A few years ago, I wrote an article criticizing Christopher Hitchens’ Razor. This morning, I found myself tweeting about the same topic, and I decided to post my string of tweets here. So now, without further ado, Christopher Hitchens’ Deepity… One of the best examples of a deepity (i.s. a pseudo-profundity) comes from Christopher Hitchens: […]
Christopher Hitchens
The Day Christopher Hitchens Battled Five Christian Apologists
I started blogging at the Christian Post in March 2009. (My website and blog were born a couple of years later.) My first article was titled “Atheism in Dallas” (reprinted here) and in it, I recounted my reflections after seeing the late Christopher Hitchens pitted against five (five?!) Christian apologists. As I recounted in the […]
One of the dumber things Christopher Hitchens said
Christopher Hitchens was a master rhetorician. And like many a master rhetorician, he said more than a few things which are (1) memorable, (2) apparently profound, and (3) actually kind of dumb. Consider the following oft-quoted sentence from God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything: “What can be asserted without evidence can also be […]
On the dying of Christopher Hitchens
At the moment I’m reading through Christopher Hitchens’ posthumously published Mortality (Signal, 2012). Hitchens lived his life as, among other things, a brash iconoclast of “religion” and slayer of many sacred cows. He especially seemed to despise the idea of God and regularly expressed his belief that a universe with God would be tantamount to […]
Christopher Hitchens and the Revolt against Santa Claus
A few days ago the ever provocative Atheist Missionary made the following observation: “I think Hitchens was right: Christianity posits ‘a celestial North Korea’.” Now don’t get me wrong. I like TAM. Among other things, he has long been a great support for my books and blog and I appreciate it. But that doesn’t mean he […]
Does God trick people into hell? Lessons from Jack Chick
When I was growing up I used to search the large tract rack in our church’s foyer. The rack had hundreds of tracts stuffed together in a haphazard mess. The goal of the search? The coveted Chick tract. Jack Chick was (and is?) a mysterious, reclusive individual who reportedly lived (lives?) in Southern California and spent […]
On the passing of Christopher Hitchens
I saw Christopher Hitchens speak once at a book convention in Dallas in March 2009. He was put on a platform against five Christian theists (!). Count ’em: five! I blogged about that here. It looked rather ridiculous, but I can undertand why. Even if Hitchens wasn’t much of a technical philosopher, he was a master rhetorician […]
On those who loathe God
Frank writes: I an NOT an apatheist. I would be very concerned about god’s existence, as I would loath him for his abominable cruelty.” That’s right. In addition to atheists and apatheists we have antitheists. An antitheist is an individual who believes that God does not exist but also would reject God if God did […]
Atheism in Dallas
In March 2009 I attended the Christian Book Expo in Dallas in promotion of my then new book Finding God in the Shack (Biblica, 2009). While I had a successful seminar and book signing, the event was, on the whole, a disaster. The CBE had about ten percent of the number of visitors they were […]
On Affirmative Atheism
Protest atheism is the belief that there is no God combined with the refusal to recognize or submit to or honor or worship God should it turn out that God does, in fact, exist. A close bedfellow to protest atheism is another type of atheism that I call affirmative atheism. This is the view that […]
On the Myth of Religious Violence
Yesterday I attended a lecture by scholar William Cavanaugh from DePaul University speaking on the topic of his recent book The Myth of Religious Violence. Cavanaugh did an outstanding job. He was witty, urbane, and argued forcefully for a thesis of monumental importance. I commend the book to you. While I haven’t read it, I’ve […]