YESTERDAY, AFTER A LONG and well-publicized struggle against cancer, Christopher Hitchens finally got to learn the truth about God and an afterlife. For him, in this life, there was neither, so it’s unlikely that in the next life, things will be much different.
Hitchens made his living as an impolite but often persuasive contrarian whose amusing performances, in person and in writing, were designed to reduce even the most ancient and imaginative hopes and dreams to the size of a pragmatically hopeless six-foot man who proclaimed proudly God Is Not Great – and Mother Teresa wasn’t much better. After all, what could an angry so-called Deity do? Strike him dead at 62?
With fellow atheist-barker Richard Dawkins, Hitchens worked the secularist midway, putting a red nose and a funny face on nihilism and despair and setting up straw-men dressed as faith and belief, then knocking them over with outrageous ease. He will be canonized instantly by his many followers.
God, if there is a God, blessed him with the gift of eloquence, if not also the gift of insight. God, however, retained the gift of irony: Hitchens, the modern Chrysostom of unbelievers, was killed by the cancer that destroyed his golden throat.
– Calamo.
The fact that Hitchens didn’t believe in God might not be a total catastrophe for him, particularly if he was sincere in his disbelief (and he probably was). If he gave God enough reasons to believe in him, and if he lived according to a proper model (not as clear), then he might do okay in the next life. It’s always dodgy to second guess God. God is just smarter than I am. Hitchens—not really so bright, just articulate.
Right, and God probably thinks He’ll get the last word.
Possibly one of the worst examples of sentence construction I have ever seen:
“Hitchens made his living as an impolite but often persuasive contrarian whose amusing performances, in person and in writing, were designed to reduce even the most ancient and imaginative hopes and dreams to the size of a pragmatically hopeless six-foot man who proclaimed proudly God Is Not Great – and Mother Teresa wasn’t much better.”