If you haven’t yet heard, Christopher Hitchens died at the young age of 62. He’s the guy who wrote God is Not Great and was a celebrated essayist railing against religion and for rationalism. He really knew how to piss people off and clearly thought outside the box, although his understanding of world religions was amazingly shallow and narrow. Nevertheless, he gained many followers.
As a brilliant writer, he cleverly argued against blind allegiance to any orthodoxy and ended up creating just another orthodoxy, or at least that’s how it seems to me. His followers became “Hitchenites” and touted “Hitchenism” to anyone who would listen. They claimed their superiority over those who had interest in realities greater than what the senses can detect. Rationalism and science received their blind allegiance (dare I say “worship?”). Many could not or would not acknowledge other frontiers of knowledge and referred to those who went beyond these “Gods” as “superstitious.”
I don’t think he would want to “rest in peace.” He deliberately didn’t live in peace. I would like to think that he would have evolved beyond the cognitive structures he so carefully built. After all, he was one who liked to rattle cages. I think it’s possible that, had he lived, he may have gotten tired of hearing his followers spout what became fairly predictable “Hitchenisms.” I’d like to think that he would have come up with some new way to amuse himself and sell his material – some new ways to rattle cages.
I don’t care about his belief or non-belief in “God” (whatever that meant to him). I admired his willingness to challenge the status quo. I would like to have seen what might have come from his challenging his own orthodoxy, and I think he would have done that eventually. I’m sorry he died. Rebellis interruptus…
nancyjfinleysd 