Hitchens At Work

9 Responses to Hitchens At Work

1. Louis Andrews says:

   October 24, 2009 at 7:02 am

   Indeed, he is at the top of his form. Hitchens is a very brilliant, but very strange individual.
2. Polichinello says:

   October 24, 2009 at 1:52 pm

   I think it was Mencken who pointed out that high Amp intellects tend throw off a lot of wild sparks.
3. Snippet says:

   October 24, 2009 at 1:53 pm

   May I quibble?

   Thank you.

   I am reasonably sure the Hebrews (like the Chinese and the Indusvalistanis) could read, and write.

   And they were really very far away from being the most backward group of people on the planet at that particular time (Africa, Most of the Western Hemisphere, and for that matter, a cold, forested place, full of pale blond folk…).

   Still, point well taken, and enjoyed.

   This sort of exercise is one big, fat, hairy, preaching to the choir deal. The believers have an arsenal of rationalizations (which they call apologetics, for some reason) at their disposal, which they fire off in the general direction of those who point out the logical absurdities of their position.

   This particular choir-member did enjoy the show.
4. Onkel Bob says:

   October 24, 2009 at 8:05 pm

   You may quibble but you would be wrong. The Hebrews came from Egypt which used hieroglyphs, not a syllabic or logographic system. Furthermore, reading and writing was restricted to an elite class, even some Egyptian rulers were not completely literate. Written Hebrew does not appear until after the Babylonian captivity, which exposed the captives to the Sumerian writing system. That explains why Genesis has two accounts for the creation, there were competing oral histories.
   Arguably the Gauls were quite civilized and peaceable people. The Romans destroyed their culture and allowed competing tribes to supplant them, giving us a distorted view of ancient northern and western Europe. The surviving art indicates they were quite intelligent and for the most part, and far more advanced than the pastoral nomadic Hebrews. The conquest of Gaul was no mean task, but Romans did not record (nor care about) their victim’s history.
5. MP says:

   October 25, 2009 at 12:05 am

   Hitchens’ point here is one well worth making, but I’ve heard him make it so many times before. If you listen to enough of his debates, or enough clips from them, you realize that you’re not going to hear anything terribly new the next time.

   And he’s wrong, of course, that any believer *has* to accept anything. Apart from the outright “world is 6000 years old” creationists, believers will always find some rationalization for their faith. Don’t know what they thought God’s plan for the Neanderthals was, but I’m sure they have some story.
6. Frank Cook says:

   October 25, 2009 at 3:02 am

   Socrates was always fussy about definitions. The God debate gets confounded by the lack of a clear definition of what we mean by the word God. Is He a kind, just, benevolent fellow, as judged by mankind? Or is He Aristotle’s prime mover with a larger, more expansive hidden agenda?
7. Kevembuangga says:

   October 25, 2009 at 4:34 am

   
   MP:
   believers will always find some rationalization for their faith. Don’t know what they thought God’s plan for the Neanderthals was, but I’m sure they have some story.

   Of course, “ex falso sequitur quodlibet”, that’s why I think only psychiatry (or realpolitik…) is relevant in dealing with religionists.
8. Snippet says:

   October 25, 2009 at 3:33 pm

   So … some Hebrews used a hieroglyphics-based writing system instead of a phonetic alphabet.

   Also, some Europeans were “peaceful,” and got eradicated by those who most emphatically were not.

   Still, the idea that the Hebrews were the “most backward people on the planet” seems a bit overstated. I’d be curious to know how they rated if compared to other contemporary groups.

   This hyperbole is unnecessary.

   If God had gone to some actually illiterate group – i.e. one where no one even understood the concept of writing – and there were plenty in those days, then Hitchen’s point would be on more solid ground.
9. black sea says:

   October 25, 2009 at 8:43 pm

   If you watch the full-length video, Hitchens carries on at some length about the value, not so much practical as moral, in facing up to the truth, no matter how disturbing this may be (mortality, the absence of God, the absence of any discernible plan for our lives, etc.)

   I therefore found it personally disturbing that Hitchens went on at equal length about his admiration for the work and ideas of Stephen J. Gould, a man, who, so I understand, chose to vary from the observable facts regarding intelligence whenever they threatened his own political and social dogmas. I would add, on that point, that I have never heard Hitchens make a public accounting of the ways in which his expectations for the outcome of the invasion and occupation of Iraq have been shattered by the turn of events, and the extent to which this has forced him to re-evaluate his own premises regarding human behavior in the political sphere.

   The most I have heard him concede is that the occupation was mishandled in many ways. However, I myself see no evidence that a better “handled” occupation would have resulted in a substantially different set of facts on the ground. I think Christopher Hitchens is well worth reading and is an intelligent and at times amusing speaker, but I believe that he is, on certain matters, as dogmatic as the Pope.

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