wins in a religious person, their conscience tells them that it is a bad thing and needs to be avoided in the future, even though the results may be temporarily pleasant. Pain is a warning sign that a person’s body is in danger. Guilt is the equivalent for the person’s soul.
An atheist is much less likely to effectively experience guilt because there is no established moral code to reference. If he or she experiences guilt, they are much more likely to adapt their code with a nice, juicy rationalization, and there is no way to tell them that they are wrong, since there is no higher moral authority than the self.
Therefore, in the case of an atheist, the evil tendencies will tend to increase with time, while there is a dampening factor in the religious. It comes down to simple systems theory.
Tom
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 27 April 2007 at 7:58 am:
I agree that VTech isn’t about any larger problem with society and doesn’t deserve that much analysis. I actually said that explicitly to a friend who was really moved by the events and who asked me for my thoughts on it…basically there isn’t anything to say.
But, Hitchens sounds a bit callous here, everyone has their own way of grieving, I don’t think it’s “cool” or “intellectual” to tease someone for memorializing or grieving in an idiosyncratic way.