Hitchens has a great interview with Anderson Cooper, there is a clip at crooksandliars.com

Hitchens at his best. Also some information I did not know about Falwell's involvement in Israel, very, very interesting. He even is critical of Bush! wow.

Snitchens using the phrase "credulous idiot." Thick runs the irony . . .

I prophetize that Hitchen's skull will pop open and his brain will be raptured into the sky. Then once in the sky, it will lazily putter over the heartland and fertilize ordinary corn into hybrid "Smart & Sassy Corn". Yay!

I remember going to a service for a deceased fellow black belt from my studio and thinking to myself 'why I am I here?' I felt extremely awkward, not because I felt I didn’t belong in the church, but because the whole time the service revolved around religious mumbo-jumbo instead of reflecting on the person who just passed away. Out of all the masses the church has held, couldn't they have at least dedicated that one hour or two to that person? The whole time I just heard the reiteration of rosaries being chanted. "Hail Mary full of..." shit! There was also a point where I felt like slapping the lady standing near the pulpit! She just rambled on and on about how we all could die tomorrow and we wouldn’t even know what hit us so therefore it is important to be a strong believer just in case (sorry lady, I don’t gamble in Pascal’s casino thank you very much!). Oh and by the way, thanks for the cheering up you old bat!

She then continued to say that if we all chanted, "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph we love you. Save souls." three times that 1000 souls from purgatory (don't ask how she got the arithmetic down for this) will be sent up to heaven. In my mind I responded with, "and how many more souls could I save if I clapped my hands twice, jumped three times, spun around in a circle, and yelled Abracadabra?" If I come across as frustrated it is because I experienced the same thing with my grandfather's funeral. Only briefly did they mention his name followed by religious bullshit for the whole mass. I wholeheartedly agree with Dawkins that secular funerals can actually be more satisfying. At least they reminisce about the person and not dwell in metaphysical malarkey. In a funeral about a loved one the last thing I want to be thinking about it how many reindeer Santa has. I identify greatly with this story.

Just thought I'd share that.

Hitchens for president. One can only dream wistfully.

Oops, Iraq, I forgot to forget to forget to forget about..I forget...

Great interview -- and a fantastic article. Brilliant.

And Erick, I feel for you, man. That shit makes me sick.

This was hilarious. Anderson didn't seem too sure that Chris wasn't just 'putting him on'.

Driving around this morning I was disappointed that so many were still here despite the Falwell Rapture. Damnnit!

I went to Liberty University and all I got was this lousy tee shirt...

...and a job at the white house

You can't say for certain whether or not Chris was right about Jerry not being able to make it all the way through a long book, but that bit reminded me of all the r-tards I had to deal with growing up in various churches in the south. They read the beginning of the bible and said "yep, gawd created us leik his image and then made those womens who just had to eat apples" and then they skip to the back to see how it ends and proclaim, "yep, I know how it ends, we win, woohoo!"

simply remarkable.

Oh, goodness.

I was wandering around the internets and found this over at Pandagon.

It's just too delicious.

This via Phelps website....

Thomas Road Baptist Church 1 Mountain View Rd. This is for the funeral of the lying, false prophet Jerry Falwell. He was not a hero, nor was he honorable. He was nothing more than a wolf in sheep's clothing, and he has made those that follow in his folly to be twice as evil as he is.

More despicable people demonstrating against despicable people, all in the name of God.

Impressive debunking of the fraudulent phony Falwell. How could this fraud have commanded the airwaves like he did for so long. He is now thankfully wormfood. Thanks for posting this.

Burn!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLdnwH7s5qs&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ethebluestate%2Ecom%2F

That youtube clip was hilarious! Thanks!

I have to disagree with Hitchens' assessment of Falwell's sincerity. To say that he preached an ethics based upon the bible and religion that he never believed in but that he was rather a hypocrite who just wanted to fraud people out of money is intellectually misleading.

The problem with Falwell wasn't that he was insincere about his beliefs but in fact that we was sincere and attempted to be consistent in the teachings of religion. To damn Falwell as a fraud is to give religion a pass on on its record and its irrational nature. So in a sense Hitchens is being disingenuous with himself when he writes a book about how god is not great and then evades the fact that it is religion that creates the Falwells of the world.

"...it is religion that creates the Falwells of the world."

No, completely wrong -- the Falwells of this world creates religion.

As to Falwell's sincerity, I disagree with Hitchens' conjecture about him being gleeful about what he got away with. A human being's capacity for delusion is almost endless -- and there's no greater encouragement to be had, than hundreds of thousands of fellow delusional idiots backing you up.

Yes, he might actually have believed that he was doing something good, or that whatever part of his own actions he recognized to be bad -- he excused it for whatever reason. But that's no excuse. It isn't rational to consider what he did, as good. Any more than it is rational to consider the acts of a certifiably insane person good, just because he believes he will save the earth by killing someone he believes to be the anti-Christ (which incidentally happened not that long ago).

Evil is as evil does. And Falwell was without a doubt evil.

Sincerity is only as good as your actions. To my mind the man was too cynical, too pathologically devious to actually believe. It's like wondering if Peter Popoff, with his radio ear piece actually believes in the God, Christ, heaven and hell thing.

Dobson, with his blood diamonds and close partnerships with some of the vilest murderers in Africa, multiple indictments for using your sick aunt's pension money to leverage huge loans for his blood diamond business. What does he have faith in?

I don't believe these types believe anything except that religion always sells and a sucker is born every second, and that you will never go broke from underestimating the taste and intelligence of the American public. That's what they believe.

If you actually believe the magic sky god, knows everything about you, every thing you do, say, and think, and that judgement is inescapable, you don't live your entire life as a sleazy con man, thief, and professional liar.

I don't have alot to add, except a sincere and heartfelt thanks to Mr. Hitchens.

His reference to Elmer Gantry reminds us that religious hucksterism isn't new to our era. It just happens to be more dangerous now, and thus should be less tolerated.

Don't you all get it? God killed Falwell so that Hitchins could promote his book. Brilliant!

God: "Yay, I'm killing myself!"

Excellent points by hitchens though. /agree

Hitchens had a "debate" with a Baptist minister and professor just before this interview was recorded. We had 500 people in the local UU church and 200 more were turned away. It was a complete smackdown by Hitchens, even though you got a sense that he was trying to be fairly polite. What a great night, to hear that erudite man put into words what I've been thinking for years ... and to be surrounded by a cheering crowd that was about 80% in agreement with him. Go get "God is Not Great" ASAP and go see him while he's on tour if you can.

The local paper ran an article that got the quotes right but the score wrong. I wish Hitchens had had a stronger opponent so we could have seen him get out of 2nd gear.

People like Falwell are master manipulators. They use the Bible selectively to prove whatever it is they use to manipulate people. Or to take a social position.

Falwell used the Bible to justify racism, homophobia, keeping women in their place. In addition to making lots of money by telling people falsehoods straight out of a holy book. Send money to me, go to heaven.

This manipulation comes with a threat attached. So do they really believe? Or is it simply craving for the rewards from the spectacular results of this type of manipulation?

Linda

If the minister said this in the debate, he was on to something:

God is not an explanation for the universe, English said, but a representation of the mystery of life. The fact that there are so many kinds of religion, English said, proves "the universality of religious quest. Our souls are religious souls -- they long for something other than the ordinary, and they reach out for something transcendental."

hmm..

If you like this clip, check out the youtube clip of Hitchens talking about Fallwell on FOX News (I believe it was on Hannity and other guy). If you listen very carefully at the end of the bit while the conservative morons are trying to talk over him, hitchens says "if you gave Fallwell an enema you could bury him in a matchbox"...presumably because hes full of crap...priceless!

Folks--

Does anyone have an audio or video clip of the Hitchens debate in Raleigh NC? The one against Adam English, in the UU church?