Clipmarks | reimers's 'hitchens' clips

The Four Horsemen

Fri, 23 May 2008 05:41:23 GMT

clipped by: reimers
clipper's remarks: RichardDawkins.net has a posted a 2 hour discussion between Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris about public reaction to their books.

Clip Source: video.google.com

[Video]

Hitchens VS Religion (Part 1/5)

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 01:33:35 GMT

clipped by: reimers

Clip Source: youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: hitchens, religion, atheism

Hitchens: Farewell to a literary great, with chutzpah...

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 16:04:58 GMT

clipped by: reimers

Clip Source: books.guardian.co.uk

'Culture," said Norman Mailer pugnaciously in 1981, "is worth a little risk." Admittedly, he was uttering these words at a chaotic press conference, just after a convict, for whose release he had ardently campaigned, had stabbed a harmless waiter to death.

But I remember admiring Mailer's audacity even as I slightly whistled at his promiscuity. And I suppose that no appreciation of the man is possible without taking a comparative survey of both those capacities. I find I have to add that it's quite surprisingly difficult to picture the cultural scene without him

Tags: mailer, hitchens

God Is Not Great Except 3 of 3

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 18:42:29 GMT

clipped by: reimers

Clip Source: www.slate.com

If the followers of the prophet Muhammad hoped to put an end to any future "revelations" after the immaculate conception of the Koran, they reckoned without the founder of what is now one of the world's fastest-growing faiths. And they did not foresee (how could they, mammals as they were?) that the prophet of this ridiculous cult would model himself on theirs. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—hereafter known as the Mormons—was founded by a gifted opportunist who, despite couching his text in openly plagiarized Christian terms, announced that "I shall be to this generation a new Muhammad" and adopted as his fighting slogan the words, which he thought he had learned from Islam, "Either the Al-Koran or the sword." He was too ignorant to know that if you use the word al you do not need another definite article, but then he did resemble Muhammad in being able only to make a borrowing out of other people's bibles.

Tags: hitchens, religion

God Is Not Great Excerpt 2 0f 3

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 18:40:47 GMT

clipped by: reimers

Clip Source: www.slate.com

Everything.

There is some question as to whether Islam is a separate religion at all. It initially fulfilled a need among Arabs for a distinctive or special creed, and is forever identified with their language and their impressive later conquests, which, while not as striking as those of the young Alexander of Macedonia, certainly conveyed an idea of being backed by a divine will until they petered out at the fringes of the Balkans and the Mediterranean. But Islam when examined is not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms, helping itself from earlier books and traditions as occasion appeared to require. Thus, far from being "born in the clear light of history," as Ernest Renan so generously phrased it, Islam in its origins is just as shady and approximate as those from which it took its borrowings. It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or "surrender" as a maxim to its adherents

Tags: hitchens, religion

God Is Not Great Excerpt 1 of 3

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 18:37:52 GMT

clipped by: reimers

Clip Source: www.slate.com

There are four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking.

Tags: hitchens, religion