Nixon and the Jews

What is with the love affair with Christopher Hitchins? We have great people like James Randi and Richard Dawkins on our side, why the heck do we need to worship the "Phil Donahue of critical thinkers"?

Hitchens's brand of atheism is one that gives your worldview a bad name.

Good luck peddling him.

He's intellectually polemical to the point of total retardation.

So what didn't you agree with there? He's calling a spade a spade which is just about as much as you can hope in the media these days.

I mostly like Hitchens, as I mostly like Dawkins. I'm not ready to name either as my secular prophet, but both make good points and make them articulately. So what if sometimes they get a little full of themselves and supercilious? Just means they're letting us know that they ain't perfect, either, and shouldn't be treated as oracles. "Oh, it's Hitchens/Dawkins: I can turn off my filter now and just uncritically accept whatever he's saying."

Anyone hear of the late Alan Watts?

Watts was gifted in articulating principles of spiritual value with absolutely nothing lacking on the intellectual side. It's true, he wasn't peddling belief in God, per se. However, he wasn't marshaling his intellectual gifts in sheer opposition to notions of God or the spiritual realm either. I think that points to the error of these debates, i.e.: tacit reinforcement of water-tight incompatibility between the intellect and intuitive contemplation of a religious nature. The latter must therefore be vanquished like a vestigial fang. This premise, in itself, strikes me as rather unenlightened and bellicose. It does yank chains and sell books, speaking of rackets.

N.B. Hitchens refers to Canadian evangelist James Templeton. His name was actually Charles Templeton.

Charles Templeton is an amazing character, and father to comics artist Ty Templeton, to boot.

Alan Watts: I spent many a Sunday AM listening to his lectures on KPFK Los Angles. A silver tongue, a playful mind.

Hitch is nuts over the jihadists (and especially Iraq), but he's always compelling and fearlessly offensive.

Check out some animations to Alan Watts philosophical musings here:

http://penguin-feather.blogspot.com/

I do agree with much of what Hitchens says but I have to say that I really dislike the man - he seems like a very bitter person inside.

Regarding global warming - his argument really infuriates me.

If global warming is caused by man-made CO2 emissions, and if by taking drastic steps to reduce those emissions we can mitigate those effects, then great.

However, if we are wrong, then taking those steps does not mean that we can then say, "at least we played it safe".

I'm afraid there is still a great price to pay.

Just one part of this human cost is that we will force developing nations to remain non-industrialised, their economies under-developed, and their many millions of people to remain in abject poverty.

Regarding what religious leaders really believe:

"I get mail all the time from religious leaders who admit to me in private that they do not believe in God but think that the best way to continue their lives is to swallow hard and get on with their ministries, concentrating on bringing more good than evil into the lives of their parishioners and those for whom their churches provide care."

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/danielcdennett/2007/08/theagonyofmisplacedecstasy.html

Direct link to Alan Watts animations:

http://penguin-feather.blogspot.com/2007/08/animated-philosophy-of-alan-watts.html and http://penguin-feather.blogspot.com/2007/08/more-animated-alan-watts-philosophy.html

Truth, straight-up, no chaser.

Hartman, once again you fail to make your point honestly. Just because a guy is an arrogant bastard, or is "rude" to your dear beliefs to the point of being intolerable, doesn't mean he's stupid. Arrogant and rude for Hitchens is debatable, his ideas too and I happen to agree to a large extent on his stance on religion, but one thing he is not is stupid.

Just one part of this human cost is that we will force developing nations to remain non-industrialised, their economies under-developed, and their many millions of people to remain in abject poverty.

Honestly? Now it's environmentalists that are keeping third world countries in 'abject poverty'? So, if we let these third world countries pollute the hell out of the world, they'd be completely industrialized and comfortably middle class? I understand your reasoning, it did take a lot of polluting and burning of fossil fuels to get america and britian to the industrialized state that they are in now, but that doesn't mean that every third world country has to burn coal to become industrialized. It's like arguing that because we used abestos and lead paint in the 50's (which was arguably the fastest growth of the suburbs and middle class in US history) that we need to let third world countries use asbestos and lead paint to become an industrialized nation.

This is just my view of why this arguement sounds like a false correlation, but I could be wrong, i'd just like to see some sort of, ya know, proof. Energy is energy. Just because coal is the "cheapest" (in the dollars sense), doesn't mean that it always has to be, or that it always will be.

The fact that corporations make these third world countries pay for WATER THEY GATHER OFF OF THEIR OWN ROOFS seems like a bit more of a hinderance to their industrial development to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheCorporation#ExpansionPlan

(Link goes to talk about how Bechtel Corporation made it illegal to collect rainwater, even though up to 1/4 of their yearly income was going to pay for water from Bechtel.)

i had no idea what this man is saying