Every so often I start to miss a man I never had the pleasure of knowing. Christopher Hitchens has become some what of a legend in the atheist community. The late Christopher Hitchens has made a name for himself for giving out ravenous beatings at the debate table. So much so that his stinging tongue has been penned the Hitchslap. Here is a collection of some of Christopher Hitchens best hitchslap moments.
Hitchslap
The act that noted rational atheist Christopher Hitchens must employ on theologists when they attempt to enter discussions that require logic for proof and not “faith”.
Context: Christopher just hitchslapped Ned Flanders again when he tried to use the circular reasoning as proof that his theory is true because the Bible supports it.
Short Bio of Christopher Hitchens (taken directly from Wikipedia):
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American[2][3] author, polemicist, debater, and journalist.[4] Hitchens contributed to New Statesman, The Nation,The Atlantic, The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. He was the author of twelve books and five collections of essays, and concentrated on a range of subjects, including politics, literature and religion. A staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure. Known for hiscontrarian stance on a number of issues, he excoriated such public figures as Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Lady Diana, and Pope Benedict XVI. He was the older brother of authorPeter Hitchens.
Long describing himself as a socialist, Hitchens began his break from the established political left after what he called the “tepid reaction” of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair, followed by the left’s embrace of Bill Clinton, and the “anti-war” movement’s opposition to intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina—though Hitchens did not leave his position writing for The Nation until, post-9/11, he felt the magazine had arrived at a position “that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama bin Laden.”[5] The September 11 attacks “exhilarated” him, bringing into focus “a battle between everything I love and everything I hate,” and strengthening his embrace of an interventionist foreign policy which challenged “fascism with an Islamic face“.[6] His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not “a conservative of any kind”, and his friend Ian McEwan described him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.[7][8] Indeed, in a 2010 BBC interview, he stated that he was ‘still a Marxist‘.[9]
A noted critic of religion and an antitheist, he said that a person “could be an atheist and wish that belief in god were correct”, but that “an antitheist, a term I’m trying to get into circulation, is someone who is relieved that there’s no evidence for such an assertion.”[10] According to Hitchens, the concept of a god or a supreme being is a totalitarian belief that destroys individual freedom, and that free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of teaching ethics and defining human civilisation. His anti-religion polemic, New York Times Bestseller, God is not Great – How Religion Poisons Everything, sold over 500,000 copies.
Hitchens died on 15 December 2011, from complications arising from oesophageal cancer, a disease that he acknowledged was more than likely due to his lifelong predilection for heavy smoking and drinking.[11]
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