In an interview a few years back with The Sun magazine, atheist bigwig Sam Harris had this to say about the comparable (de)merits of religion and rape:
If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion.
You can read the whole interview starting here.
And some people wonder why so many atheists have broken with Harris and the rest of the Old School New Atheist Boys Club to start Atheism Plus.
EDITED TO ADD: Hadn’t noticed that the interview was from 2006, so maybe this is old news to a lot of atheists. Still horrible.
Now I feel bad about ragging on Hitchens at such length–it’s not like he was the worst pundit ever or anything–but “a little touch of Harry in the night” is just unfortunate.
@ katz
Works in reverse too – you can love what the person is saying but find the way it’s delivered clumsy.
The biggest issue with Skyrim’s position in the conversation isn’t the question of whether or not Hitchens was a good writer, though. It’s the attempt to insist that if people don’t like what Hitchens had to say (ideas, not writing style) then it must be because of either jealousy or personal animosity towards Hitchens. Which is a ridiculous assertion to make when you’re talking about things like the defense of torture as ethically acceptable. It’s not as if being anti-torture is such an unusual position that it could only be explained by jealous or dislike of the person advocating in favor of it.
I had a long post on God Is Not Great that got eaten, but it basically boiled down to this, only with the Bible and the Koran. The whole book reads as if Hitchens has no idea that anyone in the 5,000 years previous to Christopher Hitchens has ever studied these texts or written scholarship on them. He treats himself to paragraphs-long victory laps for noticing things that occurred to me when I was about twelve–and I’m no genius theologian, just a kid who paid attention in CCD.
Um, wow, okay, well I didn’t get that impression at all. What were you expecting, some sort of brilliant new take on why the Bible is kind of dumb? I’m not an atheist, but I’m going to be honest, there really are only so many obvious fallacies you can point out in organized Christianity or Islam or whatever. Hitchens pointed out the same old shit, just more forcefully maybe even than Richard Dawkins.
I do think that all of the aggressive atheist screeds over the past decade or so all kind of belabor the same talking points, but maybe it could be argued that’s the goal… because of course no one has ever refuted them, they just ignore them because you know, faith is faith. So they need to be continually pushed in peoples’ faces. Even if it is kind of annoying.
It’s a quote from Henry V, but yes, in that context it sounds more like something parents should be warning their children about.
My mind went straight to a little touch of whiskey in the night, which is equally unforunate.
The entire first sentence just says that the franchise is over without actually saying anything about it.
Well yes, it’s the conclusion, that’s what you do.
The last sentence is touting as an achievement something that hasn’t happened yet (Harry Potter’s impact on the future).
Yes, he makes it clear he’s speculating, but it’s true that it did get a lot of kids reading, so it’s a pretty bankable speculation.
The reference to Pullman isn’t doing much to counter David’s assertion that he just dashes off reviews by mentioning other vaguely-related things.
I don’t see how this is superfluous at all. Harry got kids reading, and then he sets out a possible next step.
And that’s why, if you Google “Who created God?” or “the problem of evil,” you won’t find a single Christian site. No books have ever been written on the subject, and there certainly doesn’t exist an entire branch of theology related to refuting these sorts of talking points. Because faith.
Note: I’m not saying that anyone has to be convinced by said refutations; you have every right to consider the problem of evil (or whatever) to be an insurmountable obstacle to believing in God! No one has the right to tell you that you must find something convincing. But there are many rebuttals and discussions going back some 1800 years and many people have found them convincing. It’s not like, as Skyrimjob seems to think, atheists have a series of arguments so utterly convincing that the only way you can not be won over by them is to pretend you’re not listening.
(which speaks volumes about how persuasive you find his writing)?
What? Just because he’s failed to convince me that religion is the source of all evil doesn’t mean he’s not a great writer. I just don’t see the world that way. I don’t think anything could convince me.
Predicting something is different from congratulating someone on an achievement. For instance, I can predict that Vettel will win the 2013 F1 world championship handily and that’s a fair prediction, but I can’t cite that as an achievement of his. Because he hasn’t done it yet. Confusing the two is a sign of unclear writing.
A conclusion restates the thesis. If his only thesis about the last Potter movie is “The Harry Potter franchise is over,” he shouldn’t be writing a review.
Predicting something is different from congratulating someone on an achievement. For instance, I can predict that Vettel will win the 2013 F1 world championship handily and that’s a fair prediction, but I can’t cite that as an achievement of his. Because he hasn’t done it yet. Confusing the two is a sign of unclear writing.
Okay, he’s NOT ACTUALLY chalking it up as an achievement, just PROJECCCTING that it will be one. Still good writing, and also, the people who were laughing at a touch of Harry, that says more about you than Hitchens.
Unintentionally writing things that make other people laugh is a mark of a good writer?
If that’s immediately what comes to mind, you need to raise up your thinking process, son.
Skyrimjob: (which speaks volumes about how persuasive you find his writing)?
What? Just because he’s failed to convince me that religion is the source of all evil doesn’t mean he’s not a great writer.
Because you’ve been touting him as a “genius”. Someone the Atheist Community ought to revere; a person who is a better writer than… I don’t know, insert name here.
So you, who apparently hadn’t seriously considered “The Problem of Evil Before”, hadn’t come into 1800 years of Christian writing on the subject; not seen the fawning adulation of C.S. Lewis mediocre apologia, wrote a redundant book you thought brilliant; yet for all his genius, for all his perspicacity: all the things which mean atheists ought not call him out for his failings; because he’s such an incredibly persuasive writer read his attack on these subjects and weren’t convinced.
Ok. That’s not really a problem. I happen to think C. S. Lewis, for all the simplistic arguments in “The Great Divorce, and the tortured cosmology in “The Last Battle” and the problematic facility of “The Screwtape Letters” was a dab stylist. For my homiletics I prefer Robert Capon’s Supper of the Lamb (not least because it stands on its own as a work about the nature of the numinous, as well as being an allegory. If you don’t accept the religion, the message [food is good, and the Universe is wonderful] stands on its own).
But you didn’t argue that. You argued for a transcendent aspect to Hitchens. If he was that good, why didn’t he convince you?
That’s the point I was making; If he is that good, objectively your contention is hurt by that failure of his.
Skyrimjob: It’s just well-constructed. He ties in the “19 years later” epilogue with his thesis that Harry will kickstart the next generation of readers.
I disagree. I think it’s a lot of wasted verbiage, with an attempt to belittle the reader (I have a similar problem with Prairie Home Companion, I don’t think Keillor respects his audience, and he plays them for chumps). He is saying Harry Potter is banal, it’s a prop (like the want, “folded into the box”*) and it’s only merit is the hope that in it’s impoverished (compared to Pullman) pages some people, in the future, will look back on it fondly; the training wheels to real literature.
If what he wanted to say was, “This is a crap book, but lots of people liked it, and there is some redeeming quality in that, he could have done it without the condescending smarm.
It isn’t that you like Hitchens, it’s how you defend him.
You are holding him up as an apotheosis; saying he is, “objectively” a great writer, and you are sad/disappointed that atheists are shitting on his memory (nil nisi, &c.). I like Heinlein, who isn’t one of the most well-repspected of writers in a lot of feminist circles. No one thinks that makes me a troll; not least because I don’t hold him up as a paragon.
That’s your downfall, you are holding us to a standard which is rediculous. You like Hitchens’ writing, fine. Don’t call other people idiots, with small-minded jealousy problems because we don’t.
*katz, I think it’s the box the want comes in, padded and lined with velvet, that’s he trying to evoke; not as well as he might, since it was opaque to you.
Pecunium, you’re falling behind. We’ve moved on to “you can’t appreciate Hitchens’ writing because you can’t think on his level.”
Skyrimjob, you may observe that I referred to the “touch of Harry” bit as a pointless Shakespeare reference; I know what he was referring to, it just doesn’t mean anything.
Also, why should atheists in particular show respect for Hitchens? A great writer is a great writer – religious convictions or the lack thereof shouldn’t matter in terms of whether or not we respect someone on a literary level. I’m an atheist and I have plenty of respect for Lewis.
Skyrimjob: If that’s immediately what comes to mind, you need to raise up your thinking process, son.
Nope. It’s a basic tenet of English that the person presenting the message has to be clear to the audience.
If, in this case, the reader takes a different message than the writer meant, the problem isn’t all on the reader. It’s a bit more complicated than that (and even the simplest of CommTheory Models would take pages to go into, in anything more than a very surface treatment), but the onus is on the person who wants to be understood to make the meaning plain.
Which, actually, is part of Hitchens’ failings as a prosodist. He counted on his plain meaning being hard to apprehend. He used his education as a stick to beat his audience. The reference to Pullman was made with two targets (I was an editor, and while you may not like my writing, I’ve been published, newspapers, magazines and books), one target was those who had read Pullman; he could be tolerably certain many of them would sneer at Potter fans. The other target was those who hadn’t, whom he could depend on a fair number of to feel insecure about there lack of erudition.
katz: I see that. I write as I see comments, the I post at the end of the page.
I’ve caught up. 🙂
I’m just teasing; I know that’s how you post.
Referencing kids graduating to Pullman is also odd because His Dark Materials is another middle-grade fantasy series aimed at exactly the same age group. There’s a pretty obvious layer of “if you got smarter you’d read authors who agree with me” there.
Cassndra: I have a moderate derision for Lewis. I appreciate his skill with words, I just think his theology sucks.
In that regard, actually, I think Hitchens is less bothersome; if someone is a good person, and an atheist, it’s no matter. If they are a theist with what I see as, at best, incomplete, understandings, which lead them to religious error, that’s a problem.
Lewis has a lot of his work (e.g. The Last Battle, where Susan growing up, and becoming a sexual creature keeps her from being able to enter the Narnian heaven), which leads (IMO) catholics (in particular) astray. He’s also used by fundies to justify evil things, in the name of “love”.
But those are issues of content, not style.
katz: Sorry, the Irony Tag was broken. 🙂
And I have to work in the Morning. Knives to sharpen, and slicing to teach.
So, assuming I have energy, I’ll be back in 20 hours, or so.
@ pecunium
I meant purely in terms of literary style. I try to ignore the theology bits, though I agree that the treatment of Susan left a bad taste in the mouth.
It’s a curious coincidence that Hitchens’ last article for the Atlantic was derisive of G.K. Chesterton. Now, if you have problems with Lewis’s theology, you’ll have a hundred times more problems with Chesterton’s, but that man is truly a stylistic master. I’d cautiously point to his work as the best prose of the 20th century.