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| Hitchslap 22 - Don't take no thought for the morrow |
Hitchslap 22: Jesus the fraud 4:44
Got to believe in everything I say or go to hell or heaven
Willing to grant the immaculate conception, the virgin birth, and the resurrection, annunciation and the assumption. It doesn't prove the truth of the proposition that you should take no thought for the morrow.
Deluded bronze-age inhabitants of Palestine.
On the historicity point there are two reasons to believe in some sort of charismatic deluded rabbi
1/ The amount of fabrication needed to get him born in Bethlehem. None of the story of the nativity is true in any detail.
2/ That the witnesses to the resurrection were women, illiterate stupid deluded hysterical girls who would never have been believed in a Jewish court of the time.
It is impressive to me that the evidence is so obviously, strenuously cobbled together.
Noble words of Socrates will continue to illuminate.
‘Co-stars’:
Cited: C S Lewis, Socrates, Jesus
Link: http://youtu.be/578G-wu6z88
Hitchslap 23: Religion is the poison chalice 2:43
Implied question – why don't you accept this wonderful offer, why wouldn't you like to meet Shakespeare
. . . Corporeally reassembled
When Socrates was sentenced to death for his philosophical investigations and blasphemy he hoped to have discussions with other philosophers.
Whether it goes on or not after I die, I don't know, but I do know I want to do it while I'm alive.
I don't know enough, haven't understood enough . . .
Wouldn't have it any other way
Dead until you believe as they do. What a terrible thing to be telling children.
‘Co-stars’:
Cited: Shakespeare, Socrates
Link: http://youtu.be/k_Vex-TYA9o
Hitchslap 24: Religious right and wrong. 4:23
Christian scientist – or at least scientist who is Christian.
Mark Twain said of Mary Baker Eddy “chloroform in print”
People have been around for at least 100,000 years. They were born and they died, living not much more than 25 years. Dying of their teeth, appendix, terrible diseases, misery, malnutrition and fear. Where do the earthquakes . . .
Awful cults of sacrifice, war and rape. Struggle to make progress.
To the point where they could brew beer – a breakthrough in my opinion.
You have to believe this if you believe in mono-theism, for the first 97-98 thousand years heaven watches with indifference. 3000 years ago at the most it is decided that heaven must intervene now, but the revelation must be made to the most backward, barbaric, illiterate, superstitious and savage people in the most stony part of the world.
Not in China where they could already read. Not in the Indus valley.
Force them to cut their way through all the neighbours with slaughter, genocide and racism and settle in the only part of the middle east where there is no oil.
And without this we wouldn't know right from wrong!
‘Co-stars’:
Cited: Mary Baker Eddy, Mark Twain, Richard Dawkins, Francis Collins
Link: http://youtu.be/K7Pgxg6h1SQ
Hitchslap 25: religion poisons everything. 05:35
[If there is no god why do you spend all your life trying to convince . . .]
Not my whole career but now a major pre-occupation.
Opposition to theocracy.
Resist those who serious want to encompass the destruction of civilisation.
Mono-theistic Messianic religion wants us to die.
Can tell the yearning for things to be over, whenever you read any of its real texts.
Escatological argument that if you don't believe that there is going to be an apocalypse then you are not really a believer.
Extreme Muslims can't wait for the 'final solution'.
Cult of death to be opposed in our daily lives where there are people who only want to ruin good relationships between different people, nations, tribes . . .
When I said "Religion poisons everything" I meant that it infects us in our most basic integrity and says that we can't be moral . . . and forces us to love someone that we fear.
Though I do, some nights, stay home, I enjoy more the nights when I go out and fight against this ultimate wickedness and ultimate stupidity.
‘Co-stars’:
Cited: Rapture, Israeli settlers, Messiah
Link: http://youtu.be/k6YzS-TXT08
Hitchslap 26: Christians prey on the dying. 2:47
[Serious illness – has it shaped you view of the afterlife?]
It fractionally increases my contempt for the false consolation element of religion and my dislike for the dictatorial and totalitarian part of it.
Perfectly normal in this society to approach dying people who you don't know and say “Now are you going to change your mind?” Its considered almost a polite question.
Horrible undertone of blackmail to it. History of fraud.
People say “I'm writing to you as a friend”.
...haven't had quite the vinegar that I would like to have had
To Catholics: Would it be polite to say “You may only have a few days left but you don't have to live as a serf you know”?
I think it would be something of a breach of taste but if it is in the name of god it has a sort of licence.
‘Co-stars’:
Cited: Charles Darwin, Thomas Paine, Sam Harris
Link: http://youtu.be/Mky96adnjso
Hitchslap 27: God is a joke and the believer is the punchline. 1:40
One of the reasons I like debating the religious is that you never know what they are going to say next.
Already had a suggestion that god is only really a guru, a friend when you are in need.
He wouldn't do anything like bugger around with Job to prove a point.
For hundreds and thousands of years this kind of discussion would have been in most places impossible to have, or Sam and I would have been having it at risk of our lives.
Religion now comes to us in this smiley-faced ingratiating way because it has had to give so much ground and because we know so much more.
You have no right to forget how it behaved when it was strong, when it really did believe that it had god on its side.
‘Co-stars’:
Cited: Sam Harris
Link: http://youtu.be/0grNMmK4S8I
Hitchslap 28: Slavery and genocide with divine permission. 3:41
Whoever asked that has obviously only just come into the room.
McGrath was unusually good on this point – Dostoevsky. If god exists we have to do what he says, and if he does not exist then we can do what we like.
Is it not said of god's chosen people in the Pentateuch that they can do exactly as they like to other people with divine permission?
Have been to Iran, not allowed to sentence a woman who is a virgin to death, but religious law means she can be raped by the revolutionary guard, then she is not a virgin any more and can be sentenced to death.
Divine permission enables actions that a morally normally unbeliever would not contemplate. Genital mutilation – who would do that.
Morally normal and intelligent people find themselves saying fatuous and wicked things.
Suicide bombing community is entirely faith based
Genital mutilation community is entirely faith based
Slavery is mandated by the bible. Abolitionist might have been christians but it was about time.
Name an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer in the name of faith that couldn't have been by an infidel, and name, if you can, and this is easier, a wicked action that could only have been mandated by faith. Then you will see how silly your question was, whoever you were.
‘Co-stars’: Alistair McGrath
Cited: Dostoevsky, Poet Laureate
Link: http://youtu.be/eO-E3tnFOOk
Hitchslap Index posts: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
The next parts coming regularly. Check back for more!
Please add your comments, suggestions and corrections so that they can be included (with credit) in the final summary index that will be made up of these posts.
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