Unanswerable Prayers

[Dave]

Good piece.





Unanswerable Prayers


What’s an atheist to think when thousands of believers (including prominent rabbis and priests) are praying for his survival and salvation—while others believe his cancer was divinely inspired, and hope that he burns in hell? Related: The first in the series, “Topic of Cancer,” by Christopher Hitchens.

www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/10/hitchens-201010

Wiki: Christopher Eric Hitchens (born 13 April 1949) is an English-born author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008.[2] He is a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits and in 2005 he was voted the world's fifth top public intellectual.

[fiona]

Very interesting. It appears that you are dammed if you do and dammed if you don't. I enjoy reading Hitchens when I come across him. But in the end, hitchens will do what he will do. He may repent or not. That is if he has anything to repent for. And someone will have the last word. But then, it won't matter, will it, because Hitchens will be where he will be and we will have lost a great man and a great thinker. I once drew a cartoon, long lost, of a bunch of archeologists standing in the throne room of the tomb of Tut. One of the men was pointing at a pile of dung on the floor. In the balloon above his head I wrote " Look! Famous Lost Turds!" Well, I know, I know. I thought it was pretty funny at the time. I think that's about what it amounts to in the end! LOL.

[Dave]

I think you and I are in the same camp, Fiona. Hitchens may be right or wrong, but his theories matter little to which propositions I choose as reasonable or not. I too have enjoyed reading him, but in the end one's beliefs are more personal than necessarily logical or arguable.