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Hazleton on Hitchens

Posted February 3rd, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

Last month, Town Hall Seattle ran a program called ‘Three Lives,’  originally touted as eulogies of three public figures — Christopher Hitchens, Kim Jong-Il, and Vaclav Havel — linked by the sole fact that they’d happened to die within four days of each other in December.  I was asked to speak about Hitchens.  “No way,” I said.  “Not unless you’re ready for an anti-eulogy.”

They were.

Here’s the video, in which I start at about the 4.45 time mark, running to 23.10.

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But if you want to see a really great presentation, go back to the video and start at the 57.35 mark, where ACT Theatre artistic director Kurt Beattie and actors Bob Wright and Tom Carrato deliver a stunning tribute to Vaclav Havel, inspiring me to go out and buy a copy of ‘Disturbing the Peace’ the next day, when I also read this moving assessment by his long-time translator, Paul Wilson.  I’m only sorry Havel had to die for me to pay closer attention.  But then that’s kind of Wilson’s point.

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File under: agnosticism, atheism, feminism, fundamentalism, Islam, Judaism | Tagged: Tags: ACT Theatre, antisemitism, Christopher Hitchens, Iraq war, Islamophobia, journalism, Kim Jong-Il, Kurt Beattie, Margaret Thatcher, torture, Town Hall Seattle, Vaclav Havel | 5 Comments
  1. homophilosophicus says:
    February 3, 2012 at 7:56 pm

    Dear Leslie, sycophancy isn’t really what I do best, so I shall keep this brief. Your blog is marvellous. See, that was brief. I have been surfing for this brand of intelligent read for a while, and the reason for this is that I am stuck. Recently ‘homophilosophicus’ (an Irish theology blog) has begun an interfaith project at which I would dearly like you to take a peek. At present we are short on a Jewish voice, female voices in general and a Feminist opinion. You may not have the time, you may not even be interested, but please take a look:
    http://homophilosophicus.wordpress.com/introduction/
    and the contributors so far:
    http://homophilosophicus.wordpress.com/contributors/
    Yes, we run the risk of looking rather pale in your light (there’s that sycophant again!), but this is something we are willing to risk.

    The pay scale is rubbish (non-existent in fact), but if we could entice you in anyway whatsoever please mail me on:
    homophilosophicus.wordpress@gmail.com

    Jason Michael

  2. snow black says:
    February 13, 2012 at 10:12 am

    Bravo, and thanks for reading Hitchens so I don’t have to, as they say. I’ve always prided myself on having grown out of my taste for his brand of bullshit well before the Iraq war made plain his true nature.

  3. Imraan says:
    May 23, 2012 at 10:08 am

    Reblogged this on Heightened Senses and commented:
    Though I have not read her works (yet, and yes, it is on my to read list; I can’t wait for her biography of the Prophet to be published), Ms Hazelton is one of the most articulate (and astute at that) speakers I have heard, and if that is anything to go by, I cannot wait to get started on her books; this might sound sycophantic but I really love the way her mind seems to work, and how she appropriates words in a nuanced and colourful way, without ever distorting her topic.

    Do watch this eulogy

  4. Imraan says:
    May 23, 2012 at 2:27 pm

    What an excellent presentation; your case was cogent, and very sharply articulated! I’m glad that there are those ‘out there’ in the world who don’t drool over him or his work, or can’t help but fawn because of his ability to produce quotes; I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him whilst listening to him- his life appears to have been wasted, and I pray mine does not go the way of his. As George Galloway wrote, “He wrote like an angel but placed himself in the service of the devils.”

    I hope you don’t mind but I have reblogged this.

    Regards,

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 2, 2012 at 9:42 am

      I can just imagine him wincing at that Galloway quote!

That Old-Time Atheist Religion

Posted July 18th, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

I think of them as H2D2 — not the name of a techno-punk band, but the two H’s and two D’s of the ‘new atheism’ quadrumvirate (that’s a triumvirate plus one, or at least it is now) consisting of Hitchens and Harris, Dawkins and Dennett.  One of my first posts here on The AT was Is Christopher Hitchens Running for Pope? and I’m far from the only one to suspect his evangelical fervor.

Now Reza Aslan, author of Beyond Fundamentalism and No God But God, by far the best general introduction out there to the history of Islam, is tackling both the fervor and the astounding simplicities of H2D2 thinking.  In a post over at the Washington Post’s ‘On Faith,’ he starts by talking about an atheist ad on the side of a London bus (what is this thing with buses and religion?), but quickly gets to the point.  The H2D2 movement, he says, is:

… a new and particularly zealous form of fundamentalism–an atheist fundamentalism.  The parallels with religious fundamentalism are obvious and startling:  The conviction that they are in sole possession of truth (scientific or otherwise), the troubling lack of tolerance for the views of their critics (Dawkins has compared creationists to Holocaust deniers), the insistence on a literalist reading of scripture (more literalist, in fact, than one finds among most religious fundamentalists), the simplistic reductionism of the religious phenomenon, and, perhaps most bizarrely, their overwhelming sense of siege —  the belief that they have been oppressed and marginalized by Western societies and are just not going to take it anymore.  This is not the philosophical atheism of Feuerbach or Marx, Schopenhauer or Nietzsche (I am not the first to think that the new atheists give atheism a bad name).  Neither is it the scientific agnosticism of Thomas Huxley or Herbert Spencer.  This is, rather, a caricature of atheism: shallow scholarship mixed with evangelical fervor.

Read Aslan’s full piece, posted on the Washington Post’s ‘On Faith’ blog, here.

Meanwhile Hitchens’ new book Hitch-22 is, to quote the Hitch himself, Not Great.  I opened it expecting an extended fireworks display of wit, and instead found a self-conscious memoir written in the pompous style of a member of some musty gentleman’s club in St James’ Square, musing aloud while nursing a glass of port and a gouty foot.   All the “good bits” had already been quoted in the reviews (yes, all of them — that’s how many there are), which obligingly glossed over the far more extended sophomoric sections.  But he did finally get me to laugh out loud when he makes the belated discovery that one of his grandmothers was half-Jewish (the shock!  the awe!), impelling the great atheist to go haring off to eastern Europe in sentimental search of his Jewish roots.  Oy vay.

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File under: agnosticism, atheism, fundamentalism | Tagged: Tags: Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, On Faith, Reza Aslan, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris | 6 Comments
  1. Pietra says:
    July 18, 2010 at 7:59 pm

    Okay, I’ll work harder to read some of these people; maybe if I sit up I won’t fall asleep so quickly.

  2. Lynn Rosen says:
    July 19, 2010 at 9:24 am

    Medear, your post and your take on Hitchens’ “shock&awe” discovery caused an orgasm of delight in this corner. Don’t never quit your spot-on good bits.

  3. Charlotte Gerlings says:
    July 22, 2010 at 5:59 am

    Hi Lesley, the pedant in me feels bound to point out that the atheist proclamation on London buses was not actually Dawkins’s idea, although he usefully offered to match the money raised to fund it in other UK cities too. It was in fact the creation of the prominent secularist Ariane Sherine, a witty young writer and journalist, London-born of Iranian and American parents and incidentally, raised as a Christian.
    A couple of years ago, offended by a particular Christian tagline, she wrote in the Guardian newspaper: ‘Now, if I wanted to run a bus ad saying “The ‘bits’ in orange juice aren’t orange but plastic – don’t drink them or you’ll die!” I think I might be asked to back up my claims. But apparently you don’t need evidence to run an ad suggesting we’ll all face the ire of the son of man when he comes, then link to a website advocating endless pain for atheists.
    ‘When I called the Advertising Standards Authority, the nice lady said they’d only received two complaints about the bus ads, neither of which had been investigated, because the quotations used are clearly from the Bible and there’s nothing in the code to prohibit advertising a religious message.’
    Two years on from the bus campaign, Sherine remains a staunch member of the British Humanist Association but she has resumed comedy writing, saying she’s no longer ‘involved in any atheist stuff’. And who can blame her when atheism is regularly misrepresented and conflated with fundamentalism in such articles as Aslan’s ‘On Faith’? As an atheist for over forty years, I’m truly tired of hearing what religionists have to say about non-believers – and so-called New Atheism doesn’t mean our critics’ counter arguments are either new or better reasoned.
    Mainland Britain has become a secularised society (the established Church of England loses credibility at every turn) nor is there discrimination against anyone wishing to run for local council office or parliament; their religious affiliations or otherwise are not considered relevant. Any disparagement directed at atheists comes from those who profess an all-powerful God of infinite love and understanding – how weird is that?
    Dawkins and company are currently high-profile thanks to modern media coverage. As a ‘private’ atheist who doesn’t engage in polemics ( full-on RC education did for me as far as any kind of apologetics is concerned) I’m not always happy with this but if that’s what it takes to offer an alternative to the virulence of God’s children – chosen, born-again, self-mortifying, whatever – then better stand by for more of the same!

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      July 23, 2010 at 10:07 am

      Not pedantic at all — full of good information. I like your terminology too: secularist/religionist instead of believer/nonbeliever, as in fiction/nonfiction, the latter being entirely determined as the absence of the former. Might post exactly this. Thanks.

      • charlotte gerlings says:
        July 24, 2010 at 2:47 am

        Off on a tangent:
        ‘Fiction/nonfiction, the latter being entirely determined as the absence of the former’ – an intriguing semantic point. What might we use as alternative pairings?
        creative / factual
        conceptual / representational
        fabrication / actuality
        inventive / derivative
        Whatever you do, don’t go near TRUTH (hornet’s nest, ton of bricks etc)

        • Lesley Hazleton says:
          July 24, 2010 at 10:40 am

          Challenge accepted! Stay tuned…

Is Christopher Hitchens Running for Pope?

Posted April 18th, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

“New atheists” Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are having a ball with the pedophile priest scandal — it seems to prove everything they’ve ever said about the evils of religion.

It’s disturbing enough that anyone at all is having a ball with this ghastly issue, though maybe that’s inevitable when the Hitchens-Dawkins style of atheism has all the hallmarks of being a religion of its own.  But worse is that their call for the Pope to resign smacks more than a little of… well, to be kind, disingenuousness.  To be less kind, hypocrisy.

If you don’t believe in medicine, you’re hardly going to call for a better doctor.  If H and D really believe all they say about the evils of religion, then there’s no way they could imagine that a change of Pope could make any difference, especially when nobody in the upper reaches of Churchly hierarchy seems capable of plain human feeling — capable, that is, of expressing pure unadulterated outrage that such things have been done under the guise (literally) of priestly robes.

I don’t question H and D’s outrage,  but while most of us are watching this unfold with horror, they can barely contain their glee.

I wish I could feel that glee, but I’m with Nick Kristof on the Op-Ed page of today’s New York Times, talking about “the other Catholic church.”  This is the “grass-roots church” of nuns and priests working with the poor, the sick, and the needy both in the States and worldwide.  “Their magnificence,” writes Kristof, “lies not in their vestments, but in their selflessness.”

Maybe H and D could learn just a bit from that selflessness.   They’ve leapt on the bandwagon of scandal with no apparent purpose other than self-promotion.

Or maybe Hitchens is running for Pope?

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File under: agnosticism, atheism, Christianity | Tagged: Tags: atheism, Catholic Church, Christopher Hitchens, Nick Kristof, pedophilia, Pope, Richard Dawkins | 1 Comment
  1. lavrans says:
    April 27, 2010 at 10:19 pm

    Makes me think about the Catholic priests who used to come in and help us at Chicken Soup Brigade. CSB, as an AIDS charity, was filled with a lot of the alternative community. Yet Catholic Community Services used the same space for their meals on wheels, and there was a lot of crossover of help. We would regularly get Catholic groups- from adults to teenagers to nuns-in-training.

    One of my most amusing memories was Valentines day, when someone hired “Leather Santa” to come and people got their pictures taken sitting on his lap. Leather Santa was a very fit young man in leather boots, leather G-string with a whip and a Santa cap. Meanwhile a group of travelling nuns show up to help in the warehouse just as one of the priests was getting his picture taken. There was a certain amount of blushing, but also a lot of laughing.

    I can sympathize with the skepticism of religion, but not the heart of it. It’s too easy to mistake the bureaucracy of religion as its foundation.

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