Christopher Hitchens talks about book

Christopher Hitchens is the author of God is not Great. Tonight I watched him speak about his book.

He asked some important questions. Why do we lie to ourselves? Why do we as human beings like wishful thinking? Why does our human makeup have a fear of freedom? Why do we want to be told what to do?

He basically says that it is innate in all humans to surrender to these feelings.

What does that mean? We want someone to care about us. We might feel better knowing that some higher power is looking out for us. However, our need for that feeling does not make a god reality.

Mr. Hitchens talks about morality. He talked about how it is insulting when someone who does not believe in a god is questioned about their morals. He quoted Fydor Dostoevsky in his book The Brothers Karamazov.. "Isn't everything permissible if god is dead".

In my head, my world, everything is not permissible if there is no god. I know right from wrong..yes, even us atheists do.

This is an amazing book. You would really have to be interested in reading a lot of detailed discussions. The brothers talk about religion in depth and it is very interesting since they have very different point of views. It is like reading a really long conversation that totally moves away from the actually story being told. I happen to like that in a book and found it to be very real to life. Don't we all have off the cuff conversations?

It is insulting to ask such a question about my morality being an atheist because as Hitchens gets to the point by saying..Name an ethical statement or action made by someone of religious faith that could not have been made/done by someone with no faith. So, you don't need religion to be a good person.

Its so freeing actually. I don't feel that anyone is watching over me or knows my thoughts. Who wants that?

not moi.

Comments

[evanescent]

Hi Pink,

I love watching Hitchens talk and debate. He certainly isn't as 'dignified' or restrained (if those are the right words) as Dawkins, but the man is an encyclopedia of quotes, knowledge, politics, and history. He is awesome to watch in full flow.

Can you find a link to the video of the speech you talk about in this post??

[mrk]

Hey Pink,

I found your site after looking for info related to Steven Pinker's chapter in the book "Intelligent Thought." Thanks for your thoughts!

[Elika Kohen]

I think anyone from any religion would agree that you don't need religion to be a good person.

That's not the point of religion.

Being a good person is a great investment in this life, but being a pious person is something argued to be more significant than simply being a "good person". Piety is intended to transcend these 120 years and have eternal impact, not to just have impact during our lives here.

There is a big difference between being a good person and a righteous one. Even "good people" have someone looking over their shoulder--its called "the law".

The human hope is that these 120 years or so isn't just it. And if it isn't "just it", then whatever we do must have consequences that transcend the temporal and impact what is above. That is the essence of religion.

If we choose to remove the concepts of piety from society, then by extension we have to address our mortality. We can spend our lives investing in piety for a future existence, or we can deny the concept of our future existence and engage in senseless frivolity since there really isn't anything worth investing our entire lives into. That is one big slippery slope to go down. In order to really clear the air about the existence of God, we would have to prove beyond a shadow of doubt that there is no life after death. And that will be kind of hard to do as we are already bringing people back through our own sciences, albeit pretty limited.

As far as Hitchens' challenge? There is one ethical act. Faithfully living your life according to what God commanded is an ethical act that only the beliving can perform. By definition, if any immoral person engaged in that, they could not rightly be considered immoral.