I really don't know why I'm angry. I really did expect Christians to race to the front to see who could say something stupid about the death of Christopher Hitchens first.
Really, I expected smug self-rightiousness from the likes of Ray Comfort, and he didn't fail to live down to my expectations by posting a blog entry titled, "Christopher Hitchens is no longer an atheist. Richard Dawkins now believes in God" (No, I won't link to him.) Comfort made hay from Hitchens' corpse, while taking the time to quote-mine Dawkins.
And of course Rick Warren played "Concern Troll" by taking the time to say something hateful about Hitchens.
Twitter has been in an uproar too. Lots of good Christians have been threatening the person who started the trending topic #GodIsNotGreat
Over the next few days, expect to see a lot of "Good" Christians sadly lamenting that Hitchens "is no longer an atheist" or that he "knows the truth now". This false piety, this false sympathy is the curdling of human kindness into a sludge of religious evil.
Let me make this very simple for the followers of a god. You think you know what Christopher Hitchens is thinking right now. But you are wrong. He is not thinking anything. He's dead. His brain is no longer functioning, and therefore his mind has... ceased. The words he wrote, the words he spoke, the friends he made, the enemies he impressed, the people he touched are all that remains of his rapier-sharp intellect.
But Hitchens is gone, and does not exist anywhere.
This is a thought that terrifies many religious people. And this abject fear, this panic, is one of the most powerful tools of religion. Hitchens knew this, and overcame it.
He no longer cares about the religious buzzards that pick over his corpse. But I'm angry about it. Even though I knew it was coming.
2 comments:
Caladus,
Do you know whether or not Rick Warren and Christopher Hitchens were friends? Looks like to me that Warren is genuinley mourning the loss of a friend. Is that conceit? I dare to say that Warren would appreciate an expression of grief from a "non-believer". (I would, anyway).
By adding the last 5 words to his comment, Rick Warren's supposed "message of compassion" has been turned into a chance to preach.
This isn't compassion, this is the act of a vulture over the corpse of Hitchens. And Hitchens would be the first to point this out.
I don't expect you to understand this.
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