Christopher Hitchens talks about dying of cancer.
And as always, he’s surprising and real and intelligent and, frankly, awesome.
Comments
Oh geez. I had no idea he was dying.
I really like Hitchens. I don’t always agree with him 100%, but the world definitely needs more people like him.
Also, if you were a fly on the wall where a conversation with him and Martin Amis was happening, do you think you’d know what they were talking about 25% of the time? I’d take the under.
This is interesting because I was just discussing the myth of the “no atheists in foxholes” saying, at least based on my own experience. I wondered if going through what I’ve been going through with my son and spending so much time in hospitals seeing senseless misery, sickness, and death among children of all people would have turned me towards any sense of faith or belief. And if anything it’s had the opposite affect and strengthened my disbelief exponentially. It sounds like Hitchens is having the same effect facing death.
Also, spending so much time in these hospitals and seeing people wearing religious paraphenalia or garb (be they crucifix jewelry, traditional hindu or muslim garb, yarmulkes, etc.) crying and shouting and just generally having a hard time with the misery and suffering of the ones they love…….the thing is that I would be and have been handling this the same way they are and I’m an avowed and hardcore atheist. But isn’t one of the reasons people always give for faith and the superiority of faith how much easier it makes life’s struggles? How it gives meaning to our pain? If that’s the case then why are these people of presumably devout faith dealing with things the same way I am. Where is their comfort? Granted I can’t presume to know what is really going on in their hearts, minds, and heads but it just seems that the solace promised by those of faith always preaching to the unconverted rarely actually manifests itself in comfort in these situations.
Who knows. Obviously a bigger question than any of us can answer or comprehend. But still it’s something that continues to confound me.
I finally had a chance to read this article.
Having gone through the experience, I found it to be a refreshingly accurate portrayal of the diagnosis and treatment, but one that I’d describe as “glimpses.” Every day has different emotions, physical reactions, schedules. He didn’t get into that, and I’m glad.
My favorite paragraph was the third, where he talks about the “new land” and its optimism, humor, language and intrusiveness.
I also agree with him on the use of the word “battle.” It implies that you have any control, that you can do anything to get through it. You can have the willpower and the good health but unfortunately that isn’t the complete answer. I thought this was quite poignant:
“Myself, I love the imagery of struggle. I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient. Allow me to inform you, though, that when you sit in a room with a set of other finalists, and kindly people bring a huge transparent bag of poison and plug it into your arm, and you either read or don’t read a book while the venom sack gradually empties itself into your system, the image of the ardent soldier or revolutionary is the very last one that will occur to you. You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water.”
Kevin, I am sorry to hear your child has been ill. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be.
On faith, I personally found it, and still find it, useless. I suppose it is some sort of comfort to believe in a higher power to take care of you when your body won’t do it any more. I believed that science would take care of me, and it did. Praying or not praying would not change the outcome unless I took out the science part.
Of course, I say all this while discussing with my husband the possibility of raising a (non-existent) future child in the church because both of us had good experiences being a part of it growing up and feel that the basic teachings are good for kids to learn…that it can’t hurt to have what we teach our children emphasized by the church (probably Lutheran not Catholic like I went through), we can teach them other faiths, and they can make their own decision later.
Sue, that paragraph killed me. And while I can’t even begin to fathom what you or Hitchens went through, if it ever comes to that, I hope I can handle it with that sort of grace and objectivity. The latter, I think, is highly underrated.
As for raising your kids in the church, I think it’s important to consider consider where the church’s (or any church’s) teachings came from. If we accept that they are not handed down from on high by God, then we conclude that they evolved through society; through our naturally occurring altruistic tendencies. Dawkins himself has an entire book dedicated to the biology of such tendencies evolving (The Selfish Gene) genetically and culturally.
I, personally, theorize that the methods of the (or a) church can only serve to undermine the sort of things you’d teach your kid about being a good person. When a kid asks why it’s wrong to steal, which answer would have more lasting effects? “Because it is a sin and God will send sinners to hell” or “because you have harmed another person and we all have to try to create a better world to live in where people don’t hurt each other for personal gain.”
My parents taught me the latter, without the aid of the church, and I’m only a little bit of an asshole.
That’s really interesting John, I’m glad I brought it up. Kale has the opinion that church and religion was invented to scare people into doing the right thing. As in, all these stories were made up to teach people to make the right decision and not kill their neighbor over a chicken or to be respectful to your parents. He doesn’t really believe in the church teachings or in God, heaven, hell, etc. I don’t either. But what we both remember from that experience is being treated well and taught good values. His background is the opposite of mine, so when his mom would disappear for hours, he’d hang out at the church across the street.
I guess I was looking at the values taught MINUS the God and Jesus part.
Have you read the book The Selfish Gene? This sounds like the perfect book for Kale to read based on that brief description. Who is the author? He did read God is Not Great by Hitchens and liked it.
Thank you for your first comment. You would be able to handle the situation with grace and dignity and a ton of objectivity, but I hope you never, ever, ever have to. I chose to be strong about it, open and public about it and accepting of it. But the bottom line is, I was lucky for once in my life.
The Selfish Gene is by Richard Dawkins and it’s sort of what put him on the map, before he became an atheist crusader. That he would propose that morality and ethics were evolved biologically and sociologically so offended the religious right, that they made him a target of criticism and protest, which lead to him writing more anti-faith oriented books like the Blind Watchmaker or the God Delusion.
I have read it and it’s, perhaps, a bit dry as it is, first and foremost, a biology book. But my god if it isn’t crazy interesting and, considering Dawkins is a doctor of evolutionary science, not of religion, it’s probably his best book. Or at least the best of the ones I’ve read. I still haven’t read the God Delusion because I kinda feel like it’d be preaching to the choir (quite literally).
I dunno, I’ve just heard far too many Christians say things like, “without God, what reason do I have not to murder and steal?” Seems like they sorta missed the whole fucking point and didn’t really develop any core moralities or ethics. They just fear retribution.