"And here is the point, about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake."
"The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair. I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on-only henceforth in my absence. (It's the second of those thoughts: the edition of the newspaper that will come out on the day after I have gone, that is the more distressing.) Much more horrible, though, would be the announcement that the party was continuing forever, and that I was forbidden to leave. Whether it was a hellishly bad party or a party that was perfectly heavenly in every respect, the moment that it became eternal and compulsory would be the precise moment that it began to pall."
"One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody-not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms-had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think-though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one-that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell."
Damn! I miss Christopher every single day since he left, I suspect I’ll miss him until my furlough here on earth is revoked. The suave good looks charm, the fierce rhetoric, the incomparable intellect. His legacy ensures his immortality. 💐 🥃 god is Not GREAT, but Christopher Hitchens is.
Although I disgreed with Christopher on the invasion of Iraq, almost everything else I agreed with him on. It is very telling how many people miss him so much to this day, many of whom never knew him of which i am one. I live in Oxfordshire and his brother regularly goes into my local coffee shop. His political views are polar opposite to Hitchens but he is always very charming when i have stopped to say hello. Thanks for sharing this.🥂🥂
Fabulous. A very intelligent debate/ conversation which is sadly lacking today. Christopher is on form and although I find most of Buckley's views unappealing, I can still recognise what an excellent orator he was and he certainly makes you think. The third guy was out of his league here.
holy shit that first question was 11 years ahead of it's time for the conservative movement globally. Hitchen's pro-Iraq invasion stance weirdly understandable (a rare thing) but I wonder how his views would have shifted had he lived long enough to see how much of an utter failure based on the actions of dishonest and cynical actors it was. it's really a shame that he was so wrong about this major issue. he claimed to be mostly a Marxist but I worry that he might have gone down a reactionary / conservative / anti-"woke" bent like so many other IDW folks/grifters. Though, realistically he probably would be somewhere in Sam Harris-land today.
10:40 I think it is interesting to hear the rank and file left malign some conservative. The rhetoric from the so called progressives is all was heated and full of hate. They are no angles and just as dangerous as any boogeyman form the right. And hitches chuckles when hearing the rhetoric he does nothing to tamper it down. Anywhoo.
I wish he would've given up that smoking. he gained nothing from it yet we lost someone very valuable. and ironically, the money that goes to the tobacco and other sin industries typically end up supporting the religious dictatorships he fights against.
Christopher's comments about the consensus are more apparent today because we see how much worse things are now that these new forms of media are prevalent. The power of memes, personalized recommendation systems, and so on are a lot stronger than the manufacture of consent via the traditional media.
This left black people hating each other, even to date there's nothing black South Africans hate more than Black people. Xenophobia is more prevalent than racism.
I was really into Thomas Paine during college. It was a big piece of my education. His writing was so excellent. Christopher Hitchens is a centerpiece of my education.
Nice to see that Hitch escaped the avant-garde doctrinal machinations of Cambridge schooling and made it to the more respectable intellectual orthodoxy of Oxford.
The Jesus freakish lady from the south was given far too much time; Hitch dealt with it beautifully by pointing out that genuflection isn’t reflection!
And then there’s the ‘pinched and scrawny faces of the pious’. Well, there, I must caution you not to overlook the slobbery, rotund faces of others who pretend to aspire to piety, but like their food a lot!
Hitch, what do you think makes Scientology, Mormonism, or Billy Graham more repulsive than some of the more long-lived religions? Is it money, power, the narcissism of the leader(s) or some combination of all of them.
Really appreciate this man. But this odious worshipping going on in every comment section of his videos is getting old. He’d hate this very thing, and the countless pseudo intellectuals waxing lyrical about a man they never met is absurd.
It's not just in the states, in the UK we don't get this sort of journalism any more. Mainly I think for a couple of reasons, firstly the corporation's don't want us educated or informed and also the show wants to be the story now, not as a platform to help inform and encourage debate. Mr Hitchens is such a loss to the whole world, unless you're a radical or racist obviously.
I was born in 51.There is no doubt Britain was safer in many ways, despite the fact, that as children our play was rough and tumble a an often daring and even dangerous . We had more freedom to play and roam and have adventures, even though we had chores to do. Times were tough but we had various ways to make our own pocket money, collecting and selling scrap metal, selling old clothes to the ragman at a penny ha'penny a pound and woolens at sixpence a pound. We collected and returned soda bottles for the three pence deposits. However it was not all sweetness and light. However many of us lived in houses we could not afford to heat, and suffered the bites of bed bugs Many of us,went to school with large holes in the soles of our shoes ( we had to line the insides of them with cut out layers of cereal boxes to keep out the cold. I witnessed some children in the schoolyard retrieving the crusts from the other children's lunches from the refuse bins, picking the ants from them before eating them (the crusts not the ants). I guess it was better in some ways and worse in others.
"ONE HAS TO SUSPECT THE MOTIVES OF THOSE WHO DO SO... IN PARTICULAR THE MOTIVES OF THOSE WHO ARE D E T E R M I N E D TO BE OFFENDED." Enough said, exactly what is happening in the world right now.
Hobsbawn is such a Commie that he struggles to even admit that he's Jewish. He supported the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and followed the party line when Britain fought the Nazis alone. British Communists were forbidden to support Britain. He was a traitor and a scum-bag.
