One minute Falwell an evil genius swindler, the next minute he can’t read.

Get your story straight, man!

This tactic is effective even though it is not logically valid.

jdpaz on May 16, 2007 at 7:30 PM

Very few here appear interested in whether or not their position is logically consistent.

Well, I’m sure atheists who write for popular right-wing blogs with a substantial readership of believers aren’t going to openly express their pride in Hitchens, but the rest of us really don’t mind. Frankly, we’re sick of politely accepting the blithe contempt heaped upon us by the “culture of life” so it’s really no skin off our noses if Hitchens comes off as rude or insensitive.

I feel no joy about Falwell’s death, but I didn’t feel any joy about his life either.

Enrique on May 16, 2007 at 11:18 AM

Frankly, an awful lot of the “blithe contempt” posted in this site is directed at those of faith by you. I haven’t seen anyone here ragging on you because you are an atheist. Most of the comments directed at you are in response to your childish insults. You are truly broken dude. Consider getting some help with your issue.

Entelechy on May 16, 2007 at 4:35 PM

Extraordinarily well said.

Don’t be ridicules, the “you” in question was never a personal pronoun but clearly and obviously an editorial pronoun. Furthermore AP has extensively displayed the intellectual capacity to differentiate the difference between personal and editorial pronouns. The arguments that AP has set forth are a combination of outrage and devils advocacy.

The outrage aspect of his arguments can be seen in his “failure to believe” suppositions. Believing that a failure to believe results in condemnation is equivalent to asserting, what gives God the right to reject me if I do not believe in him? This line of reasoning presupposes that it is God who is doing the rejecting and that the basis upon which God makes that decision is inequitable to the individual being rejected.

The Devils advocacy aspect of his argument can be seen in his “A truly loving God” supposition. This is more or less the same argument Satan, that old serpent used on Eve in the Garden of Eden, “Did God really say”. Both arguments by implication challenge the motives of God by suggesting that if God were really who he claims to be that he would not behave in this manner.

AP, you’re still just arguing from outrage.

jdpaz on May 16, 2007 at 3:32 PM

I think that AP’s tone may come more from way we’ve personalized our theology and applied it to him. In several posts above I read explanations of judgement which I largely agreed with theologically, addressed to AP with the pronoun “you”. As in, “you will be damned because…” This is about as un-winsome as we can get, and comes across as a poke in the eye; whatever value there may have been in the discussion is lost after that.

I expect that most of thsoe who wrote those posts would agree that the points they made would apply to any and every one, and would read just the same using ‘we’ or some relative pronoun.

CyberCypher: Why is it that I get the uneasy feeling that AllahPundit does this on purpose in order to provoke the large number of Christians that hang-out here at HotAir — with the net effect of a substantial increase in traffic and posts? If my suspicions are true, then how can HotAir say that it has any more credibility than Hitchens (all religions are evil) or Falwell (9/11 was God’s vengence on America and caused by gay people) or even Fred Phelps. You are on a slippery slope here, my friend. HotAir should not serve as an enabler for reprehensible human refuse like Hitchens. Providing these people with a forum to spread their message of hate is a sin that only the MSM is worthy of — I had higher hopes for HotAir.

I don’t understand this. I thought the point of HotAir was to provide a conservative prospective on current events, not to serve as a sanctuary where religious folks can be secure from having their beliefs examined. Michelle and Bryan often post post religious items and no one complains, even when, as with Bryan’s InstaPundit post, we respectfully disagree. Despite what you appear to believe, atheists can be intelligent, analytical, conservative, and witty as AllahPundit demonstrates everyday.

How do so many of you know that God is a “he”?

I can only speak for Christianity: He calls Himself a “He” although not actually male. Man and Woman were both created in His Image.

I think Hitchens does believe in God–and hates His guts.

baldilocks on May 16, 2007 at 4:14 PM

That aptly describes many atheists that I’ve met, but then they were usually so emo their wrists slit themselves.

I don’t think it applies to Hitchens, not exactly. I think he’s just a profoundly bitter, unhappy man who in his heart wishes the best for mankind. Like most honest atheists, the problem of pain and his own definitions of justice prevent him from accepting the reality of God.

If anyone ever wondered what the wailing and knashing of teeth looked like, well, you just saw a perfect display of it from this scared, scared man.

csdeven on May 16, 2007 at 10:35 AM

csdeven, you couldn’t be more wrong. Whatever one thinks of Christopher Hitchens, agreeing or not with him, he is a courageous man. In fact, he has more courage than many of us bundled together. This assessment is not based on his writings only. It’s outside of the context of this thread to list all the items, with explanations.

I don’t defend his timing on CNN and in Slate. It’s always best to wait until the dead are cold and buried, or laid to rest according to their customs/desires, before speaking ill of them (unless they are the ilk of Zarquawi).

Phelps tops the list. No one else needs to follow. None of them, so far, have listed all the flaws in Mr. Falwell, including his stand on segregation. Those of you who claim the media destorted him are simply wrong. His statements stand for themselves. He functioned in front of modern technology. However, we should all give him and his family the decency of time, before yammering about him.

How do so many of you know that God is a “he”? If there is a god, he/she loves Christopher and AP, and all of us. There are many specimens out there with much worse traits than us, and with fewer talents.

Christopher has always claimed to be a recovered Marxist and a continuing drinker. No hypocrisy here.

On the Hitchens hygiene – I read an article once with a great deal dedicated to this topic – he looks, acts and talks gruff, but is in reality one of the cleanest (literally) people, mannered (with his circle and family), dedicated, moral, convicted, reliable, etc.

On the WoT and his courageous fight against jihadism, with risks to his and his family’s life, he is admirable. His fight began long before 9/11/01.

He said these things, and more, while Mr. Falwell lived – thus the “book selling” theory holds no water.

I disagree with him at times, but I’m happy he is a citizen of the U.S., that he lives in our time, and I defend his right to be who he is.

baldilocks, du bist wunderbar (ich habe dir elektronisch 2 Briefe geschrieben eine Weile her), but Mr. Hitchens does not believe in any gods. And in the U.S. wonderfully he is free not to.

Does Hitch look like he’s been drinking?

Tim Burton on May 16, 2007 at 11:22 AM

Is the Pope Polish German?

I think Hitchens does believe in God–and hates His guts.

Finished Hitch’s latest book today after purchasing it yesterday. I think people should be aware, and painfully so, that Hitchens said much the same thing about Falwell when he was alive and he would be a hypocrite to say different things simply because Falwell was dead.

Hitchens was painfully and brutally honest. I don’t disagree with what he said, but I do think he might have waited until Falwell was buried. Why sugar coat the man’s many errors in judgement simply because he thought he was doing the work of God? Don’t get it.

This is a stronger (or shall I say, more clarifying) argument.

But I have problems with the idea that honest agnosticism, among a whole host of other specifics, is “evil.” So we’re at an impasse: God doesn’t author nor control evil, rather gives man free will to choose it, but he has a hand somewhere in deciding and/or communicating what is evil.

According to Scripture (Arminians please stay out of this argument), man does not have free will. Man’s free will was lost when Adam sinned. He was our federal (representative) head. Man cannot choose to believe in the Christian God one way or another.

And I personally can’t see non-belief in a specific religion as evil, especially since:

1. Occam’s Razor gives various religious leaders throughout history plenty of motivation to state as much, to gain worldly influence over fellow man.

2. When you consider #1 in light of the fact that man cannot fully fathom God’s will anyway, yet still attempts to do so via the man-made doctrine of various religions.

3. When so many people I know, including authors of popular conservative videoblogs, are otherwise such good people, in spite of being non-believers in a specific religion.

Again, hard to fathom.

Again, see the Wilson-Hitchens debate. We first have to establish that atheism is even a logically tenable position. There are certainly man-made religions out there, which can be refuted on their logical inconsistency. Christianity is the only one logically defensible.

Those arguing from a position of faith can make many rational arguments based on logical resoning, within the bounds of certain essential presumptions.

And slepticism, by its nature, will inevitably not be satisfied by such certainty without greater justification.

Belief in the infallibility and irreducible veracity of scripture is an essential premise without which we cannot have any fruitful discussion on matters of faith. We can have discussions of worldly affairs and worldly considerations of justice, but how can we ever discuss the nature of God when we don’t even agree on the definition of what God is?

Additionally, skepticism is neither a substantive nor consistent worldview. At its best, it is a tool to be applied on fully rational (scientific) questions cluttered with contradictory evidence, a means of synthesis. Skepticism cannot reduce beyond the nature of Man, e.g. cogito ergo sum. How can it possibly reduce beyond that to the nature of God? If we cannot agree that Man has a soul, what use is there in discussing the nature of that soul or the destiny of it?

God is posited, not deduced, and even still the knowledge of His existence and essence are not, indeed cannot be, generated in the rational mind alone. God is the starting point, the “beginning of knowledge.” Those that do not start from that point do so by choice and in doing so have taken a position that prevents any agreement on issues involving God. There is no argument I can give you to prove His existence or to prove any statement regarding His design for creation in absence of a common agreement on a systematic theology.

“He that hath an ear, let him hear.”

From Job we find there is no “[Judeo-]Christian concept of fairness”.

There is nothing necessarily illogical about the Creator saying, “These are the rules. Follow them.”

AP, you’re still just arguing from outrage.

It seems to me a truly loving God would want to redeem all his creations in the afterlife and forgive those who didn’t know the joys of worshipping him on earth.

Yes he does want to, but he will not force you to do something that you do not want to do. He cannot forgive you if you refuse to be forgiven or even to admit that you need to be forgiven.

That’s the punishment for nonbelieve: “suffering” during life by not knowing Christ’s love, or whatever.

God is not going to punish anyone for not believing. It is not unbelief that damns a person to eternal suffering. The word sin is an old archery term which means to miss the target, in theological terms it means to fall short of perfection.

When Adam and Eve transgressed God’s laws they sold not only themselves into slavery to transgression but all of their future offspring. This is called original sin and the payment, the reward granted for that transgression was eternal separation from perfection and from God.

That original sin like money placed in an investment portfolio paid dividends, those dividends are your own personal sins, and it is a combination of these transgressions original and personal that damn a person not their disbelief.

You will not be damned for not believing, you will be damned for falling short of perfection. This is why Christ’s sacrifice is so important. God knew that you could never overcome your imperfections, imperfections that were passed on to your against your will. So he devised a method to circumvent his own requirements of perfection.

He did this by allowing someone who was both 100 percent human and 100 percent perfect to pay the penalty for your imperfections in your place, and for that payment to take place all you have to do is believe that the payment has been made.

If you don’t believe then the balance due on your failure to be perfect is due upon your death. And if you refuse to allow someone who can pay it do so then that leaves only you to make a payment that you can never make.

So then, best guess — what’s a nonbeliever like me in store for in the afterlife? Abio seems to think I’m headed for the lake of fire, or something much worse: the total absence of God’s love, which in the Christian cosmology is infinitely more painful. You seem to be taking the “live a good life and don’t worry too much about belief” approach. Sounds good to me, but I must say, belief in God does seem to count pretty highly with most religious people as a key to redemption.

Sorry. Let me try to explain.

I do believe that belief is a necessary component of salvation. However, I believe that it is our sin, not our unbelief, that condemns us.

The emphasis may be one of responsibility. To say that God judges me for my actions,” is to admit that the responsibility is mine. To say that “God condemns me simply for my unbelief,” is to lay that responsibility upon God, not to mention a mis-statement of what orthodox Christianity believes.

As for the afterlife – I have no idea what it holds for you, or anyone. I don’t presume to have that insight.

If we are talking about the concept of “hell,” I don’t know what it is. I don’t happen to think (and, I am an Evangelical), that it is necessarily an eternal lake of fire, or a state of unending punishment, or, a place where someone is in a state of constant physical pain. The Bible is full of metaphors, and metaphors should not be taken quite so literally. What I do believe about “hell” is that it is a place of separation from God. What that means is anybody’s guess. But, I personally don’t think it involves fire.

Quite similarly for the other side of the coin. I don’t know what heaven is like, I have no clue. What I believe about it is that it is a place of eternal relationship with God, the creator, and with God’s people…

belief in God does seem to count pretty highly with most religious people as a key to redemption.

I don’t know, Allah. I don’t believe in the IRS, but I still have to pay taxes…

God is sovereign over all, both good and evil, though he is not the author of evil. …. Picture a mosaic, if you will. Individual tiles may appear ugly from up close, but when we step backward, the picture is beautiful. So it is with God’s sovereignity.

This is a stronger (or shall I say, more clarifying) argument.

But I have problems with the idea that honest agnosticism, among a whole host of other specifics, is “evil.” So we’re at an impasse: God doesn’t author nor control evil, rather gives man free will to choose it, but he has a hand somewhere in deciding and/or communicating what is evil.

And again we arrive back at: Q: But “why is that evil?” Answer: “Because.”

And I personally can’t see non-belief in a specific religion as evil, especially since:

1. Occam’s Razor gives various religious leaders throughout history plenty of motivation to state as much, to gain worldly influence over fellow man.

2. When you consider #1 in light of the fact that man cannot fully fathom God’s will anyway, yet still attempts to do so via the man-made doctrine of various religions.

3. When so many people I know, including authors of popular conservative videoblogs, are otherwise such good people, in spite of being non-believers in a specific religion.

Again, hard to fathom.