Oh please, either sober up or stop talking.
Christopher Hitchens is all over the place with his book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. And when I first heard of it I anticipated throwing it on my list of books you just, wow, got to read.
Then I saw Christopher Hitchens on the Daily Show. And other things since. I gotta say, he’s not helping the cause.
One of the reasons why I’m such a Richard Dawkins fangirl is everytime I hear him talk he comes across, to me anyway, so calm and reasonable. I don’t know how he got pegged as a Militant Atheist, which may be semantically accurate, but seems to have connotations of aggressiveness and pig-headed bullying. Dawkins will very patiently explain his thoughts and why he thinks it without resorting to personal attacks.
Christopher Hitchens, however IS an angry, aggressive, name-calling bully. And yes, when he speaks, there’s a part of me sitting ringside thinking, “Yeah, punch ‘im in the kidneys! You got ‘im on the ropes.” The more reasonable part of me though is rather embarrassed to have him in our “neo-Atheist” camp. It’s like having Picasso at your party, yes he might be a great artist, but he’s also a mean drunk.
I think he also makes me uncomfortable because while I may admire Dawkins and aspire to act like him, I’m probably much more likely to act like Hitchens.
