{"id":1009,"date":"2008-12-22T15:03:09","date_gmt":"2008-12-22T23:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=1009"},"modified":"2008-12-22T15:03:09","modified_gmt":"2008-12-22T23:03:09","slug":"has-christopher-hitchens-been-duped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/has-christopher-hitchens-been-duped\/","title":{"rendered":"Has Christopher Hitchens Been Duped?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Christopher Hitchens <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2207148\/\">accuses Rick Warren of bigotry <\/a>for believing that Jews will not go to heaven (<a href=\"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=955#comments\">thanks to Wally <\/a>for the link).   Hitchens\u2019 condemnation strikes me as unduly harsh.  I don\u2019t think it\u2019s fair to label a theological position as bigotry simply because it does not conform to secular principles.<\/p>\n<p>But here\u2019s another possibility: Do modern Christians still believe with the same fervor as in the past all those unyielding doctrines of eternal damnation for the unbaptised and unconverted?  They sure don\u2019t act as if they do.  If they really were convinced that their friends, co-workers, neighbors, and in-laws were going to hell because they possessed the wrong or no religious belief, I would think that the knowledge would be unbearable.  Christians surely see that most of their wrong-believing personal acquaintances are just as moral and deserving as themselves.  How, then, do they live with the knowledge that their friends and loved ones face an eternity of torment?  I would expect a frenzy of proselytizing, by word or by sword.  <\/p>\n<p>In previous centuries, when religion had the upper hand, religious differences meant more.  But ours is a world dominated by the secular values of tolerance and equality.  Either believers live with an extraordinary degree of cognitive dissonance between the inclusive values of their society and the dictates of their religion, or they unconsciously mitigate those bloody-minded dictates as atavistic vestiges from a more primitive time.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder which it is.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christopher Hitchens accuses Rick Warren of bigotry for believing that Jews will not go to heaven (thanks to Wally for the link). Hitchens\u2019 condemnation strikes me as unduly harsh. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s fair to label a theological position as &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/has-christopher-hitchens-been-duped\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1009"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1011,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions\/1011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}