123 thoughts on “Best tweet ever”

        1. As Jess the bartender said when I asked about getting a glass to salute Hitchens on Friday, “do you want red, black or blue label? I think the blue goes for around $36 a shot.” Erm, if JW Black is good enough fo Hitchins then it’s good enough for me! 😉

    2. I recall him wondering out loud at a debate why he had been given so much time to give his opening statement. His words were something along the lines of “well, it certainly isn’t going to take me 20 mins to disprove the existence of God.” (It may have been the debate with his brother)

        1. Except it drew me to an interesting conclusion. If Peter, as a child, were able to make a scary jump from roof to ledge only because Christopher bravely did it first, and seeing Christopher’s courage gave Peter the courage, then now is the perfect time for Peter to make another such jump, from religion to atheism. Christopher’s courage, this time, is certainly greater, but Peter has been allowed to gear up for it all the longer, as well.

          2. I think you’ll find that Peter has jumped in the opposite direction, from atheism to God-botherdom. He was as left-wing as his elder brother in his younger days.

          3. He took the opposite direction for lack of courage from the very start. Now, Christopher has made not only the very lifelong preparation but the very jump itself from life to death wtih no god. Courage as only Hitch could show, and the only sort which might fill the sails of his admittedly weaker brother. Now is the time for Peter to take Hitch’s courage to heart, to self, and to make that same leap to atheism.

          4. @docatheist

            “…fill the sails..” nautical metaphor. A conscious reference to their naval upbringing?

  3. I had the same idea early yesterday, but thought of it as a headline: “Hitchens Meets Maker; Maker Loses Debate, Concedes Non-Existence.”

  4. Along a similar line- I’m sure many of you have already read this, but I think it’s worth repeating:

    Rumours of Christopher Hitchens’ deathbed conversion have begun circulating. Sources report that he called for a priest – and converted him to atheism.

    I think Christopher would approve.

  5. Can somebody please explain to me what’s the point of the tweet or where lies the hilarious point of it? Given my language incompetence, I didn’t get it, unfortunately.

    1. 1) Someone created a Twitter account impersonating God.

      2) Yesterday, that account posted this Tweet in honor of Hitchens’s awesomeness and rhetorical skills. In other words, it’s supposed to be God saying that Hitchens was able to convince even him (God) that He doesn’t exist.

        1. After one day’s silence, I sense evidence of absence is evidently assent. I think mirandaceleste is clearly to be admired.

          1. I wish that I could say I knew anything about the man behind the curtain/Twitter account, but, alas, I do not.

            I suppose that brings us back to the “Mysterious Ways” thing again, and, OH HAI, GOD: you still haven’t answered my Very Important Question about Bono! Geez.

    1. It’s certainly not Hitch’s fault; it really depends how smart the god is. For the christian god, the one in OT, I suspect it indeed should take around 30 minutes.

      2. Well, Yahweh ben Yahweh has never been known for his intellect. Being an unreasonable bastard on the other hand…

      1. Wouldn’tcha just know it? Atheists finally prove that God doesn’t exist and then He turns up on an atheist website. This is turning into a post-modernist matrix of Hitchcockian complexity.

      1. Pick away. Here are my preemptive answers:
        a) Free will
        b) Because
        c) That’s just the way I made things work
        d) I work in #mysteriousWays

        If that doesn’t clear everything up, then go ahead and ask your questions.

        1. That’s amazing. My questions were:

          a)Name a rubbish film about whales. Fill the gaps. —- —-y
          b)In which Beatles song do they sing in cod-Spanish?
          c)If evolution, explain Rabbi Averick.
          d)What did the part-time magician and assay officer say?

          Every one answered. Alleluia. Praise the Lord.

        2. That indeed is amazing! But you answered only half of my question. I know you’re busy smiting people and all, but I’m pretty curious about this:

          d) 1) What’s your favorite U2 song? 2) Relatedly, what are your feelings about Bono? Do you mind that he thinks he’s you? I mean, is it flattering, or is it more like a Single White Female kind of thing? Thanks, Bro!

          1. Miranda,

            Please, please, please, not from the sublime to the ridiculous. God enters the room and you ask about Bono? Surely, there is something more profound you can ask…Come to think of it, maybe not. So, here goes. Was John Lennon bigger than Jesus? And I don’t mean height.

          2. But only Theologians get all srs bznss about God! We heathens have to bring the laughs, you know?

            Relatedly, your question is way better than mine. Well-played, sir! 🙂

          3. Hang on a bit, Miranda.

            Seeing as the entire web is watching us atheists (according to ‘Almighty God {as if}), I think we should revert to type and have a thorough-going and thoroughly humourless discussion on whether the so-called ‘Almighty God tweet’ is indeed amusing or whether the Luke Adams’ ‘Hitchens for the win’ joke is objectively the more, in the absence of a more academic word, ‘funny’.

            We will naturally want to define terms first; let me begin by suggesting that you start, with ‘discussion’, ‘tweet’ and ‘objectively’. Let witter commence.

        3. Which god am I asking questions of? If you are the christian god, which aspect are you, dad, the zombie or spooky?

          1. Have a little respect, Graham; capitalise those Gs, Ys, Cs, Ds, Zs and Ss while you’re at it.

          4. Two ‘Our Fathers’, and, in the spirit of gridiron sanctimoniousness, we’ll pass on the ‘Hail Marys’.

          6. The penance, the Lord’s Prayer, isn’t called that for nothing. Surely the Big Guy in the Sky would view the Tebow as accommodationist; we can’t have the flock wandering from the narrow path of the inerrant word and composing their own proto-secular entreaties.

            Start, fingering those jequirity beans, Graham, it’s a whole rosary for you; behold the caprice of the Lord. We’ll have no back-sliding into this modern Protestantism nonsense.

  8. I’m a reader of Hitchens’ books and essays, often a fan, but his legacy should be mixed.

    Before I say why, remember: Public mourning rules are different than those for private mourning. Public mourning of a political writer can include criticism of that writer. (Hitch himself embodied this, most famously–and fabulously–when Jerry Falwell died.) Unless you were a personal friend of Hitchens’, all his career is fair game even now, especially now.

    1. Hitch went to his grave unrepentant for his full-throated support of the single biggest war crime in recent history, the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

    2. Hitch could be a thoroughgoing sexist boor, such as when he called the Dixie Chicks “fat fucking slags” and “sluts” because of their rather tame criticism of then-President Bush in the early days of the Iraq invasion. Also sexist when he did some crappy evo-psych to argue that women had less of a sense a humor than men.

    The best tribute we can pay to Hitch is to cast a gimlet, full-viewing eye on all things–and that includes Hitch himself.

      1. I think not. But most of the rest of the Internets, however, are not in concurrence with you and with me. 🙂

    2. Point one, I’ll concede. Although the idea of assisting in the overthrowing of a sadistic dictator (Sadam Hussein) who was slaughtering his people is in essence rather noble.

      However, point two is utter bullshit. There is absolutely nothing “sexist” about calling girls fat or even sluts. It may be boorish and condescending, but “sexist” is no the adjective you wanna use here. Indeed most of the victims of Hitchens’ spite were male!

      Unless you can come up with an example of Hitchens devaluing women BECAUSE they’re women, then you have no right of calling him a sexist.

      He’s even famous for saying that the only unfailing remedy for poverty is the empowerment of women, for hell’s sake! …

      1. If you’re not familiar with the time-honored sexist trope of devaluing women by “accusing” them of having/enjoying sex (“sluts,” “slags”), I’m afraid I can’t help you, except to say, read up.

        Oh, and none of the Dixie Chicks are “fat” by any measure, and of course it couldn’t possibly be sexist to criticize a woman based on her perceived sexual attractiveness. Right.

        1. So, “sluts” or “slags” are supposed to mean “women who enjoy sex”? Really? …. Because that would make virtually every woman on the planet a slut and a slag. I think these terms are used to convey promiscuity more than sexual indulgence. And again, even if these epithets were meant to accuse accuse women of enjoying sex, that still wouldn’t make it a sexist remark.

          Moreover, do you really think Hitchens believed that these girls were enjoying sex too much, felt aggravated by this and resolved to called them on it? ..Doesn’t this seem unlikely?

          I think you’re just unaware of the actual meaning of the term “sexist”. A remark is sexist ONLY when it devalues one gender in favor of another. Calling a girl fat, or ugly, or even a promiscuous nympho is not sexist. There are many ways to call this form of slandering, but “sexist” is not one of them.

          1. Okay, I’m confused. Dirogatory term which are gender-specific seem sexist to me, as they suggest derogation of one sex. Am I missing something? (And, is derogation a real word? It worked so well, here!)

          4. Lexicographers of some repute, produced by the esteemed Harraps publishing organisation, and associated with the well-known and highly regarded Larousse dictionaries, renowned amongst our francophone neighbours across the Channel, m’lud.

    3. Why should he be unrepentant?
      His comments were NOT sexist
      His argument regarding female sense of humour was presented in the context of evolutionary theory and has merit

      1. Just because you can claim a scientific basis for your claims of a gender’s inferiority doesn’t make it not sexist. Pretty much every sexist in the world thinks he has evidence to support it.

        1. You obviously do not understand the context I referred to. I in no way implied a justification for “gender inferiority”.

          1. Actually, you did imply that. If that was not your intent, then the fault is with your poor communication skills, not my understanding.

          2. I only caught a glimpse, something about men needed to be humorous and women not needing to be. Sounds like we women are the superior sex, then. BTW, I thought the article was meant to be rather tongue in cheek. I’ll get to reading it soon enough.

    1. No, they are not; the Japanese have a god of kitchen ranges. If that’s not downright bizarre, I’m a relation of a monkey..er, hold on.

        1. What does ROTFLMAO mean, Doc?

          There’s so much I don’t know about internet lingo; ‘gnu’, for instance, even though I suspect I may be one. Ant Allan’s sign off – /@ – befuddles me, as well. It took me months to work out what ‘lol’ means.

          Yours sincerely,

          Slow learner.

          1. There’s constant change, so constant learning will just happen. You’ll see.

            ROTFLMAO means Rolling On The Floor, Laughing My Ass Off. It’s an upgrade/combo of the simpler LMAO and/or ROTFL.

            Gnu, as in Gnu Atheists, can actually be googled. The current atheist movement is distinctive enough (thanks much to Hitch and the rest of the Four Horsemen: Dawkins, Denning, and Harris) that our theist opponents feel threatened and want to label us for propaganda purposes by calling us New Atheists, among other things. Well, apparently, one of us wtih a sense of humor and evolution changed the New to Gnu, the name of an animal, making us Gnu Atheists and taking the sting out of theists’ propaganda with good humor.

            As for Ant Allen’s sign off, I didn’t understand it, either. Maybe he’ll tell us?

          2. How deeply unsatisfying is the derivation of the word ‘gnu’. It’s not funny or witty enough; someone can come up with something better than that.

            That makes me a ‘gnold’. then.

          3. Are you gnolder than I?
            Wikipedia says a gnu is a wildebeest. Based on its close relatives, it’s a kosher animal. So, even theists can’t claim that we gnu atheists are somehow unclean, can they?

          4. Old, old, old, but young at heart; Peter Pan and Methuselah in one. Like the rest of the human race.

            I must admit to feeling less than enamoured with being compared to a kosher animal. They can have the Passover lamb, the body of Christ, but not mine.

          5. Funny! Jews don’t have a christ and humans aren’t kosher animals. As for lamb, though, I have to admit, it’s a favorite. Never ate it on Passover, though.

          6. Judaism has been far too clever to recognise the Christ, the Anointed One; deferred gratification, I suppose, and a tad puritan. Another reason why the hedonist CH wasn’t religious.

            Now, roast lamb with rosemary, that’s something I could get quite rabbinical about.

          7. Jews turned noses up at many so-called messiashs over the millenia, even as recently as in our latest generation. JC, if he ever existed, was simply no exception.
            Now, on to the lamb: I’ve rosemary growing in the garden. Let’s get cooking!

          8. Darn, I’m such a light weight. Here, I even wrote a blog about sitting shiva for Hitch by toasting him with Johnny Walker Black for the first seven nights, and look what happens. I start writing frisky comments! Shame on me!

          9. Well, I don’t think that Ant Allen will, but I can…

            I sign my name with two large lower-case As, an affectation I copied from my father. When I sign with just my initials, I write one A inside the other, which looks rather like a commercial at sign, which is what I started using as my sign off on VMS at uni in the 1980s.

            The / was added from Unix usage, where, say, /antallan would be shorthand for my home directory.

            I also like to think that @ represents an ant’s head and / one of its antennae… although I’ve been known as Ant only since 1991.

            /@

          10. My apology for the misspelling (allen instead of allan). Interesting signature and history, though. Is “ant” a humorous counter to “uncle”?

          11. Accepted. It’s a common enough mistake that I have ant.allen@example.com set up as an alias for my primary email address!

            Ant is just short for Anthony, common in the UK (and more popular now that Tony), but still almost unheard of elsewhere. North American and continental European clients quite often start their first conversations with me with, “Is that really your name?”!

            /@

          14. @Ant,

            ‘Ant and Dec’ are a duo of TV presenters, ubiquitous on witless Saturday night ‘entertainment’ programmes, watched by people who have never heard of Christopher Hitchens.

            They saturate the airwaves with their tiresome, chirpy, Geordie duopoly. Ant and Dec go together like ‘fish and chips’, Larkin and death, and Sartre and ennui.

            On behalf of the 14 Brits who can’t bear And and Dec, I apologise for the deeply unoriginal ‘wit’ to which you are subjected by my fellow country-men, and I mean it!

          16. Pace docatheist, I’m not sure “new atheist” ever stung, but one objection was that there was nothing new about the “new atheists”: Dawkins et al. were little different from old atheists such as Robert Ingersoll.

            Of course, it works better if you pronounce “gnu” with a silent G, which seems commoner in American than in British English.

            /@

            PS. It might also suggest an atheistic bull in a theistic china shop… ?

          18. Totally OT, Ant…as one whose surname used to be Nielsen, I can match you story for story on number & frequency of misspellings.

          20. Oh, and now there are some people who think my name is “Allan Ant” — I even got booked into a hotel in Geneva as “Mr.* Ant”!

            /@

            * & that’s wrong too!

          22. @Diane G.

            You’re lucky; have you seen Irish Gaelic orthography? The language has whole words in which all the letters are silent.

            Prhaps this accounts, in some obscure dialectical way, for the Hibernian literary bent.

  10. This sounds patronizing to me, like the joke is on Hitch. Sure, God acknowledges (tongue-in-cheek) Hitch has outstanding debating skills and logic and all, but clearly by the fact that He’s tweeting undercuts the whole thing – He exists beyond Hitchen’s logic. Which is exactly what theologists claim – you may have perfect reasoning to doubt God’s existence, but God is untouchable by mere human reason!

    2. Perhaps, if you believe “God is untouchable by mere human reason”, it is your belief which clouds your view and blocks the humor. Hitch was known for his irony. Having a nonexistant god send a tweet is about as ironic as humor can get.

      1. William Lane Craig moves with precisely this dishonest gambit, that “God is untouchable by mere human reason”; nevertheless, that through the intercession of the Holy Spirit our reason can establish the existence of God. And that one can not, through reason alone, undermine or overthrow that faith.

        He tries to have it both ways by maintaining that one can buttress one’s faith through reason but that one can not disprove it through the same process. That, as Sam Harris would say, is a conversation stopper.

        Yet another example of the theists’ dissonance, in thinking two diametrically opposed ideas at the same time.

        Pathetic, integrity-light, shameful and adolescent.

      2. All it takes is to add a smiley at the end of the tweet, or to read it in a tone as if there was a smiley. It is just too easily read as sarcastic to me, that I could not agree this is the best tweet ever that atheists could manage for Hitch. The joke about Hitch asking for a priest and converting him to atheism – that was better.

        1. Lighten up, DV; it’s just funny!

          The worst lecture I ever had was on humour, in which some lecturer droned on about why and how ‘X’ was funny.

        2. It’s 140 characters DV. There mightn’t have been room for a smiley.

          In any case, +1 for leaving overwrought analysis to theologians and just taking the joke at face value.

    3. “God is untouchable by mere human reason!”

      Tell that to Oolon Colluphid and the Babel fish:
      “‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.”

  12. This was pretty good too:

    Hitchens dies. His book #GodisNotGreat trends. Religious people threaten violence. The point of his book is proven. Hitchens for the win.

    — Luke Adams (@luketadams)

    /@

  13. How soon can I get that tweet on a T-shirt? Or, better yet, a jacket or bag, so it can be shown every single day!

  14. In case it hasn’t been mentioned, or mentioned but missed by me among the many Hitch posts in the past couple of days, I want to recommend Ian McEwan’s piece in the NY Times today http://liten.be//u4aCk recounting his last few visits to Hitchens in the hospital. Inspiring and very Hitchish.

        1. It’s honour and offer…

          Is He suggesting that more than Mary may have been given an honour by Him that couldn’t be refused?

  16. I’d like to think that Hitch would be happy to know that his death has helped create one of the most entertaining threads ever on this site. Thanks to you all for some great laughs. Humour helps alleviate the pain and sadness.

    1. Here’s a heart-warming Christmas story to tickle the cockles of your godless, morally relativistic soul, a little apéritif before the 40% proof of M.R. James and Scrooge.

      This morning Sunday, the one before the day we celebrate Jesus’ birth, my wife passed the car park of the local Catholic Church; the attendant had placed temporary bollards preventing entry and, hence exit. An irascible and by no means religiously serene Catholic congregant could not drive out of the car park. My wife saw the guy, in frustration try to run down his fellow-religionist, the car park attendant.

      It’s true!

      J.G. Ballard crashes through the barriers of the Christian death cult.

      Peace and goodwill to all; have a cool Yule.

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