Hat Tip to Laffy Kat. Cross post from GD. ♡

[littlemissmartypants]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=8882254


Full disclosure, I had not heard of Christopher Hitchens before this.

♡lmsp

[guillaumeb]

1. I respected some of Hitchen's early political analysis,

but he came to see US military intervention, raw violence, as a useful tool in achieving what he considered to be good ends. My view is that if one uses violence as a means to get to peace, the journey will never end at peace.

Plus he had strong Islamophobic tendencies as well as a generalized contempt for religion. He ended up, in my opinion, as the very common anti-religion type who considered himself far too intellectual for religion.

[Lordquinton]

3. I think this belongs here

"You won't judge Teresa but you'll judge Hitchens."

[beam me up scottie]

5. .

[AtheistCrusader]

4. Well, there's nothing intellectual about religion.

Pascal's wager? Incomplete trash. Ignores the cost of living your life according to faith for no reason. 22m Catholics, 40M Protestants working to exterminate ~7m Jews in Hitler's Germany can attest to that.

Scapegoating intrinsic in the resurrection story? Vile. Dostoyevsky, a believer himself, destroyed that argument a hundred years before I was born.

Ivan for a minute was silent, his face became all at once very sad.
"Listen! I took the case of children only to make my case clearer. Of the other tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to its centre, I will say nothing. I have narrowed my subject on purpose. I am a bug, and I recognise in all humility that I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to blame, I suppose; they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, though they knew they would become unhappy, so there is no need to pity them. With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly; that everything flows and finds its level- but that's only Euclidian nonsense, I know that, and I can't consent to live by it! What comfort is it to me that there are none guilty and that cause follows effect simply and directly, and that I know it?- I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I haven't suffered simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer. But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them? That's a question I can't answer. For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions, but I've only taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so unanswerably clear. Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It's beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers' crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn't grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old. Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: 'Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.' When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can't accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child's torturer, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' but I don't want to cry aloud then. While there is still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to 'dear, kind God'! It's not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don't want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. I don't want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother's heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, what becomes of harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don't want harmony. From love for humanity I don't want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket."
"That's rebellion," murmered Alyosha, looking down.
"Rebellion? I am sorry you call it that," said Ivan earnestly. "One can hardly live in rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me yourself, I challenge your answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."
"No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly.

Religion, and Hitchens' opposition to it, wasn't merely 'holier than thou' intellectualism. It's because religion masquerades as intellectualism, but brings precisely NOTHING to the table.


Hitchens had many faults. Sexism. War-mongering among them. Feel free to make sport of those (I won't even defend him), but the charge of intellectual snobbery in opposition to an idea that doesn't even belong in the same venn diagram as intellectualism, is ridiculous.

[Lordquinton]

2. Miss his voice

He was wrong on some subjects, but he knew he could be wrong and admitted it. He put beliefs to the test, like with torture, he had claimed that waterboarding wasn't torture, and accepted the challenge to undergo the process. He lasted seconds and completely changed his point of view afterwards.

There is no counter to many of his arguments, which is why there is heavy character assassination whenever his name comes up.

[beam me up scottie]

6. Like all humans Hitchens wasn't perfect.

If nothing else he should be remembered for his brillaint expose on the Catholic saint and sadistic fraud Mother Teresa who was more Mengele than Nightingale.

Unlike members of the Church atheists don't bestow sainthood on members of our tribe so we can appreciate Hitchens while acknowledging that he was wrong about many things.

[guillaumeb]

7. "More Mengele than Nightingale"?

Very catchy, if nothing else.

[beam me up scottie]

8. I can't take credit for the Nazi reference - that actually came from an Indian journalist.

I simply followed his lead.

Though Mother Theresa’s medical centers were meant to heal people, patients were subjected to conditions that often made them even sicker. In the same documentary, an Indian journalist compared Mother Teresa’s flagship location for “Missionaries of Charity” to photographs he had seen of Nazi Germany’s Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

The entire article is quite enlightening, you should read it:

Why On Earth Is The Catholic Church Making Mother Teresa A Saint?

The New York Times concluded that she was “less interested in helping the poor than in using them as an indefatigable source of wretchedness on which to fuel the expansion of her fundamentalist Roman Catholic beliefs.”

***

The conditions at Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India were horrific

Though Mother Theresa’s medical centers were meant to heal people, patients were subjected to conditions that often made them even sicker. In the same documentary, an Indian journalist compared Mother Teresa’s flagship location for “Missionaries of Charity” to photographs he had seen of Nazi Germany’s Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

“Workers washed needles under tap water and then reused them. Medicine and other vital items were stored for months on end, expiring and still applied sporadically to patients,” said Hemley Gonzalez, a noted humanitarian worker in Indoa, when describing the Missionaries of Charity location he briefly volunteered at.

“Volunteers with little or no training carried out dangerous work on patients with highly contagious cases of tuberculosis and other life-threatening illnesses. The individuals who operated the charity refused to accept and implement medical equipment and machinery that would have safely automated processes and saved lives.”

It wasn’t just a select few cynical journalists who criticized Mother Teresa’s hospice care, either. In her hospice care centers, Mother Teresa practiced her belief that patients only needed to feel wanted and die at peace with God — not receive proper medical care — and medical experts went after her for it. In 1994, the British medical journal The Lancet claimed that medicine was scarce in her hospice centers and that patients received nothing close to what they needed to relieve their pain.

Doctors took to calling her locations “homes for the dying,” and such a name was warranted. Mother Teresa’s Calcutta home for the sick had a mortality rate of more than 40 percent. But in her view, this wasn’t a bad thing, as she believed that the suffering of the poor and sick was more of a glory than a burden.

“There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion,” Mother Teresa said. “The world gains much from their suffering.”

When it came to her own suffering, however, Mother Teresa took a different stance. The ailing altruist received care for her failing heart in a modern American hospital.

***

She wasn’t exactly a champion of reproductive rights

Mother Theresa’s goals got in the way of her support for women’s rights.

When Mother Teresa gave her 1979 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, she did so with an agenda. Mother Teresa was a staunch opponent of both abortion and birth control, and she made it clear that she believed “natural family planning” would solve the woes of pregnant women who were not ready for a child.

Mother Teresa held that opinion even for cases of rape. On the subject of Bosnian women who had been raped and impregnated by Serbian militants, Mother Teresa said, “I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing — direct murder by the mother herself.”

What Mother Teresa did promote in the realm of family planning — like abstinence — didn’t help anyone, either. She stuck by her abstinence claims, however, despite preaching about abstinence being proven ineffective again and again.

In hindsight, it’s hard to view the actions of the Catholic Church’s new so-called Saint with anything other than horror. Mother Teresa claimed to help the poor and the sick, but her very beliefs and practices ensured they were mired in poverty and pain till their dying days.

http://all-that-is-interesting.com/mother-teresa-saint

You're welcome.

[guillaumeb]

9. There is a difference between neglect, or lack of training, and deliberately

performing experiments on people that have been judged to be sub-humans.

As to abstinence education, that was motivated by a religious conviction rather than malice. Unless this journalist claimed to have some insight into Mother Theresa's secret motivation.

[beam me up scottie]

10. There's a difference between providing care and medicine for patients and neglecting them.

Teresa had millions of dollars in her account and refused to use it to pay for qualified staff and medicine.

She forcibly converted dying patients which is a violation of their religious rights.

She called rape victims who sought abortions 'murderers'.

She preached abstinence knowing that millions of women would continue to suffer and die without access to birth control.

She reused dirty needles in her facilities.

She even withheld PAIN MEDICINE from people who were in agony ffs.

That isn't treating patients like sub humans?

This didn't happen two centuries ago when nurses didn't know any better and didn't have access to effective treatments and pain meds. Teresa knew her practices were dangerous and cruel but she didn't care. She had the money and the ability to help suffering people and instead she compounded their suffering. She watched them suffer and die when she could have made a difference.

The Nazis would have been inspired by her indifference.

***

If Teresa had done the same to patients in the United States she would have been imprisoned. But because she neglected and abused poor people in India she gets a pass? Because she's religious she gets a pass?

With everything we now know about Teresa why on earth would anyone defend that vile woman?