It’s so sad to see things written by Hitch still coming out after his death. But one of them, “In defense of Richard Dawkins,” which just appeared at Free Inquiry, reminds us that sometimes stridency can be a Good Thing. It also reminds us that the good that men do is not always interred with their bones.
It’s Hitchens’s response to people accusing Dawkins of cowardice for refusing to debate that odious exponent of Divine Command Theory, William Lane Craig. The piece is short, and here’s the ending.
So here again I find myself unreservedly seconding some “stridency” by Professor Dawkins. It is disgusting to preach mass ethnic murder out of holy books. It is moreover, in the current highly charged situation in Palestine, fantastically irresponsible. Israeli settler zealotry is financed and encouraged to an important degree by American Christian evangelicals: if they seem to be advocating or excusing genocide it helps lower the threshold at which these horrors can be introduced and discussed. Such a thing seems to me to call for unequivocal condemnation. As to whether Craig is invited to disown mass murder from the platform, or as a condition of taking part, I don’t much care. But I do think I know who the demagogue is in this situation and who is the honest professional attempting to make the best use of his time in the interests of scholarship. At least two cheers for stridency!
Hitchslaps from the grave!
As I say, let’s keep the new atheism strident. We have lots to be strident about. Thanks for linking this.
+1
Christopher Hitchens is the template for stridency as a virtue. I’ve been listening to the audiobook of god is not Great, read by the author. A book so clearly written to be read out loud. It’s been making my own phrasings rather more pointed. I most fervently recommend the audiobook to everyone reading this blog.
I mean, of course, website.
I couldn’t agree more. The audiobook is a treat.
I made a similar remark on another thread: I don’t think what most of the “new” atheists do most of the time constitutes “stridency.” Hitchens could be very aggressive, but not gratuitously, I think.
I think what we mean when we say “three cheers for stridency” is really “three cheers for not compromising even a little,” or “three cheers for having the guts to say what needs to be said.”
Theists, by “stridency”, mean “uncalled for behavior.” I’ve yet to see a prominent atheist spokesperson engage in something I’d consider uncalled for behavior.
Semantic baloney, I know. But that’s what I think.
“Aggressive”, or “Assertive”?
My point exactly.
🙂
You might as well add ‘not completely servile’ to that list since it’s all seen as the same to the religious.
… But one of them, “In defense of Richard Dawkins,” just appeared at Free Inquiry, reminds us that sometimes stridency can be a Good Thing.
Exactly. Paraphrasing Barry Goldwater’s “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” one might reasonably argue that stridency in defense of democracy is virtually a virtue.
Apropos of which I recently ran across an article byTerry Eagleton, though I think there are some problematic dimensions to his argument, which strongly supported Hitchens in that position:
One of the more agreeable aspects of Christopher Hitchens’ polemic against religion, God Is Not Great, is its author’s ready willingness to declare that he thinks religion poisonous and disgusting. Perhaps he finds it mildly embarrassing in his new, post-Marxist persona that “Religion is poison” was the slogan under which Mao launched his assault on the people and culture of Tibet. But he is right to stick to his guns even so. Beliefs are not to be respected just because they are beliefs. Societies in which any kind of abrasive criticism constitutes “abuse” clearly have a problem.
Very good, I was just thinking of the Goldwater quote too! The paraphrase could be extended along the lines of Accomodationism in dealing with religious sensitivities is no virtue.
I’m beginning to think that that is definitely a bridge too far. All very well to give some credibility to the metaphors of religion, but when they cross the Rubicon into literalism – turning a useful servant into a very bad master – that is the time to be somewhat callous about “religious sensitivities”.
“I [Hitchens] , for example, am a self-taught amateur writer who quite enjoys getting a bit scruffy in debates with those who think that Earth was designed with them in mind”
This is a perverse understatement. If Hitchens is an amateur writer, what does that make the rest of us who wish we could at least skim the surface of his prosaic and literary acumen?
Scribblers in jotters. In crayon.
/@
An “amateur” is one who does it for the love of it. Hitchens obviously loved it. He didn’t say he did it only because he loved it.
In the case of Hitchens, who was at the top of his game, and to whom no other wordsmith would presume to offer professional advice, it would seem that any further improvement would come from continued and flourishing autodidacticism.
I do hope that Hitchens doesn’t leave the kind of unfilled hole that Carl Sagan seems to have managed to.
None of my other favourites are as well-read or well-traveled in the sorts of nasty places that gave him the ability to underscore how yes, indeed, he would be frightened of a group coming back from prayer in a laundry list of places all beginning with the letter B.
Yes that was brilliant.
So poignant to read these words with the great man gone. Who is left to turn these phrases? I cherish them, not just for their content but for their inimitable style.
I’m curious. Maybe somebody here can help clarify something for me.
What’s the difference between “strident” and “uppity”?
Cheers,
b&
If you wrote that while standing you were uppity, if you were also walking at the time then you were strident and uppity.
Nah…can’t be. I mean, it was all the sitting that got people called “uppity” in the sixties…Ms. Parks sitting on the bus, the Greensboro Four sitting down for a cup of coffee at Woolworth’s….
Cheers,
b&
Willian Lane Craig should no longer be allowed pass off his torrents of suedo-intellectual apologetics nonsense as real debate. His only real credentials that he has earned is that he has managed to coerce so many smart people into playing into his game. We should hope that this will finally now be brought to an end.
Thunderf00t, the Brit YouTube vlogger, has this to say: William Lane ‘Two Citations’ Craig, Academic Midget
HERE is T/f00t’s blog where one can stay abreast of Craig’s fans [or maybe it’s WLC himself?] attempts to shut down T/foot’s YouTube channel through the use of DMCAs ~ a favourite sneaky STFU manoeuvre employed by the religious YouTubers against their YouTube vlogging critics
“Divine Command Theory”? Is it a theory? How about a more appropriate label, like:
insanity
bullshit
garbage
arrogance
barbarianism
(subscribing)
Jerry wrote, “It’s so sad to see things written by Hitch still coming out after his death. ”
I think otherwise. While it’s sad that Hitchens died, I think it is fantastically glorious that these works are still coming forth. Think about it: lying there knowing he had only days remaining, tortured with pain and powerful mind-numbing opiates, he continued to keep his work at a high standard, and with dignity stared the ‘specter of death’ in the face while soldiering on. He could have well just given into the situation and stopped working, but chose to sit comfortably in deaths’s arms with the same spirit he embraced life.
It, as Dawkins says, dispels the scurrilous lie that atheists are scared of death, and lose their dignity by falling on their knees and begging the almighty for reprieve.
“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ….”
I think it’s marvellous to know there is more of Hitch still to be published. How much more, I wonder, and how will we know it’s all out? A Hitchens halting problem.