The good news is that the doctor gave me a clean bill of health. Here’s something to get the weekend started.
Steve Stewart-Williams now has a Substack site (everybody does–I feel left out!), but he’s a good guy and it’s worth looking at (subscribe if you want to read it regularly). Here’s one of his posts that you can see for free: his choice of the top ten quotes by Christopher Hitchens. I’ll give just two, as you need to see them all. Click on the screenshot to read:
Two from Hitch to get you started. Most of you will have heard of these, but the first one may be his most famous (it has a Wikipedia page):
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” (This is now known as Hitchens’ razor, and is an extremely useful intellectual tool.)
“If someone tells me that I’ve hurt their feelings, I say, ‘I’m still waiting to hear what your point is.’ I’m very depressed how in this country you can be told, ‘That’s offensive!’ as if those two words constitute an argument.”
Go see the other eight. And you might have a look at his new post “Scientists censoring science,” discussing a recent paper on that topic written with a bunch of coauthors.
I don’t think I’ve come across number 9 before.
So many worthy quotes to choose from, but “If you gave Falwell an enema, you could have buried him in a matchbox,” would be on my top 10 list.
Yeah, I forgot about that one!
That list of matchbox coffins has been greatly expanded. Trump immediately comes to mind. My latest nomination would be Speaker Johnson.
A related substack (in case you were not familiar with it already)
https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/we-brought-down-the-house
I second this recommendation.
One of my favorites is, “My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.”
+1
I compile notes on Hitchens’ Razor – I give an excerpt – mostly from Wikipedia :
Begin excerpt:
“what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
The razor originated from the centuries-old philosophical Latin dictum : “Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur,”
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
Translation: What is asserted gratuitously may be denied gratuitously.
Jon R. Stone, The Routledge Dictionary of Latin Quotations (2005), p. 101. Anonymous, widely used since at least the early 19th century (e.g. The Classical Journal, Vol. 40 (1829), p. 312).
The Sagan standard is a neologism abbreviating the aphorism that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (ECREE).[1]
End excerpt
… I think the link is … here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor
And :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_standard
… was it Victor Stenger who put forth something about “proving negatives” if the evidence is expected to have been there?
I recently ran across this one from Hitchens that I hope I’ve remembered correctly:
“I don’t have a body; I am a body.”
Simple yet brilliant.
I hadn’t heard that one. but I did hear a religious person say the opposite:
“You don’t have a soul; you ARE a soul. You have a body.”
I wonder if she got it from Hitchens.
I was fortunate enough to hear him speak several times, and recall something like:
“Don’t assume the first lynch mob on the scene is the True Voice of the People.”
It was related to riots by Muslims over blasphemy, cautioning on the dubious existence of a consensus. I can’t seem to find it online.
There was a new one where he referred to how the barbarians only take the city if someone holds open the gates for them. I think it is from old literature, but not sure.
I put the link up before – check YouTube.
So glad you got a clean bill of health!
Today is the anniversary of Hitch’s death and I was looking at his quotes last night to choose one for the Deaths section below today’s Hili (I hadn’t realised that he’d died on my birthday before). There’s a very large collection (with some repeats) here: https://www.azquotes.com/author/6756-Christopher_Hitchens
Happy birthday, Jez!
Indeed. Happy Birthday.
The man who keeps track of the blessed arrivals and celestial departures ought to get a special HB for his own self.
Happy birthday!
Thanks!
First in that list: “In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.”
Steven Weinberg said something very similar: “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
I wonder who was first.
I do wish Hitchens had said “That which _is_ asserted without evidence …” rather than “That which _can be_ asserted without evidence …”. Hitchens’ Razor, in the form in which he actually said it, is just wrong: if we take “can be” literally then it’s a triviality (because anything at all _can be_ either asserted or dismissed without evidence); if we take it to mean “can legitimately be” then it’s false (e.g., arguably propositions of pure mathematics can legitimately be asserted but not dismissed without evidence) and in any case this doesn’t match how the thing is actually used.
What Hitchens meant was that something that _is_ (illegitimately) asserted without evidence may _legitimately_ be dismissed without evidence.
And yeah, this is all pedantry, but when we’re talking principles of reasoned argument I think it’s important to be correct. And the _correct_ (but inauthentic) version of Hitchens’ Razor is, indeed, a useful intellectual and rhetorical tool.
Hitchens’ Razor is genius and the Cats are gods statement is not just funny (and probably true) but is also a reminder how the very same observations can sometimes lead people to the very opposite conclusions.
Comment 4 in mod – is it ok?
One of my favorite Hitch quotes:
“It’s considered perfectly normal in this society to approach dying people who you don’t know but who are unbelievers and say, ‘Now are you going to change your mind?’ That is considered almost a polite question… But if it’s in the name of God, it has a social license. Well fuck that is what I say and will say if it’s my last breath.”
Soon after publishing “God Is Not Great”, Hitchens did a book tour which deliberately included a number of locations in the American south. In a public talk where I heard him shortly afterwards, he reminisced rather fondly about how audience members in the bible belt were pleased to discover each other at his talks.
For those of us who greatly admire Hitchens, his memoir “Hitch 22” was valuable in its personal expression, but a bit of a disappointment. Unlike his other writing, it was so
rambling and discursive that one had to wonder at the apparent lack of editing. ???
“The discovery there is no god is a great relief, because if there were, it would be like living in a celestial North Korea if there was one. You would never be able to escape.”
Indeed!