Hitchens can be brutal - cougarguard.com — unofficial BYU Cougars / LDS sports, football, basketball forum and message board

YOhio · 04-25-2007, 08:55 PM

But he makes some good points in this article that castigates the outpouring of false sentiment after the Virginia Tech shootings.

http://www.slate.com/id/2164914/nav/tap1/

This section stuck out:

For an academic president to have equated 32 of his fellow humans with their murderer in an orgy of "one-ness" was probably the stupidest thing that happened last week, but not by a very wide margin. Almost everybody in the country seems to have taken this non-event as permission to talk the starkest nonsense. And why not? Since the slaughter raised no real issues, it was a blank slate on which anyone could doodle. Try this, from the eighth straight day of breathless coverage in the New York Times. The person being quoted is the Rev. Susan Verbrugge of Blacksburg Presbyterian Church, addressing her congregation in an attempt, in the silly argotof the day, "to make sense of the senseless":

Ms. Verbrugge recounted breaking through the previous week's numbness as she stopped on a morning walk and found herself yelling at the mountains and at God. Though her shouts were initially met with silence, she said, she soon was reassured by the simplest of things, the chirping of birds.

"God was doing something about the world," she said. "Starting with my own heart, I could see good."

Yes, it's always about you, isn't it? (By the way, I'd watch that habit of yelling at mountains and God in the greater Blacksburg area if I were you. Some idiot might take it for a "warning sign.") When piffle like this gets respectful treatment from the media, we can guess that it's not because of the profundity of the emotion but rather because of its extreme shallowness. Those birds were singing just as loudly and just as sweetly when the bullets were finding their targets.

MikeWaters · 04-25-2007, 08:59 PM

I like how Hitchens managed to criticize organized religion.

Everyone has their own "piffle". This article is *his* piffle.

Detroitdad · 04-25-2007, 09:04 PM

Hitchens is an ass. I can rarely understand what he writes because he fills it with all sorts of allusions and antecdotes with which I am not familiar. He is a completely incomprehensible, unlikable curmudgeon without redeming qualities.

YOhio · 04-25-2007, 09:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Detroitdad

Hitchens is an ass. I can rarely understand what he writes because he fills it with all sorts of allusions and antecdotes with which I am not familiar. He is a completely incomprehensible, unlikable curmudgeon without redeming qualities.

That's why I like him. Curmudgeon's crack me up.

SeattleUte · 04-25-2007, 09:50 PM

He's a hard core atheist. Hates religion. And he's gone slightly nutty since he apostatized from The Nation supporting a war he now realizes was a huge mistake for all of us.

Tex · 04-25-2007, 10:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Detroitdad

Hitchens is an ass. I can rarely understand what he writes because he fills it with all sorts of allusions and antecdotes with which I am not familiar. He is a completely incomprehensible, unlikable curmudgeon without redeming qualities.

Hitchens if frequently wrong and usually conceited, but he also happens to be brilliant. If you can't understand him, I'd say the fault lies with you.

Archaea · 04-25-2007, 10:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tex

Hitchens if frequently wrong and usually conceited, but he also happens to be brilliant. If you can't understand him, I'd say the fault lies with you.

I do understand him and he is an ass, sometimes brilliant, sometimes naive, but almost always an ass.

Detroitdad · 04-25-2007, 11:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tex

Hitchens if frequently wrong and usually conceited, but he also happens to be brilliant. If you can't understand him, I'd say the fault lies with you.

Maybe he is brilliant but he is certainly not good at communicating his point of view. Maybe it is my own dumbness.

Detroitdad · 04-25-2007, 11:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

He's a hard core atheist. Hates religion. And he's gone slightly nutty since he apostatized from The Nation supporting a war he now realizes was a huge mistake for all of us.

All of the things that I have read from him in retrospective of the war have been unrepentant.

YOhio · 04-26-2007, 02:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

He's a hard core atheist. Hates religion. And he's gone slightly nutty since he apostatized from The Nation supporting a war he now realizes was a huge mistake for all of us.

His new book is titled: "God is not great: How religions poison everything."

http://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-.../dp/0446579807

Archaea, book of the month?

04-25-2007, 08:55 PM	#1
YOhio AKA SeattleNewt Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 7,055	Hitchens can be brutal But he makes some good points in this article that castigates the outpouring of false sentiment after the Virginia Tech shootings. http://www.slate.com/id/2164914/nav/tap1/ This section stuck out: For an academic president to have equated 32 of his fellow humans with their murderer in an orgy of "one-ness" was probably the stupidest thing that happened last week, but not by a very wide margin. Almost everybody in the country seems to have taken this non-event as permission to talk the starkest nonsense. And why not? Since the slaughter raised no real issues, it was a blank slate on which anyone could doodle. Try this, from the eighth straight day of breathless coverage in the New York Times. The person being quoted is the Rev. Susan Verbrugge of Blacksburg Presbyterian Church, addressing her congregation in an attempt, in the silly argotof the day, "to make sense of the senseless": Ms. Verbrugge recounted breaking through the previous week's numbness as she stopped on a morning walk and found herself yelling at the mountains and at God. Though her shouts were initially met with silence, she said, she soon was reassured by the simplest of things, the chirping of birds. "God was doing something about the world," she said. "Starting with my own heart, I could see good." Yes, it's always about you, isn't it? (By the way, I'd watch that habit of yelling at mountains and God in the greater Blacksburg area if I were you. Some idiot might take it for a "warning sign.") When piffle like this gets respectful treatment from the media, we can guess that it's not because of the profundity of the emotion but rather because of its extreme shallowness. Those birds were singing just as loudly and just as sweetly when the bullets were finding their targets.

04-25-2007, 09:50 PM	#5
SeattleUte fairlds.org Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Seattle, WA Posts: 10,665	He's a hard core atheist. Hates religion. And he's gone slightly nutty since he apostatized from The Nation supporting a war he now realizes was a huge mistake for all of us. __________________ Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be. —Paul Auster

04-25-2007, 08:59 PM	#2
MikeWaters Demiurge Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 36,365	I like how Hitchens managed to criticize organized religion. Everyone has their own "piffle". This article is his piffle.

04-25-2007, 09:04 PM	#3
Detroitdad Resident Jackass Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Roswell, New Mexico Posts: 1,846	Hitchens is an ass. I can rarely understand what he writes because he fills it with all sorts of allusions and antecdotes with which I am not familiar. He is a completely incomprehensible, unlikable curmudgeon without redeming qualities.