Christopher Hitchens On the MSM and Rageboy

[Annie]

So what is it the media wants us to think? Skip Rageboy, him we understand.

http://www.slate.com/id/2169020/

Look Forward to Anger
It's impossible to satisfy "Rage Boy" and his ilk. It's stupid to try.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 25, 2007, at 1:46 PM ET

If you follow the link, you will be treated to some scenes from the strenuous life of a professional Muslim protester in the Kashmiri city of Srinagar. Over the last few years, there have been innumerable opportunities for him to demonstrate his piety and his pissed-offness. And the cameras have been there for him every time. Is it a fatwah? Is it a copy of the Quran allegedly down the gurgler at Guantanamo? Is it some cartoon in Denmark? Time for Rage Boy to step in and for his visage to impress the rest of the world with the depth and strength of Islamist emotion...

 

[onedomino]

From the article:

The lives of Shiite Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Christians—to say nothing of atheists or secularists—are considered by Sunni militants to be of little or no account. And yet they accuse those who criticize them of bigotry!

True enough, and then some. Also true is that Hictchens has little use for any religion whatsoever, not just Islam. The Hitchens argument in his book, "God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" is that all religion is a negative influence on society. Frankly, it is hard to see how Tibetan Buddhism poisoned the rifles of the PLA, or how Mother Teresa poisoned the lives of the dispossessed, or how St. Augustine’s “City of God” poisoned human intellectual development. Hitchens’ above remark was easy to make. His general thesis regarding the maladaptive nature of all religion emerges from his self-professed atheism. I have yet to read Hitchens where his analysis goes beyond intellectual condescension to offer more than superficial observation.

 

[Annie]

From the article: True enough, and then some. Also true is that Hictchens has little use for any religion whatsoever, not just Islam. The Hitchens argument in his book, "God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" is that all religion is a negative influence on society. Frankly, it is hard to see how Tibetan Buddhism poisoned the rifles of the PLA, or how Mother Teresa poisoned the lives of the dispossessed, or how St. Augustine’s “City of God” poisoned human intellectual development. Hitchens’ above remark was easy to make. His general thesis regarding the maladaptive nature of all religion emerges from his self-professed atheism. I have yet to read Hitchens where his analysis goes beyond intellectual condescension to offer more than superficial observation.

True about Hitchens, condescension, and religion. He debated his brother and consensus was he lost.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/footnoted/index.php?id=104

 

[onedomino]

True about Hitchens, condescension, and religion. He debated his brother and consensus was he lost.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/footnoted/index.php?id=104

From your link, the perfect rebuttal to Hitchens:

...the fault I find in his thinking is that somehow religious belief systems are inherently more dangerous than other belief systems. Political belief systems in communist China, the Soviet Union, and Cambodia have killed tens of millions. From my perspective, the danger is not in the belief system so much as the manner in which it is held. Fanatics will impose their will when they have the power and both religion and athesism have been tools for achieving political goals. Choosing to blame religion as the main culprit denies the fact that all human institutions labor under the burden that power tends to corrupt.