Over at the Guardian, Christopher Hitchens’s pal Martin Amis has a lovely piece—almost an elegy—on Hitch’s ability to rhetorically demolish his opponents:
. . . Christopher is one of the most terrifying rhetoricians that the world has yet seen. Lenin used to boast that his objective, in debate, was not rebuttal and then refutation: it was the “destruction” of his interlocutor. This isn’t Christopher’s policy – but it is his practice. Towards the very end of the last century, all the greatest chessplayers, including Garry Kasparov, began to succumb to a computer (named Deep Blue); I had the opportunity to ask two grandmasters to describe the Deep Blue experience, and they both said: “It’s like a wall coming at you.” In argument, Christopher is that wall. The prototype of Deep Blue was known as Deep Thought. And there’s a case for calling Christopher Deep Speech. With his vast array of geohistorical references and precedents, he is almost Google-like; but Google (with, say, its 10 million “results” in 0.7 seconds) is something of an idiot savant, and Christopher’s search engine is much more finely tuned. In debate, no matter what the motion, I would back him against Cicero, against Demosthenes.
Whereas mere Earthlings get by with a mess of expletives, subordinate clauses, and finely turned tautologies, Christopher talks not only in complete sentences but also in complete paragraphs.
and
Over the years Christopher has spontaneously delivered many dozens of unforgettable lines. Here are four of them:
Click over to read the four, and much more.
I read Dominic’s link earlier. I hope Hitch stays with us for a while. There aren’t many like him.
The first time I ever heard of Hitchens was when I ran across some of his Mother Teresa writings. As you can imagine that was quite an introduction to a hitherto unknown writer. I thought to myself, who is this guy and why ain’t he famous? (Turns out he actually was famous but I was too dumb to ever heard of him before. :P)
I must admit that his views on the Iraq War really tarnished his image in my mind, though recently his rhetorical prowess on behalf of the Gnus has brought me back around. Anyone can make a mistake; I am sure he was sincere in his.
I too hope he can overcome his illness.
As far as I am aware, Hitchens still has the same stance as far as the Iraq war goes. I doubt he will be conceeding this “mistake” any time soon (not that I agree with him).
But yes, I hope he is around for many years to come.
Hey, guys, I’d love to see you try to debate him on Iraq. 😀
Nah I’m quite happy with my armchair criticism thanks 😉
It’s a pity about the last few paragraphs on agnosticism being more logical than atheism.
I thought so too–rather out of place to continue what seems to be an ongoing debate between them (with the undercurrent of “I hope you’ll come to see that I was right all along”) in an article that’s otherwise a paean to his old friend.
I agree. Sounded a bit sour to me. Bit like the Christians who are hoping for a deathbed confession. And, as if. Agnosticism has nothing on atheism.
If things either ‘are’ or ‘are not’, then agnosticism is silly. If you think these things are beyond our ability to know or beyond evidence then the logical position is to hold that they ‘are not’ until some evidence appears, & then one could say something ‘is’.
I enjoyed reading this, but there was more than one occasion where Amis took awhile to get to his point. There was a certain ‘Give me five bees for a quarter,’ you’d say quality about it.
Honestly, I was disappointed. I felt it to be much more about Amis than Hitch.
I was expecting pithy quotes of an independent and substantial nature, not cliches only applicable to situations that take half a page to set up.
Amis wrote:
exactly.
I too have always considered agnosticism to be the embrace of ignorance.
wait, that’s not what he meant, you say?
huh.
Funny, I’ve always considered agnosticism to be just another form of atheism. I consider myself an agnostic in the sense that I don’t know with perfect certainty that there is no god or supernatural realm. I consider myself an atheist because I know that there is no evidence that they exist, and thus no reason to believe they do.
I suppose to most people agnosticism means that the propositions of god’s existence or non-existence are equally possible but unknowable. I don’t agree with that take at all.
I don’t know with perfect certainty that there is no god or supernatural realm.
the difference between an agnostic and an atheist is that an agnostic has ignored the fact that they don’t ACT as if they ARE agnostic about deities.
IOW, I’ve never actually met an agnostic who acts as an agnostic in their everyday lives.
the reason is simple and obvious.
since there is no evidence for any deities, then it is entirely reasonable to act as if there are not.
IOW: you too are an atheist, regardless of how you label yourself, which means your label is born of either ignorance or delusion.
Feel free to challenge that assertion.
I’ll challenge your assertion by pointing out that I never said I wasn’t an atheist. Indeed I explicitly said that I am. You’ve missed my point entirely.
no I didn’t. I’m saying there is NO reason for you to bother with calling yourself agnostic.
at all.
as you did here:
I consider myself an agnostic
Wierd that you shorten my quote and take it out of context. I am trying to emphasize that I could be called an agnostic only in the most narrow and trivial sense; a way that is essentially meaningless. I may use the word agnostic (not a word I would use to describe myself in any regular conversation, btw), but in any meaningful way I am actually an atheist. When Martin Amis calls himself an agnostic, my strong suspicion is that his use is similarly meaningless. It seems to me that he wants to acknowledge some modicum of doubt, but I don’t see any real gulf between his agnosticism and Hitchen’s atheism. I don’t see any reason for Amis to call himself an agnostic. In fact in most occasions when people call themselves agnostic, I think they’re really atheists who are afraid to call themselves by that name.
This will come as a shock to you, but my entire post was agreeing with you.
.
You may as well say that you are agnostic about faeries. Is that really what you want to say?
Yes. I am agnostic as to the existence of faeries, orbiting teapots, and invisible garage dwelling dragons. I am also afaerie, adragon, and ateapot. In similar vein I am agnostic as to the existence of a god, and I am also atheist.
Then I would suggest to you that being agnostic means nothing at all.
Are you agnostic that you exist? It’s not 100% proven that you exist because you could be part of a computer program run by some advanced alien intelligence.
The term has become meaningless if that’s what you mean by agnosticism becasue it would apply to absolutely everything.
Then I would suggest to you that being agnostic means nothing at all
*ding*
That’s pretty much my point.
Agnosticism & atheism are entirely orthogonal.
A-Gnosticism is about knowledge, or the lack thereof.
A-Theism is about belief, or the lack thereof.
Actually it is exactly the reverse, see my comment below.
Agnosticism is a theological/philosophical position on what theologists/philosophers would like to see (absolute “truth”), atheism is about what we can see (no gods) and so putatively know.
There are theological reasons to confuse this, but as atheists it behooves us to de-confuse nature (vs religion).
Actually, Michael is correct.
Agnosticism means “lack of knowledge”, “unknown”, or “unknowable”
It IS about KNOWLEDGE.
Atheism means “lack of belief in god” or “belief that there is no god”
It IS about BELIEF.
wrong.
both are conclusions based on no evidence.
the rest is semantics.
Agnosticism can be based on you having no knowledge of the subject, on you have looked but there is none, or that you have deduced that knowledge is not even possible.
It is specifically about knowledge.
Atheism (not a theist) is a lack of belief in god either because you haven’t considered the question or becasue you feel there no evidence for that belief.
It is about belief.
repeating yourself near verbatim is not going to convince me your definition of the concepts is correct.
funny how that works.
Ichthyic.
Well, actually, this is how it works:
You offer a substantial rebuttal to my post, instead of dismissive one liners, am I may consider it worth my while to offer up some additional insights. 😉
Agnosticism only means that you are not sure, that you accept you don’t know with absolute certainly. It doesn’t say anything about what you are not sure of.
You can be an agnostic Christian or agnostic Jew. The atheism bit isn’t implied at all, although a lot of people mistakenly think it is.
Of course one can be an agnostic atheist, and most self-declaring atheists will be happy to say that they don’t know for sure, even though they are fairly certain that they are correct.
In short: most “gnus” are agnostic atheists, and those who claim differently haven’t done their homework.
As I said above, if that is your definition of agnosticism, then the term becomes meaningless because you can even apply it to your own existence.
Here are some atheists who are not agnostics and who have certainy done their homework: Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett.
In fact they’ve written books on the subject!
Indeed there are degrees, but that is ultimately what the baseline is – if you are uncertain and utterly without posteriors, you start off with equal chances.
If you throw in a theological position such that it is unknowable or any observations doesn’t count in empirical matters such as elucidating nature, you can get from there to funny places: you can act atheistic (as Ichthyic notes), claim you are agnostic, but believe in religious claims.
Mostly agnosticism is an unstable position on knowledge and atheism both:
Knowledge is not obtained against perfect certainty.
If you claim that you have perfect certainty, you are not discussing the world. Such systems are relative some invented truth system, be it philosophy, fiction, or myth.
If you are studying the world, you establish facts (and theories) to a certain mutually agreeable and reasonable certainty.
There is no reason to give religion a special privilege here, not a priori and certainly not after studying its ludicrous claims. Technically you can be an “agnostic atheist” on such grounds, but the term is meaningless unless you are certain that you don’t want to confront evidence. (Because, you know, religion and science is incompatible.* :-D) If so, the correct description is “atheist”.
* Technically it is saying the same thing, don’t confuse theological methods with scientific.
<snort />
One can interpret the term, “agnosticism,” in two non-exclusive ways that I’m aware of: either that the individual professing the position admits ignorance, or the individual is asserting that knowledge is impossible.
Most who proclaim their agnosticism take the latter position. “An all-powerful super-duper-god could sprinkle magic faery dust on everybody thereby making us too stupid to realize that Jesus is real!”
Except, of course, that this imaginary megafriend forgot to sprinkle the faery dust when we figured out that not only can we not square the circle, neither can he. Therefore, whatever he is, he’s not all-powerful — not by a long shot.
I’ve yet to meet a strong agnostic who could explain why gods are immune to nonexistence proofs. For that matter, I’ve yet to meet a strong agnostic who could convince me that he understood my challenge. I think it, at least in part, stems from their concurrent inability to define the term, “god.”
Cheers,
b&
Nail on the head, Ben.
Define a god that is not scientifically assailable, and I’ll show you a god that isn’t worth being agnostic about
One other divide in terms: Some use the word about certain claims, that seem relevant in some way. Others, so they say, are “agnostic” in an unspecified manner, to highlight that they are more aware of epistemological weaknesses than the rest of us.
These both ought to be compatible with both admitting ignorance and “strong” agnosticism, but the focus among the latter tends toward “strong” agnosticism, or maybe “absolute” agnosticism.
The man clearly has game.
No different from Christians wanting him to accept the TRUTH, ain’t it? Except he writes GOOD.
I enjoy listening to Hitchens, but I really can’t agree that he “destroys” his opponents. He gets in some good one liners, but he generally fails in apprehending the basis of his opponents argument and undermining it. I’ve only seen one or two debates where I thought he did an excellent job; in the others, he seemed poorly prepared and unfocused.
He’s really a much better listen when he’s pontificating, rather than debating.
I don’t see it that way.
It’s not that he does not understand the the basis of his opponents argument, it’s just that he refuses to spend his whole time responding to their argument with no time left to put his own view.
As Sam Harris said, “That is a losing stragedy”
“As Sam Harris said, “That is a losing stragedy””
Which explains why Harris is such a disaster in a debate.
Then you haven’t seen him debate William Graig (on god being the basis of ethics). He chewed him up and spat him out. But, if he had allowed himself to be constrained by Graig’s agenda – which Craig clearly set out at the beginning – it would have been a no contest.
I don’t get the agnosticism thing, either.
And that differs from atheism how?Does he posit atheism as involving some kind of certainty? Hasn’t his friend been clear enough?
Christopher Hitchens is a great speaker and fully deserves this praise, but I feel compelled to remind everyone that this is NOT a useful argument in favor of atheism, any more than the skill of the late Johnnie Cochran is a useful argument for the innocence of O. J. Simpson.
Yes, thank you for that, because we’re all morons here who needed that pointed out to us.
Perhpas it is not appropriate to advertise another website on this one, but the Dawkins website now contains a beautiful letter that Hitchens recently sent to the American Atheist convention apologizing that his illness prevented his planned talk. It is deeply moving and poetic. At the same time, it is unflinching in its attack on religious nonsense, and calls on non-believers never to relent in their defense of science and reason. Magnificent.
I’m troubled.
First Hitchens misses his regular Slate column. Then he begs off the above-mentioned convention. Now one of his closest friends is writing a quasi-eulogy for him.
I fear we’re losing a horseman.
I hope I’m wrong, but if not — Hitch (forgive the informality), there will be one hell of a wake.
No matter how sharp his rhetoricla skills and how sad his current predicament, and in spite of the fact that I am deeply saddened by his deteriorating state, Hitchens is flawed. His vilification of the opponents of the Iraq invasion was vicious. He kept insisting that WMDs were present there, even after it was found to be a groundless assertion. His closeness to the likes of Wolfowitz was appalling, and his taunts to the critics of Bush were at times beneath contempt. And so forth.
Even among atheists, there seems to be an ongoing attempts to make some kind of saint of him. He is not a saint and he is not a demon either. He is just a flawed human, like the rest of us.
Yes, and who ever said he was perfect? Do you think you’re telling us something new?
Nobody here thinks of Hitchens as a saint, but many of us think of him as a courageous, honest man with an immense ability to write, and a fellow defender of non-belief.
Atheists don’t have saints.
Dial down the spite, friend. Attack those who deserve being attacked, not friends with whom you may disagree.
Never thought I’d ever identify with Nabokov!
And Amis demonstrated his own strong chops with “these unexercised potencies of persuasion.”
Nor is it exactly hidden that each old friend has an impressively healthy ego. 😉
Hitchens can speak in such lengthy compound sentences, with so many clauses and parenthetical asides, that I sometimes have to rewind to follow along. Amazingly enough his spoken sentences are usually gramatically impeccable, unlike what most of us (well, at least I) produce when we undertake the same thing off the cuff…For that reason I find him easier to read than to listen to, though the dryness and drollery of the live version may not come through as well.
Of Amis’s 4 chosen favorites, I loved the first two.
I have met quite a few theists that were also agnostics. They accept some beliefs on faith and when questioned deeply admit they are not absolutely sure there is a god. So if I refer to myself as a mere agnostic, it means that I haven’t thought things through yet.
As Ben said above, here is the first question to ponder:
What definition of god is unassailable by science?
I swear you won’t need to ask another question.
Okay, a big hint: You end up with a god whose existence or not doesn’t matter one iota..
A new book – about to come out I think which many of you will want to dip into –
Quotable Hitchens: From Alcohol to Zionism
Good stuff, but as Hitchens (as all of us) it has its flaws. For example, I like puns. And as jokes in general they can be a means to let of steam, not always degrade a subject.
And the science stuff was just wrong. In the last 12 years we have achieved a consistent tested theory for the first time, with enough certainty to be considered valid and with a great deal of precision. We know the age of the universe within 1 %, and stuff like the curvature parameter better than that.
It is just the old embarrassing argument from ignorance.
Well, that, but more precisely argument from incredulity.
I’d love to argue with you Torbjorn, but it’s hard to understand what you’re talking about. So, in case I’ve misunderstood you, I’ll just leave it there. 😉
A well-crafted pun can have all the nimble ingenuity you could wish for, like S. J. Perleman’s description of being aggressively solicited by prostitutes in some exotic locale:
“It was a case of the tail dogging the wag.”