In this 2009 video Hitchens highlights the rising danger of radical Islam, and explains that objecting to the ideas of extremists that embrace and promote violence, is not Islamophobia. I wish he were around to day to articulate this distinction, which so many seem to misunderstand.
I’m sure Hitchens would have had something to say about the events of this past week, regarding free speech. In Spain, police arrested street puppeteers for performances thought to be threatening. Also arrested were a poet and a rapper. These events are part of what some are calling an overreaction throughout Europe to terrorism fears, as explained in this New York Times article.
In the same week, the good leaders of Iran (through the state run media) upped the bounty behind the death fatwa on author Salman Rushdie, placed on Rushdie in 1989 for his terrible offense of writing a novel. As many of you know, Rushdie was a good friend to Hitchens, and Hitch went out on a limb at the time (when others did not) to defend his friend. Hitchens accepted the invitation to read passages from Satanic Versus shortly after the fatwa was declared (an narrowly escaped a pipe bomb at the event). Hitchens discusses the topic in this 2010 interview:
In case you haven’t heard, Richard Dawkins had a stroke last week. It appears that he is recovering. As many of you know, he was a great friend to Christopher, and is a strident spokesman for science and reason. Humorously, his doctor told him that in the future he should stay away from controversy. Good luck having that order followed, doctor.
Here is a personal audio. message from Richard Dawkins, which he recorded for his fans:
Personal audio message from Richard Dawkins
Richard was one of the The Four Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse, the informal discussion of the so called new-athiests
Dawkins and Hitch
In Thursday night’s Democratic Presidential Debate, Hilary boasted that she had the respect of Henry Kissinger. Bernie Sanders replied “I’m proud to say Henry Kissinger is not my friend”.
In The Trial of Henry Kissinger Hitchens accused Kissinger of war crimes and related atrocities. Here he is in 2001 making his case.
This is a great interview with Hitch on The Steve Kane radio show, after one of his debates with William Lane Craig. It’s a civil exchange between Hitch and a pastor who found God, and who suggests that his conversion is proof of God’s existence. It’s a great example of Hitchens’ skills of debate.
Ok, I suppose this headline is intentionally provocative (this is, after all, Provoking Hitchens). Now that we’ve established that, hear Hitchens describe the incident for Australian TV journalist Jennifer Byrne. They were discussing his just then released memoir, Hitch 22.
I’m an Anglophile. Let me start with that. I love the U.K, but members of the Parliament should not be debating banning someone from entering the country because they disagree with his speech. How dare they? I don’t at all like the way Donald Trump talks about Muslims and I think a ban is a horrible idea, and not American, but a free society should not ban someone because they don’t like what he says.
Why not ban Anjem Choudary?, who lives in the U.K. His speech doesn’t bother the members? Here’s an article talking about his support for ISIS, and it’s well know that he would like to see Sharia law implemented in the UK, and that he praised the 911 attackers. Hitchens wrote about this man in an essay for Vanity Fair: Londistan Calling.
Hitchens has gone out of his way to protect unpopular speech. I have to believe he would be against banning any speech, including that of Donald Trump.
“Allons Travailler!” was Christopher’s response to the “what is your motto?” part of the Proust Questionnaire, a survey the editors of Vanity Fair, gave to various personalities each month. Here are Christopher’s responses.
Reprinted from Hitch 22
I realize this is a bit off topic, but since David Bowie died this week, I thought readers of this blog might appreciate his answers to the same questionnaire.You can view them here.
As for how Bowie might be connected to Hitchens, the media published a list of Bowie’s top 100 books. Included in the list is Hitchens’ “The Trial of Henry Kissinger“.
Hitch fans toast the man with glasses of Johnny Walker Black Label. It is well known that he had a large capacity to drink, and to still write brilliantly. Graydon Carter, the publisher of Vanity Fair, wrote in a tribute to Hitch, “I can recall a lunch in 1991, when I was editing The New York Observer, and he and Aimée Bell, his longtime editor, and I got together for a quick bite at a restaurant on Madison, no longer there. Christopher’s copy was due early that afternoon. Pre-lunch canisters of scotch were followed by a couple of glasses of wine during the meal and a similar quantity of post-meal cognac. That was just his intake. After stumbling back to the office, we set him up at a rickety table and with an old Olivetti, and in a symphony of clacking he produced a 1,000-word column of near perfection in under half an hour.”
If you want to read Hitchens’ own words about the consumption of alcohol, see these passages from Hitch 22:
This is timely as just yesterday I posted about astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss, who was a friend to Hitchens, and whose work Hitch admired (particularly the arguments that eventually became his book “A Universe From Nothing“.
On Christmas Day, the Wall Street Journal published an article from Eric Metaxas suggesting that the likelihood of the universe being intelligently designed has increased. It is a chapter from his book “Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life” (Dutton Adult, 2014)
Before any intelligent design fans get too excited, they should read Krauss’ response, which he wrote to the editors of the WSJ. Here are both pieces.
ERIC METAXAS PIECE (reprinted from WSJ)
Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God
By ERIC METAXAS
Dec. 25, 2014 4:56 p.m. ET
In 1966 Time magazine ran a cover story asking: Is God Dead? Many have accepted the cultural narrative that he’s obsolete—that as science progresses, there is less need for a “God” to explain the universe. Yet it turns out that the rumors of God’s death were premature. More amazing is that the relatively recent case for his existence comes from a surprising place—science itself.
Here’s the story: The same year Time featured the now-famous headline, the astronomer Carl Sagan announced that there were two important criteria for a planet to support life: The right kind of star, and a planet the right distance from that star. Given the roughly octillion—1 followed by 27 zeros—planets in the universe, there should have been about septillion—1 followed by 24 zeros—planets capable of supporting life.
With such spectacular odds, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a large, expensive collection of private and publicly funded projects launched in the 1960s, was sure to turn up something soon. Scientists listened with a vast radio telescopic network for signals that resembled coded intelligence and were not merely random. But as years passed, the silence from the rest of the universe was deafening. Congress defunded SETI in 1993, but the search continues with private funds. As of 2014, researchers have discovered precisely bubkis—0 followed by nothing.
What happened? As our knowledge of the universe increased, it became clear that there were far more factors necessary for life than Sagan supposed. His two parameters grew to 10 and then 20 and then 50, and so the number of potentially life-supporting planets decreased accordingly. The number dropped to a few thousand planets and kept on plummeting.
Even SETI proponents acknowledged the problem. Peter Schenkel wrote in a 2006 piece for Skeptical Inquirer magazine: “In light of new findings and insights, it seems appropriate to put excessive euphoria to rest . . . . We should quietly admit that the early estimates . . . may no longer be tenable.”
As factors continued to be discovered, the number of possible planets hit zero, and kept going. In other words, the odds turned against any planet in the universe supporting life, including this one. Probability said that even we shouldn’t be here.
Today there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to support life—every single one of which must be perfectly met, or the whole thing falls apart. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby, whose gravity will draw away asteroids, a thousand times as many would hit Earth’s surface. The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing.
Yet here we are, not only existing, but talking about existing. What can account for it? Can every one of those many parameters have been perfect by accident? At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we cannot be the result of random forces? Doesn’t assuming that an intelligence created these perfect conditions require far less faith than believing that a life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the inconceivable odds to come into being?
There’s more. The fine-tuning necessary for life to exist on a planet is nothing compared with the fine-tuning required for the universe to exist at all. For example, astrophysicists now know that the values of the four fundamental forces—gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the “strong” and “weak” nuclear forces—were determined less than one millionth of a second after the big bang. Alter any one value and the universe could not exist. For instance, if the ratio between the nuclear strong force and the electromagnetic force had been off by the tiniest fraction of the tiniest fraction—by even one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000—then no stars could have ever formed at all. Feel free to gulp.
Multiply that single parameter by all the other necessary conditions, and the odds against the universe existing are so heart-stoppingly astronomical that the notion that it all “just happened” defies common sense. It would be like tossing a coin and having it come up heads 10 quintillion times in a row. Really?
Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who coined the term “big bang,” said that his atheism was “greatly shaken” at these developments. He later wrote that “a common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology . . . . The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”
Theoretical physicist Paul Davies has said that “the appearance of design is overwhelming” and Oxford professor Dr. John Lennox has said “the more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator . . . gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”
The greatest miracle of all time, without any close seconds, is the universe. It is the miracle of all miracles, one that ineluctably points with the combined brightness of every star to something—or Someone—beyond itself.
Mr. Metaxas is the author, most recently, of “Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life” ( Dutton Adult, 2014).
LAWRENCE KRAUSS RESPONSE to the WSJ
To the editor:
I was rather surprised to read the unfortunate oped piece “Science Increasingly makes the case for God”, written not by a scientist but a religious writer with an agenda. The piece was rife with inappropriate scientific misrepresentations. For example:
We currently DO NOT know the factors that allow the evolution of life in the Universe. We know the many factors that were important here on Earth, but we do not know what set of other factors might allow a different evolutionary history elsewhere. The mistake made by the author is akin to saying that if one looks at all the factors in my life that led directly to my sitting at my computer to write this, one would obtain a probability so small as to conclude that it is impossible that anyone else could ever sit down to compose a letter to the WSJ.
We have discovered many more planets around stars in our galaxy than we previously imagined, and many more forms of life existing in extreme environments in our planet than were known when early estimates of the frequency of life in the universe were first made. If anything, the odds have increased, not decreased.
The Universe would certainly continue to exist even if the strength of the four known forces was different. It is true that if the forces had vastly different strengths (nowhere near as tiny as the fine-scale variation asserted by the writer) then life as we know it would probably not evolved. This is more likely an example of life being fine-tuned for the universe in which it evolved, rather than the other way around.
My ASU colleague Paul Davies may have said that “the appearance of design is overwhelming”, but his statement should not be misinterpreted. The appearance of design of life on Earth is also overwhelming, but we now understand, thanks to Charles Darwin that the appearance of design is not the same as design, it is in fact a remnant of the remarkable efficiency of natural selection.
Religious arguments for the existence of God thinly veiled as scientific arguments do a disservice to both science and religion, and by allowing a Christian apologist to masquerade as a scientist WSJ did a disservice to its readers.
provokinghitchens.com 