Raising a Glass to The Hitch.

Today is the first anniversary of the death of the irreplaceable Christopher Hitchens. To mark this, I will later today be raising a glass to his memory and numerous accomplishments—but in the meantime I thought some of you might like to revisit the piece I wrote upon hearing of his death last year.

A Wager: Won or Lost?

 

 

Read the free sample of The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts here.

Buy your copy of The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts now!

© 2012 Gary William Murning

Hitchens on a Sunday. Amen.

After yesterday’s brief post featuring the video of Anderson Cooper‘s interview with the ever erudite and refreshingly honest Christopher Hitchens, I’ve noticed a couple of things.

1. My page hits have increased substantially.
2. I can’t help wondering how I myself, as an atheist and in many respects, to use Hitch’s preferred noun, anti-theist, will deal with what I’m sure we can safely assume is for each and every one of us an inevitability.

Last year – in fact it’s coming up to the anniversary – I had what ultimately turned out to be a not too serious sudden-onset medical problem that resulted in my being hospitalised at five o’clock in the morning. As many of my regular readers know, I have Type II (more or less) spinal muscular atrophy. In my case it’s categorised as a “severe” physical disability. Nonetheless, I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy remarkably good health for many years. I’m disabled, not ill. Consequently, finding myself vomiting blood at five in the morning was something of a shock to the system.

Once at the hospital, however, it seemed that there wasn’t all that much to be concerned about. It looked like a fairly minor stomach bleed – most likely caused by the pinprick ulcers they eventually found. However, just as I was getting close to being discharged my Hb levels plummeted. We later found out that this was likely to have been a false reading, but at the time we didn’t know this – and given that they were having considerable problems getting a new, viable line into me… I was scared.

Of course, this was nothing like Hitch’s situation. But it’s as close as I’ve come recently. Ever, for that matter.

I was ill. Not as ill as any of us thought at that time – but I was weak, I hadn’t been eating and I think I was probably in shock. At one point, I can’t recall when, exactly, I seemed to click onto autopilot. I stopped thinking the way I normally would and simply focused on what was happening at that particular time. Things like writing novels, getting published, they became irrelevant. I sensed on that primitive level that death was a possibility – that it’s always a possibility.

So did I pray? Hitchens has talked about this extensively since his diagnosis. The religious among us – some, at least – trot out the tried and tested (and failed) “there are no atheists in foxholes“, sometimes just a little too smugly, and even dyed in the wool atheists like me find ourselves wondering what we’d do, even as we acknowledge that it’s something we haven’t as yet even contemplated resorting to in any real or meaningful way.

What many seem to completely miss when they refer to their foxholes is that for some of us, religion, the concept of gods, isn’t something from which we’ve escaped. It’s never really been there. Granted, we may have during our schooling gone through the predicated motions, but as adults it’s never been a question of rejecting god – he, she or it was never there to begin with. Certainly not in the way that people of faith experience. (I stress: for some of us.) And, so, the impulse to return to something in which we once found comfort just isn’t there.

And this is how it was for me. I’ve never depended upon gods. Even as a child, I never seriously asked expecting to receive. If I wanted love, if I wanted support – it was there, always, in the form of my parents. I didn’t have to ask.

So, no, I didn’t pray. I acquiesced to the knowledge of those around me – the doctors and nurses (although I wasn’t all that passive; I did constantly question) – and found the emotional support I needed in my parents. Had the prognosis been graver, would this have been the case? I’m pretty sure it would have been.

But just in case, let me quote Hitch on this:

As a terrified, half-aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business, though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be ‘me.’

Two sample chapters of If I Never can be read here.

To buy your copy of If I Never, please click here.

Also, UK Kindle users can now buy If I Never here. (US Kindle users here.)

© 2010 Gary William Murning

Christopher Hitchens Interviewed by Anderson Cooper.

Yet another intelligent, thought-provoking interview with Christopher Hitchens.

Two sample chapters of If I Never can be read here.

To buy your copy of If I Never, please click here.

Also, UK Kindle users can now buy If I Never here. (US Kindle users here.)

From Big Bang to Us.

I haven’t done a science related post in a while, if memory serves me well, so today I thought I’d share this great YouTube series on the history of the universe with you. There is much in it that many of you will already be familiar with, but it is nonetheless an excellent, simple explanation of many complex ideas. A valuable refresher and an excellent introduction for the beginner.

From potholer54′s YouTube site:

WE NEED YOU! — I am looking for people who can “seed” the Made Easy series, either hosting it on their websites, mailing DVDs to schools or to other ‘seeds’, or spreading through BitTorrents. If you can help spread a bit of science and counter the rolling tide of creationist ignorance, please get in touch. Message me with a description of what you can do. Thanks!

The ‘Made Easy’ series is designed to explain the evidence that shows how we got here, from the Big bang to human migration out of Africa. A better quality version will soon be available for free download from a website — details to be announced. I will be happy to send DVDs free of charge to schools after the series is finished.

The ‘Made Easy’ series of videos can be freely copied and distributed for educational purposes, but cannot be used for commercial gain in whole or in part. They cannot be altered, transformed or added to. If you use repost these videos you must attribute them to ‘Potholer54 on YouTube.”

Name: Potholer.

I’ve been a journalist for 20 years, 14 years as a science correspondent. My degree is in geology, but while working for a science magazine and several science programs I had to tackle a number of different fields, from quantum physics to microbiology. My particular talent was my ignorance. By not understanding half of what I was assigned to cover, I had to reduce scientific discoveries from the complex to the simple. If I wrote it in a way that I could understand it, then my readers could understand it.

 

Richard Dawkins TVOntario.

Part one of an excellent interview with Richard Dawkins.

I haven’t done this for a while, because I’m not all that sure that video content goes down too well with my regular readers, but this is a good one. Take a moment. You might like it.

(The parting in his hair does worry me, though.)

Let’s Pimp Again…

Carrying on from here, few more of my favourite blogs…

1. Rambling On. Lottie and her very precise Virtual Bitchslaps (and more!).
2. Hayley’s Online Soapbox. A very refreshingly sceptical and investigative approach to the “paranormal.
3. Andrew’s Tech Blog. Newly discovered. A wealth of techie info from a very nice guy whose brains I want to pick
4. Richard Dawkins’s “In the News” Section. News stories with on science, atheism and religion.
5. Wired Science. Science blog network from Wired.
6. On the Road Again. My stand-up mate, John.

[Please be aware that not being included in the list does not necessarily mean your blog falls into the "badly written blogs that claim to speak with authority on subjects they quite clearly know nothing about" category.]

Pimp.

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, but what with my “creative endeavours” and whatnot, I just haven’t got round to it.

Until now.

The blogoshere is growing on a minute by minute basis. It’s estimated, in fact, to be growing so fast that by 2020 it will have broken free of its technological confines and turned the world and everything in it to a fish-paste-like mush… or was that nanobots? Either way, it’s a force to be reckoned with — and as our blogging skills increase I’m sure the trend for so-called “real journalists” to start sweating a bit and worrying about their job security will also continue to grow. Exponentially.

But, let’s face it, there’s a whole heap of dross out there. Silly, personal websites I have no objection to. They serve a purpose for the individual concerned and more power to them. What I don’t like, however, are the badly written blogs that claim to speak with authority on subjects they quite clearly know nothing about.

With this in mind, I thought I’d take a few moments to introduce you to some of my fellow bloggers who don’t fit into this category. These are the blogs I read on a daily basis. And they are a bit good.

See what you think.

1. The Odd Blog. Mike’s mix of Internutter de-masking and commentary.
2. PD Smith. Science writer par exellence.
3. The Will Rhodes Portmanteau. Will’s political blog.
4. Nectarville. Bekki’s blog. Slow down, girl!
5. Pharyngula. ”Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal.”
6. KurzweilAI.net. Science and futurism.

… that’s all for now, but more will follow soon.

[Edit: Please be aware that not being included in the list does not necessarily mean your blog falls into the "badly written blogs that claim to speak with authority on subjects they quite clearly know nothing about" category.]

Queerer than We Can Suppose.

Richard Dawkins on the strangeness of science.

Irreligion.

I haven’t actually had chance to read this particular book, yet (will probably wait for the paperback), but it is definitely going on “the list”.

——————————

Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up

by John Allen Paulos

From: RichardDawkins.net.This little book just arrived on December 26th, and I must have missed it in the Christmas shuffle.  

A Lifelong Unbeliever Finds No Reason to Change His Mind

Are there any logical reasons to believe in God? Mathematician and bestselling author John Allen Paulos thinks not. In Irreligion he presents the case for his own worldview, organizing his book into twelve chapters that refute the twelve arguments most often put forward for believing in God’s existence. The latter arguments, Paulos relates in his characteristically lighthearted style, “range from what might be called golden oldies to those with a more contemporary beat. On the playlist are the firstcause argument, the argument from design, the ontological argument, arguments from faith and biblical codes, the argument from the anthropic principle, the moral universality argument, and others.” Interspersed among his twelve counterarguments are remarks on a variety of irreligious themes, ranging from the nature of miracles and creationist probability to cognitive illusions and prudential wagers. Special attention is paid to topics, arguments, and questions that spring from his incredulity “not only about religion but also about others’ credulity.” Despite the strong influence of his day job, Paulos says, there isn’t a single mathematical formula in the book

“John Allen Paulos has done us all a great service. Irreligion is an elegant and timely response to the manifold ignorance that still goes by the name of ‘faith’ in the twenty-first century.”- Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation 

“He’s done it again. John Allen Paulos has written a charming book that takes you on a journey of flawless logic, with simple and clear examples drawn from math, science, and pop culture. At the end, Paulos has left you with plenty to think about, whether you are religious, irreligious, or anything inbetween.”- Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, American Museum of Natural History, and author of Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries 

“For years John Allen Paulos has been our guide for reading newspapers, playing the stock market, and understanding what all those graphs and charts and formulas really mean. No one knows how to dissect an argument better than Paulos. Now he has turned his rapier wit to the grandest question of them all: Is there a God? Those who are religious skeptics will find in Paulos’s analysis new ways of looking at both old and new arguments, and those who believe that God’s existence can be proven through science, reason, and logic will have to answer to this mathematician’s penetrating analysis.”- Michael Shermer, author of How We Believe, The Science of Good and Evil, and Why Darwin Matters

The Four Horsmen.

“On the 30th of September 2007, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens sat down for a first-of-its-kind, unmoderated 2-hour discussion, convened by RDFRS and filmed by Josh Timonen.”

Fascinating, informative and thought-provoking.