in two parts:
inspired by christopher hitchens.
via atheist movies
|
|
|---|
Showing posts with label christopher hitchens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christopher hitchens. Show all posts
the four horsemen reunite in 2012
at the atheist foundation of australia.
click image to source
'the atheist foundation of australia is excited to announce that the next global atheist convention – ‘a celebration of reason’ will feature headline speakers richard dawkins, daniel dennett, sam harris and christopher hitchens (health permitting).
the global atheist convention will be held once again at the melbourne convention and exhibition centre from 13 - 15 april 2012.'
the atheist movement has made great strides these past few years. i'm curious to this meetup will differ from the first.
click image to source
'the atheist foundation of australia is excited to announce that the next global atheist convention – ‘a celebration of reason’ will feature headline speakers richard dawkins, daniel dennett, sam harris and christopher hitchens (health permitting).
the global atheist convention will be held once again at the melbourne convention and exhibition centre from 13 - 15 april 2012.'
the atheist movement has made great strides these past few years. i'm curious to this meetup will differ from the first.
christopher hitchens: find your own voice
unspoken truths, at vanity fair.
snip
deprivation of the ability to speak is more like an attack of impotence, or the amputation of part of the personality. to a great degree, in public and private, i “was” my voice. all the rituals and etiquette of conversation, from clearing the throat in preparation for the telling of an extremely long and taxing joke to (in younger days) trying to make my proposals more persuasive as i sank the tone by a strategic octave of shame, were innate and essential to me. i have never been able to sing, but i could once recite poetry and quote prose and was sometimes even asked to do so. and timing is everything: the exquisite moment when one can break in and cap a story, or turn a line for a laugh, or ridicule an opponent. i lived for moments like that. now, if i want to enter a conversation, i have to attract attention in some other way, and live with the awful fact that people are then listening “sympathetically.” at least they don’t have to pay attention for long: i can’t keep it up and anyway can’t stand to.
/snip
if it be your will,
that i speak no more:
and my voice be still,
as it was before...
snip
deprivation of the ability to speak is more like an attack of impotence, or the amputation of part of the personality. to a great degree, in public and private, i “was” my voice. all the rituals and etiquette of conversation, from clearing the throat in preparation for the telling of an extremely long and taxing joke to (in younger days) trying to make my proposals more persuasive as i sank the tone by a strategic octave of shame, were innate and essential to me. i have never been able to sing, but i could once recite poetry and quote prose and was sometimes even asked to do so. and timing is everything: the exquisite moment when one can break in and cap a story, or turn a line for a laugh, or ridicule an opponent. i lived for moments like that. now, if i want to enter a conversation, i have to attract attention in some other way, and live with the awful fact that people are then listening “sympathetically.” at least they don’t have to pay attention for long: i can’t keep it up and anyway can’t stand to.
/snip
if it be your will,
that i speak no more:
and my voice be still,
as it was before...
amis on hitchens
presented in the guardian as 'he's one of the most terrifying rhetoricians the world has seen', martin amis hails the peerless intelligence and rhetorical ingenuity of his exceptional friend, christopher hitchens
image pinched from the guardian
the final paragraph [save for the previous two appealing to ignorance] is an indicator, not a climax, of a rewarding read to brighten my frustration at this day's all-seeping celebration of the lack of reason.
snip
anyway, we do know what is going to happen to you, and to everyone else who will ever live on this planet. your corporeal existence, o hitch, derives from the elements released by supernovae, by exploding stars. stellar fire was your womb, and stellar fire will be your grave: a just course for one who has always blazed so very brightly. the parent star, that steady-state h-bomb we call the sun, will eventually turn from yellow dwarf to red giant, and will swell out to consume what is left of us, about six billion years from now.
/snip
image pinched from the guardian
the final paragraph [save for the previous two appealing to ignorance] is an indicator, not a climax, of a rewarding read to brighten my frustration at this day's all-seeping celebration of the lack of reason.
snip
anyway, we do know what is going to happen to you, and to everyone else who will ever live on this planet. your corporeal existence, o hitch, derives from the elements released by supernovae, by exploding stars. stellar fire was your womb, and stellar fire will be your grave: a just course for one who has always blazed so very brightly. the parent star, that steady-state h-bomb we call the sun, will eventually turn from yellow dwarf to red giant, and will swell out to consume what is left of us, about six billion years from now.
/snip
christopher hitchens: don't keep the faith
in his message to american atheists:
'dear fellow-unbelievers,
nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument i am currently having with the specter of death. nobody ever wins this argument, though there are some solid points to be made while the discussion goes on. i have found, as the enemy becomes more familiar, that all the special pleading for salvation, redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before. i hope to help defend and pass on the lessons of this for many years to come, but for now i have found my trust better placed in two things: the skill and principle of advanced medical science, and the comradeship of innumerable friends and family, all of them immune to the false consolations of religion. it is these forces among others which will speed the day when humanity emancipates itself from the mind-forged manacles of servility and superstitition. it is our innate solidarity, and not some despotism of the sky, which is the source of our morality and our sense of decency.'
read on...
'dear fellow-unbelievers,
nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument i am currently having with the specter of death. nobody ever wins this argument, though there are some solid points to be made while the discussion goes on. i have found, as the enemy becomes more familiar, that all the special pleading for salvation, redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before. i hope to help defend and pass on the lessons of this for many years to come, but for now i have found my trust better placed in two things: the skill and principle of advanced medical science, and the comradeship of innumerable friends and family, all of them immune to the false consolations of religion. it is these forces among others which will speed the day when humanity emancipates itself from the mind-forged manacles of servility and superstitition. it is our innate solidarity, and not some despotism of the sky, which is the source of our morality and our sense of decency.'
read on...
hitch in confidence
christopher hitchens interviewed by laurie taylor, broadcast april 14, 2011, in 6 parts.
i'm embedding now, and will watch tonight.
via daily hitchens.
i'm embedding now, and will watch tonight.
via daily hitchens.
happy birthday, christopher hitchens.
photographed at home in washington, DC.
photograph: jamie james medina for the observer
να τα χιλιοστήσεις!
you bloody fools
on the telegraph, godless in tumourville:
snip
has he ever shared larkin’s yearning for faith?
'no,’ he says. 'there isn’t the evidence and i don’t see why anyone would want it to be true. a permanent, invigilated, regulated dictatorship which you are told is for your own good. i can’t think of anything worse.’
and does he share larkin’s fear of death?
he cannot pretend that he hasn’t been giving this some thought lately. but he approaches the matter elliptically. the philosopher david hume, he says, said you are not afraid of the time before you were born when there was nothingness, so why should you be any more concerned afterwards? 'lucretius put it more simply, saying you’re not going to know you’re dead so there’s nothing to be afraid of. what larkin was saying was, you bloody fools; that’s exactly what i’m afraid of – annihilation.’ he pauses. 'it is a disagreeable thought.’
/snip
hitchens expressed these thoughts in hitch 22, and they've been mine as well since i was a young girl. leave it to hitchens to find others' thoughts and bring them together so well. i find so few people who understand this.
do you?
when i was reading his memoir, i was moved to take this picture. i don't know why. i hadn't planned it out, but immediately, i saw it and knelt down to capture it. to me, it expressed my recession from life:
snip
has he ever shared larkin’s yearning for faith?
'no,’ he says. 'there isn’t the evidence and i don’t see why anyone would want it to be true. a permanent, invigilated, regulated dictatorship which you are told is for your own good. i can’t think of anything worse.’
and does he share larkin’s fear of death?
he cannot pretend that he hasn’t been giving this some thought lately. but he approaches the matter elliptically. the philosopher david hume, he says, said you are not afraid of the time before you were born when there was nothingness, so why should you be any more concerned afterwards? 'lucretius put it more simply, saying you’re not going to know you’re dead so there’s nothing to be afraid of. what larkin was saying was, you bloody fools; that’s exactly what i’m afraid of – annihilation.’ he pauses. 'it is a disagreeable thought.’
/snip
hitchens expressed these thoughts in hitch 22, and they've been mine as well since i was a young girl. leave it to hitchens to find others' thoughts and bring them together so well. i find so few people who understand this.
do you?
when i was reading his memoir, i was moved to take this picture. i don't know why. i hadn't planned it out, but immediately, i saw it and knelt down to capture it. to me, it expressed my recession from life:
christopher hitchens is unwell
at vanity fair: 'christopher hitchens is undergoing radiation treatment and wasn't able to write this week's column on his usual schedule. he hopes to file soon.'
so he will no longer be able to say that he never missed a deadline. just one week away, and he is missed.
i hope he feels better soon.
so he will no longer be able to say that he never missed a deadline. just one week away, and he is missed.
i hope he feels better soon.
is there an afterlife? a debate
at the jewish tv network:
click image to view debate at source
on the panel: sam harris, christopher hitchens, david wolpe and bradley artson.
i've just started listening to this and the first argument from the first speaker, david wolpe, has started with a dull thud.
to the question, if he expects to go to heaven, he argues that part of the problem of the idea of an afterlife is that we take it more literally than it needs to be and that makes it ridiculous. he says that before we entered this world, we could not have imagined mountains and tunafish and teeth and ideas -- of course not. it is unimaginable. but we expect to be able to imagine the other world, reducing it to nonsense.
except that i didn't exist before being born, therefore i don't remember trying to imagine any of it. if i existed, i have no recollection of it at all, and it has no discernible effect on my present life... so it's completely irrelevant. and why, if there's so much talk about an afterlife, is there no curiosity about a prelife? this is nonsense.
i sincerely hope i hear something interesting from the theists by the time this finishes.
EDIT: harris started of well. relaying his fear that this debate would bore the audience, he quoted his wife as saying, 'nothing hitchens does is ever boring'.
EDIT again: hitchens can quote literature and scripture too -- specifically, star wars.
EDIT yet again: very enjoyable... great points from all around.
click image to view debate at source
on the panel: sam harris, christopher hitchens, david wolpe and bradley artson.
i've just started listening to this and the first argument from the first speaker, david wolpe, has started with a dull thud.
to the question, if he expects to go to heaven, he argues that part of the problem of the idea of an afterlife is that we take it more literally than it needs to be and that makes it ridiculous. he says that before we entered this world, we could not have imagined mountains and tunafish and teeth and ideas -- of course not. it is unimaginable. but we expect to be able to imagine the other world, reducing it to nonsense.
except that i didn't exist before being born, therefore i don't remember trying to imagine any of it. if i existed, i have no recollection of it at all, and it has no discernible effect on my present life... so it's completely irrelevant. and why, if there's so much talk about an afterlife, is there no curiosity about a prelife? this is nonsense.
i sincerely hope i hear something interesting from the theists by the time this finishes.
EDIT: harris started of well. relaying his fear that this debate would bore the audience, he quoted his wife as saying, 'nothing hitchens does is ever boring'.
EDIT again: hitchens can quote literature and scripture too -- specifically, star wars.
EDIT yet again: very enjoyable... great points from all around.
hitch hitch hitch hitch
view in the dark
my books by christopher hitchens (although i tend to prefer audiobooks at this age).
friends have been telling me to try lightroom, so i did. i edited this RAW file exclusively in LR3.3: i changed white balance, added contrast, some sharpening, a subtle vignette and watermark... and used its publishing service to send it straight to flickr. pretty nifty.
pictured:
the portable atheist
letters to a young contrarian
god is not great
hitch 22
the world and the universe through the eyes of non-believers
what we believe
music and lyrics by colony 5 - future:
tragedies and suffering
i hear them scream
screaming for help
the prophets preach
the end of the world
only fools believe their words
we want to love
we want to breathe
we want to be
rebuild the world
with the knowledge
we retrieve
we want to feel
we want to live
we want to see
seek the wisdom
from the future
and believe
no truth without evidence
it's easy to lie
who can seek the answers
who can see through the sky
such a great temptation
who can carry such a quest
and gain that information
we don't need no god
we don't need no god no more
we don't need a tyrant
we want to love
we want to breathe
we want to be
rebuild the world
with the knowledge
we retrieve
we want to feel
we want to live
we want to see
seek the wisdom
from the future
and believe
music and lyrics by colony 5 - future:
tragedies and suffering
i hear them scream
screaming for help
the prophets preach
the end of the world
only fools believe their words
we want to love
we want to breathe
we want to be
rebuild the world
with the knowledge
we retrieve
we want to feel
we want to live
we want to see
seek the wisdom
from the future
and believe
no truth without evidence
it's easy to lie
who can seek the answers
who can see through the sky
such a great temptation
who can carry such a quest
and gain that information
we don't need no god
we don't need no god no more
we don't need a tyrant
we want to love
we want to breathe
we want to be
rebuild the world
with the knowledge
we retrieve
we want to feel
we want to live
we want to see
seek the wisdom
from the future
and believe
christopher hitchens vs shmuley boteach
is there an afterlife?
christopher hitchens debated rabbi shmuley at cooper union, new york on thursday, september 16, 2010.
christopher hitchens debated rabbi shmuley at cooper union, new york on thursday, september 16, 2010.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
