Hey All…. I noticed that Redbubble is a great source for all your Hitch T shirt and hoddie needs. Happy shopping.
Hitchens on a tree stump. A miracle?
Click on above image for video
This is so spot on. Thanks Bill.
On Friday’s episode of Real Time, Maher discusses the tendency for opponents of atheism to label any belief system (or lack of a belief system) as a religion, clearly trying to create some equivalency between what they believe and what atheists don’t. To be clear, belief in climate change, for instance, is NOT a religion. Likewise, atheism is NOT a religion – but watch the clip because Maher explains it better than I can. By the way, the piece is worth it just for the graphic of Hitchens’ face on a tree stump. If I didn’t see it, I never wood have believed it (ok, admittedly a bad pun).
Sam Harris: Islam and the Future of Tolerance
Check out this Daily Beast article for some insight into the new book by Sam Harris and former extremist turned reformer Maajid Hawaz on extemism:
Daily Beast Article:
The book is available from Amazon:
David Corn on Hitchens’ habits (late night drinking followed by brilliant 1,500 word essays)
David Corn of Mother Jones, as a young journalist, shared an office with Hitch. He writes about it in this piece from Slate:
Hitch on Guns . Agree with him? I don’t
With the news of the most recent mass school shooting (if you missed it, don’t worry there will be another one soon) There have been many posts about Hitchens’ views on gun control. It seems he thought the gun control faction had it all wrong. Consider these points from a 1994 article for The Nation. 
What’s wrong with that? A lot Hitch. With so many gun deaths relative to other countries, the status quo is clearly not working.
What does everyone think?
A great perspective is offered by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker. Please read The Simple Truth About Gun Control.
Regressive Leftists
In this clip from Real Time with Bill Maher, Bill and Richard Dawkins discuss the disconcerting trend on the left toward what Sam Harris calls “regressive leftism”. It describes people, usually left leaning, that are afraid to defend ideas they usually support (like free speech) because they think they might be labeled as Islamophobes.
Mugshots. What do these people have in common?
Yes, they are all nice faces, but beyond that, they are all trustees of Project Reason, an organization dedicated to spreading science and secular values, founded by Sam and Annaka Harris. Christopher was a trustee.
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Project Reason is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. We seek to encourage critical thinking and wise public policy through a variety of interrelated projects. The foundation can convene conferences, produce films, sponsor scientific studies and opinion polls, hold contests, publish original research, award grants to other charitable organizations, and offer material support to religious dissidents and public intellectuals — all with the purpose of eroding the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world. While Project Reason is devoted to fostering critical thinking generally, we believe that religious ideas require a special focus. Both science and the arts are built upon cultures of vigorous self-criticism; religious discourse is not. As a result, religious dogmatism still reigns unchallenged in almost every society on earth—dividing humanity from itself, inflaming conflict, preventing wise public policy, and diverting scarce resources. One of the primary goals of Project Reason is to change this increasingly unhealthy status quo.
Please read more at http://www.project-reason.org/about/#sthash.h0wvHad9.dpuf
The site has trustee bios, but not much more. However, you can sign up to receive informational emails.
Ben Carson….. even whackier than initially thought
Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson is no stranger to nutty comments but this one from 2012 takes the cake. Dr. Carson believes that evolution was encouraged by none other than Satan (poor Satan, always getting the blame). He also said the big bang theory was part of “fairy tales” published by “high-faluting scientists”.
Thanks Dr. Carson, for clearing up some of the puzzles of evolution.
Read more in this article by Steven Benen on the Maddow Blog.
Progress of a kind. Record number would vote for an atheist
Progress of a kind, to use a Hitchens expression. While atheists are still the worse performing group in this Gallup poll of groups that are suitable to be elected President, 58% percent isn’t bad, and it is the best it’s been since the poll started in 1958. The trend line is encouraging, as are the demographics, which show younger people more willing to vote for an atheist.
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Source: CBS Article with more details
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A short clip of Hitch debating atheism and morality with Pastor Douglas Wilson onthe Joy Behar show:
What Makes Salman Rushdie Laugh?
Hitchens and Rushdie shared a sense of humor, as Rushdie explains in this NYT interview. In Hitch-22, Christopher told about a game they played, [Book] Titles That Don’t Quite Make It, which is how the Hitch-22 title originated. Rushdie explains in this 2012 piece for Vanity Fair:
Hitch-22 was a title born of the silly word games we played, one of which was Titles That Don’t Quite Make It, among which were A Farewell to Weapons, For Whom the Bell Rings, To Kill a Hummingbird, The Catcher in the Wheat, Mr. Zhivago, and Toby-Dick, a.k.a. Moby-Cock. And, as the not-quite version of Joseph Heller’s comic masterpiece, Hitch-22. Christopher rescued this last title from the slush pile of our catechism of failures and redeemed it by giving it to the text which now stands as his best memorial.
provokinghitchens.com 