John Gray in the Guardian - The atheist delusion:
“Writing of the Trotskyite-Luxemburgist sect to which he once belonged, Hitchens confesses sadly: “There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb.” He need not worry. His record on Iraq shows he has not lost the will to believe. The effect of the American-led invasion has been to deliver most of the country outside the Kurdish zone into the hands of an Islamist elective theocracy, in which women, gays and religious minorities are more oppressed than at any time in Iraq’s history. The idea that Iraq could become a secular democracy – which Hitchens ardently promoted – was possible only as an act of faith.”
I am glad John Gray provides the connection between Rosa Luxemburg, Leo Trotsky and the secular neocons. It’s not a coincidence that before the Iraq invasion George Bush praised Natan Sharansky’s book on democracy. In fact Sharansky’s book has nothing to do with the liberal capitalism and everything to do with the idea of the “permanent revolution”. In other words from the original communist revolutionaries to the secular Jewish necons, it’s all about the moshiyach. It’s equally amusing that Christopher Hitchens who discovered he was Jewish long after his “Trotskyite-Luxemburgist days”, nevertheless carries the cursed mutation.
P.S. John Gray writes that religions are a human condition but revolutions and proselytizing of religions is the root of evil. Hence the aggressive atheism is a form of a proselytizing religion and have to be condemned. John Gray is actually articulating the vision of his teacher Isaiah Berlin and the central ideological confrontation of the 20th century. See my post - The Case for the Negative Freedom in Isaiah Berlin v. the Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre.
- For real! They dug up Bobby Fisher’s corpse in Iceland over a paternity claim in Philippines - Guardian.
- “Legions of individuals have been left with stale skills, and little prospect of finding meaningful work, and benefits that are being exhausted. By our math the crop of people who are unemployed but not receiving a check amounts to 9.2m” - Telegraph. The “D” word is out of the box.
- Prediction: Dow below 1,000 - NYT.
- David Horowitz on Christopher Hitchens – NRO.
- Christopher Hitchens (on McChrystal): One More Mission – Slate. I believe this is the first article after the Hitch’s announcement.
- Garima Gospels – the world’s oldest Christian book found in a remote monastery in Ethiopia - Daily Mail.
- מרת שאקאלאד – װעגן דער היץ
by Ben Atlas on 06.18.2010.8:31am · 1 comment
A nice riff from Ross Douthat in the NYT:
Hitchens is never more himself (for better or worse) than when he’s railing against the supposed cruelties of Benedict XVI, or comparing God to Kim Jong-Il. In this sense, he’s really less of an atheist than an anti-theist: Whereas Dawkins and co. are appalled by the belief in God, Hitchens is far more appalled by the idea that anyone would want to obey Him. Every true romantic needs a great foe, a worthy adversary, a villain to whose destruction he can consecrate himself. Never one for half measures, Hitchens just decided to go all the way to the top.”
Leon Wieseltier is trying to formulate and delineate his approach, this is great, but in the process he draws a caricature. There is the uninterrupted tradition that goes all the way to Spinoza, Marx, Nietzsche, not some small potatoes. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein certainly attempts to tackle the problem philosophically. But here is the rant. ►►►read more
On the subject of Hanukkah – the Fastest Spin in Jewish History, Hitchens picks up where I left off, or is it visa versa? Some choice quotes from his Slate article:
“…the Hasmonean regime that resulted from the Maccabean revolt soon became exorbitantly corrupt, vicious, and divided, and encouraged the Roman annexation of Judea. Had it not been for this no-less imperial event, we would never have had to hear of Jesus of Nazareth or his sect—which was a plagiarism from fundamentalist Judaism—and the Jewish people would never have been accused of being deicidal “Christ killers.” Thus, to celebrate Hanukkah is to celebrate not just the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness but also the accidental birth of Judaism’s bastard child in the shape of Christianity. You might think that masochism could do no more. Except that it always can. Without the precedents of Orthodox Judaism and Roman Christianity, on which it is based and from which it is borrowed, there would be no Islam, either. Every Jew who honors the Hanukkah holiday because it gives his child an excuse to mingle the dreidel with the Christmas tree and the sleigh (neither of these absurd symbols having the least thing to do with Palestine two millenniums past) is celebrating the making of a series of rods for his own back. And this is not just a disaster for the Jews. When the fanatics of Palestine won that victory, and when Judaism repudiated Athens for Jerusalem, the development of the whole of humanity was terribly retarded.”
Russ Roberts produces podcasts that are examples of what we all hope media should be. An hour long interviews with genuinely fascinating people. And Russ Roberts is enlightened enough to ask real questions. I have been listening to these podcasts and reading Russ Roberts posts on various blogs and they are simply superb. Here is the conversation between Russ Roberts and Christopher Hitchens about Orwell.
The Guardian does a nice job debunking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Jewish roots claim. Rumours that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s family converted to Islam from Judaism are false. In fact, they are proud Shias. About Ahmadinejad’s mother:
“Moreover, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s mother is a Seyyede. This is a title given to women whose family are believed to be direct bloodline descendants of Prophet Muhammad. Male members are given the title of Seyyed, and include prominent figures such as Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei. In Judaism, this is equivalent to the Cohens, who are direct descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses. One has to be born into a Seyyed family: the title is never given to Muslims by birth, let alone converts. This makes it impossible for Ahmadinejad’s mother to have been a Jew. In fact, she was so proud of her lineage that everyone in her native village of Aradan referred to her by her Islamic title, Seyyede.”
The analogy to the descendants of King David would have been more appropriate. This reminds me about Christopher Hitchens’ quote posted by Devin Coldewey:
“Nothing is more human and fallible than the dynastic or hereditary principle, and Islam has been racked from its birth by squabbles between princelings and pretenders, all claiming the relevant drop of original blood. If the total of those claiming descent from the founder was added up, it would probably exceed the number of holy nails and splinters that went to make up the thousand-foot cross on which, judging by the number of splinter-shaped relics, Jesus was evidently martyred.”
Christopher Hitchens speaking in University of Toronto in 2006, a classic video. ►►►read more
The problem with all peace movements is that they call for the “interfaith dialogue”. “Everyone” knows that all religions are “beautiful” and as long as people have the tolerance for the opinions of the other, all is hunky-dory. But anyone who ever experienced a religious indoctrination or attempted a dialog with a person who was abused by a religious indoctrination, knows too well that the organized religions are hierarchical and centralized mind and life control structures. The survivors of the mind abuse know that religious hierarchies produce fighting soldiers, obedient armies that can be unleashed on an enemy at a moments notice. In fact Michael Vick was merely reenacting with dogs what humans practiced for centuries, confined and chained to an ideology humans are made to fight each other, blow themselves up, burn and pillage for the glory of god and for the entertainment and survival of a queen bee, or a grand inquisitor. Certainly human fighting and conquest preceded religions but there is no doubt that religions are the power and cohesive forces behind most confrontations today. The interfaith dialog is a hoax because the grand inquisitors recognize that their ideology flies in the face of reason. The only hope for the survival of a mythology and the supporting elaborate casuistry is to designate a well defined enemy; removing an enemy from the religious equation would immediately lead to the collapse of the particular creed. So the only real pro-peace proposition is an anti-faith dialog. And here is how Christopher Hitchens puts it: ►►►read more
Christopher Hitchens is a great man! He is the voice of clarity. He writes in Slate – Don’t Call What Happened in Iran Last Week an Election. The quotes are timeless:
“Iran and its citizens are considered by the Shiite theocracy to be the private property of the anointed mullahs. This totalitarian idea was originally based on a piece of religious quackery promulgated by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and known as velayat-e faqui. Under the terms of this edict—which originally placed the clerics in charge of the lives and property of orphans, the indigent, and the insane—the entire population is now declared to be a childlike ward of the black-robed state. Thus any voting exercise is, by definition, over before it has begun, because the all-powerful Islamic Guardian Council determines well in advance who may or may not “run.” Any newspaper referring to the subsequent proceedings as an election, sometimes complete with rallies, polls, counts, and all the rest of it, is the cause of helpless laughter among the ayatollahs. (“They fell for it? But it’s too easy!”) Shame on all those media outlets that have been complicit in this dirty lie all last week. And shame also on our pathetic secretary of state, who said that she hoped that “the genuine will and desire” of the people of Iran would be reflected in the outcome. Surely she knows that any such contingency was deliberately forestalled to begin with.”
(the chart via Andrew Sullivan) Notice how every branch of the government, even mullahs got their own army. Christopher Hitchens concludes:
“Mention of the Lebanese elections impels me to pass on what I saw with my own eyes at a recent Hezbollah rally in south Beirut, Lebanon. In a large hall that featured the official attendance of a delegation from the Iranian Embassy, the most luridly displayed poster of the pro-Iranian party was a nuclear mushroom cloud! Underneath this telling symbol was a caption warning the “Zionists” of what lay in store. We sometimes forget that Iran still officially denies any intention of acquiring nuclear weapons. Yet Ahmadinejad recently hailed an Iranian missile launch as a counterpart to Iran’s success with nuclear centrifuges, and Hezbollah has certainly been allowed to form the idea that the Iranian reactors may have nonpeaceful applications. This means, among other things, that the vicious manipulation by which the mullahs control Iran can no longer be considered their “internal affair.” Fascism at home sooner or later means fascism abroad. Face it now or fight it later. Meanwhile, give it its right name.”
This is a comment on The End of Philosophy column by David Brooks. (I noticed that all the significant columns are written by David Brooks off schedule, i.e. filling in for a different NYT columnist. The last time Brooks wrote something that important, I started a blog about it [The Rank-Link Imbalance]). Brooks focuses on the emerging assumption that our emotions are in charge of our morality.
“In other words, reasoning comes later and is often guided by the emotions that preceded it. Or as Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia memorably wrote, “The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality, and … moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest.”
This in essence is a paraphrase of Christopher Hitchens who famously confronted Rabbi Boteach with “Religion borrows its morality from us, not us from religion.” So why do we care? The prevailing Darwinian view proclaimed survival of the fittest, the annihilation of competition as a fundamental evolutionary instinct. But it turns out that our survival is also about cooperation, about tribal caring. Is the Darwinian individualism just a caricature? Brooks writes:
“…in recent years there’s an increasing appreciation that evolution isn’t just about competition. It’s also about cooperation within groups. Like bees, humans have long lived or died based on their ability to divide labor, help each other and stand together in the face of common threats. Many of our moral emotions and intuitions reflect that history. We don’t just care about our individual rights, or even the rights of other individuals. We also care about loyalty, respect, traditions, religions. We are all the descendents of successful cooperators.”
This worth repeating. Morality is not the inheritance of law or reason. It is our adaptive mode of survival that teaches us that cooperation, doing good to others is in our own interest. Conversely people who are confusing cause and effect and claim that morality is the result of a law, they sabotage or natural inclination to kindness and goodness. This has been anecdotally observed by me in Russia. Second and third generation outside of religion exhibited a moral judgment far greater than anything I ever observed within a religious culture. Brooks continues:
“The rise and now dominance of this emotional approach to morality is an epochal change. It challenges all sorts of traditions. It challenges the bookish way philosophy is conceived by most people. It challenges the Talmudic tradition, with its hyper-rational scrutiny of texts. It challenges the new atheists, who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning.”
