Re: RIP Christopher Hitchens
Date: December 16, 2011 07:18PM
Hitchens in one of his funnier, insightful, passages.
On the subject of faith & religion:
"What we have here, and picked from no mean source, is a distillation of precisely what is twisted and immoral in the faith mentality.
Its essential fanaticism, its consideration of the human being as raw material. And its fantasy of purity.
Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes us objects, in a cruel experiment, whereby we are created sick, and commanded to be well. I'll repeat that. Created sick, and then ordered to be well.
And over us, to supervise this, is installed a celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea. Exigent, I would say, more than exigent greedy for, uncritical praise, from dawn until dusk. And swift to punish the original sins with which it so tenderly gifted us in the very first place.
An eternal, unalterable, judge jury and executioner, against whom there could be, no appeal. And who wasn't finished with you, even when you died.
However! Let no one say there's no cure, salvation is offered, redemption, indeed, is promised, at the low price, of the surrender of your critical faculties."
RIP