bunch of cunts wrote:cockcockcockcockcockcockcockcockcockcockcockcockcockcockcockcock
On cocks: uh, when this thread became a cock thread? [/Priscilla]
On this passage:
Moniker wrote:To say religion is generally a negative is to say that ideology (of which religion is a subset) is generally negative, and therefore human nature.
"ideology" strikes me as part of "human nature", not identical with it. Human beings have a tendency to ascribe to various sets of beliefs, but I wouldn't say that this is all that human beings are about, i.e. "human nature".
I use the word "belief" in the philosophical sense: a set of "rules of thought" that are neither proved nor disproved by empirical validation. "Knowledge" is justified true belief, i.e. a belief that correctly describes a phenomenon (be it gravitation, voting patterns, life cycle of butterflies).
A few words on Hitchens.
Hitchens was a quite strong humanist, and saw this ideology as opposed to religion. He actually believed that humanist values (friendship, social justice, family ties, etc.) were justified their ability to grant the greater good for the greater amount of people (hence, being "true", rather than just beliefs). After all, he *was* a classical leftist. I point out a key passage below.
And then there was his style, and his positions on "revealed" beliefs.
On style: Christopher Hitchens nourished a sincere vitriolic contempt for organized religion, but in particular for some aspects of monotheistic tenets. Some quotes from
Hitch-22:
“I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.”
And another one:
“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.”
The reasons on why he had all this contempt for these aspects of (some) organized religions is perhaps clear in this passage:
"“About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about?
Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others—while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity—so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. Enough.”
So, Hitchens despised the patronizing style of religion, in particular the monotheistic flavour. Of course, he despised other variants, and more in general the notion of "supernatural belief", especially when invoked to justify moral values (see last sentence in last quote).
Second to last passage outlines the types of humanist moral values that he endorsed ("A life that partakes...call it so"). While one may argue that these values are not so different from "religious" ones, Hitchens considered their grounding in "everyday life" as a form of justified true belief that was in stark contrast to "religious" support. So, he did buy into some "ideological" version of "human nature".
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
There are several lines in that interview (versus Hannity) that crack me up, but I especially like it where the presenter asks Ralph Reed the most belief defyingly inane question ever: "Would Jesus have advocated the G.O.P", and Hitchen's response just nails the utter stupidity of it:
