Mitch Cronin Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 I've seen 'Hitch' in so many videos now, his evident aging and eventual "illness" are almost as familiar as anyone in my own family.... I'd always wondered which, of his zillions of online videos, was his last... In any case, You may well be interested in his last public words, but of at least equal value here is a terrific 12 or 13 minute introduction/tribute from Richard Dawkins.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud973COUVYs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEFCON Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 We should I think appreciate the work of C. Hitchens; if nothing else, he was as brave as he was intelligent. Mitch; I haven’t seen everything Hitchens has to offer and only recently obtained a copy of, ‘god is not Great’. I was wondering if you might point me to a video or another source where Hitchens advances any thoughts he might have with respect to his thoughts on the act of dying? IOW’s was death a ‘final’ act in his view, or a step etc. in an eternal process? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acsidestick Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 After a brief search on the internet under "what were Chris Hitchens last words" there is a great deal of disagreement, though I would trust the words of his widow when she says that the subject of God did not come up.It doesn't matter what his last words were, but I believe his next ones were "uh oh". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seeker Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 It doesn't matter what his last words were, but I believe his next ones were "uh oh".Why would you think that? ...or is it meant to be a joke? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEFCON Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 I watched a video made late in Hitchens life in which he's asked if he was going to rethink his view on God etc. Hitchens responded in the negative, but the debate didn't go any deeper in exploring the potential for the continuation of the soul or our life force in the post-death environment. Can anyone help answering the question; did Hitchens believe life was a terminal event, or was death a doorway to something else? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitch Cronin Posted October 4, 2014 Author Share Posted October 4, 2014 I can't offer you any links, but I feel fairly safe in saying he'd probably have said something like, "I have no idea, but I've never seen any evidence that there's anything else."Interestingly, one of his later-in-life, atheist speaking partners, Dr. Lawrence Krauss... a high energy particle physicist - recently answered a similar question by saying "I hope when I die I'm buried so that all of my remains can go on feeding the earth and the moss and the plants and animals, like they've fed me for my whole life." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zan Vetter Posted October 5, 2014 Share Posted October 5, 2014 Huh, surprising (or is it) number of atheists here. Check out this new initiative www.openlysecular.orgSeems to build on Hitchens' and certainly Dawkins' writings in the past decade. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IFG Posted October 5, 2014 Share Posted October 5, 2014 After a brief search on the internet under "what were Chris Hitchens last words" there is a great deal of disagreement, though I would trust the words of his widow when she says that the subject of God did not come up.It doesn't matter what his last words were, but I believe his next ones were "uh oh".I'm also inclined to believe his widow's account. I recently read his last book "Mortality", reflecting on the fact that his end was drawing nigh. Although not literally his "last words", he did therein have the following comment:Pursuing the prayer thread through the labyrinth of the web, I eventually found a bizarre “Place Bets” video. This invites potential punters to put money on whether I will repudiate my atheism and embrace religion by a certain date or continue to affirm unbelief and take the hellish consequences. This isn’t, perhaps, as cheap or as nasty as it may sound. One of Christianity’s most cerebral defenders, Blaise Pascal, reduced the essentials to a wager as far back as the seventeenth century. Put your faith in the almighty, he proposed, and you stand to gain everything. Decline the heavenly offer and you lose everything if the coin falls the other way. (Some philosophers also call this Pascal’s Gambit.)Ingenious though the full reasoning of his essay may be - he was one of the founders of probability theory - Pascal assumes both a cynical god and an abjectly opportunist human being. Suppose I ditch the principles I have held for a lifetime, in the hope of gaining favor at the last minute? I hope and trust that no serious person would be at all impressed by such a hucksterish choice. Meanwhile, the god who would reward cowardice and dishonesty and punish irreconcilable doubt is among the many gods in which (whom?) I do not believe. I don’t mean to be churlish about any kind intentions, but when September 20 comes, please do not trouble deaf heaven with your bootless cries. Unless, of course, it makes you feel better.Re: Your final comment - "Uh oh"?! Should he have been worried? Cheers, IFG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.