Christopher Hitchens, left, now faces his final passage as a still determined atheist. No doubt though that some Christian cowards will try to insert his visage into their Hell porn to get their jollies at his expense!
It's no news for most of us in the atheist community, that friend and fellow infidel Chris Hitchens now wages a monumental battle against esophogeal cancer which has produced secondaries in his lungs. The prognosis is not good, and he has since made out his will and other arrangements, as he describes to Sally Quinn in this interview:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2010/09/20/VI2010092002264.html
Of course, there's no surprise here that Hitchens has a special disdain for deathbed religious conversions, as all atheists do! Nothing sticks in an atheist's craw more than the oft-spouted canard that "there are no atheists in fox holes or in cancer wards". Horse manure! In fact, the first canard is skewered every single month in each new issue of The American Atheist magazine, which features its 'Foxhole Atheist of the Month', generally one of many thousands of confirmed atheists currently serving in Afghanistan, or (earlier) Iraq. The second has been confirmed time and time again, either by open atheists (like Hitchens, and earlier Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan) who plug onward toward their inevitable demise without yielding to the vultures baying at their deathbeds, awaiting a final "conversion", or by others (e.g. Stephen J. Gould, Katharine Hepburn) who near the end admit their unbelief for the first time.
In fact, only recently Hitchens - appearing at a gathering sponsored by The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life - criticized the pressures put on Tom Paine to embrace Christianity and the malicious rumors of faith that followed Charles Darwin's demise. (To wit, that he made a last minute deathbed conversion to make up for his faithless scientific impertinence, which is total bull pockey and BS). As Hitchens expressed it:
"I've already thought about this a great deal, thanks all the same. The idea that you may be terrified is no reason to abandon the principles of a lifetime."
Indeed. Since only a coward runs to grab an alleged "insurance policy' at the last minute to sacrifice his principles, no matter how many Christian (mainly John 3:14 evangelical) cowards flash their Hell porn, or last minute threats in his face to "grab the free gift of salvation", never owning up that this "gift" is not "free" but at the expense of one's integrity.
In this light, there appears to be the need to believe that Atheists will awaken in the nick of time on their deathbeds and reconcile with their Maker or retrieve a once lost faith. This is accepted because it perhaps increases believers’ existential comfort levels. The very idea of an Atheist laughing, or at least in good humor on his deathbed, is a terrifying prospect for those that invest death with mounds of supernatural significance. As opposed to death in the Materialist view, which is simply a wholly natural vehicle to expedite evolution. If organisms didn’t die, no change in species could occur: Stasis would be the rule with all the lack of biodiversity it portends.
In a Newsweek 'My Turn' submission 18 years ago, I noted that the Atheist accepts infirmities more or less stoically as part of the price for life as a finite creature. Sure, he may cry a bit from pain (he’s human after all), even yield to a few doubts, but he refuses to succumb to his inevitable end as a material being by substituting supernatural illusion. The Atheist refuses to compromise his unbelief to make believers’ own road easier or more secure. They are obliged to do this on their own.
At his Pew confab, Hitchens admitted he's unlikely to make it even 5 more years. When asked if he objected to people praying for him, he responded: "No, no. I take it kindly, under the assumption that they are praying for my recovery.”
And when pressed whether he might give in and make the proverbial deathbed confession, he puckishly dismissed both that notion and the idea that, if he did, such a profession would be valid:
“The entity making such a remark might be a raving, terrified person whose cancer has spread to the brain. I can’t guarantee that such an entity wouldn’t make such a ridiculous remark, but no one recognizable as myself would ever make such a remark.”
Indeed, since we know that near death as organs break down, especially as brain neural functioning lapses, all sort of circuits get fried. The synapses are clogged with errant messages, even as a deluge of brain chemicals, including dopamine, adrenalin, vasopressin and even the intravenous drugs pumped in, combine to wreak havoc on genuine neural processing. The person becomes a simulacron, or what Daniel Dennett once called a "Zimbo". He looks and somewhat acts like the real person, but is no longer that person. His brain has been usurped in the same way a crack addict's has and thus the output can't be trusted. Is this just an excuse in case Hitchens does confess? Nope, merely a cautionary warning not to trust the words emitted by a Zimbo.
Look, if your grandma is on the Alzheimer's ward and she orders you to "put that rat poison in your tea to see me better tomorrow", what? Are you actually going to be idiot enough to take her at her word and do it? Of course not! You know it isn't really the grandma you know talking but her ravaged brain! Likewise, the related mouthings of deathbed patients usually can't be trusted, no matter how many "white lights" they claim to see, or how many "demons" or "pitchforks".
At the Pew Forum, Hitchens was asked a mischievous question: What positive lesson have you learned from Christianity? He replied, with great earnestness: the transience and ephemeral nature of power and all things human.
But what he might have also considered, with his Christian brother Peter standing by his side, is that REAL Christians do exist who evoke the love of neighbor taught by their master. They do not stoop to crassly exploiting a dire situation to push their own agendas to compromise the will of those who are vulnerable, but use their compassion to make their path easier. Commendations to Peter Hitchens, in showing not only how a true brother behaves, but also a true Christian as opposed to a cultist. One who has the courage and integrity to refuse to use his brother's condition to score make believe brownie points by forcing his own beliefs to mute his own uncertainties.
No comments:
Post a Comment