Especially the Hall excerpts towards the end. The comparison between Hall and Harris tells you everything you need to know.
See also here. I'm with Dalrymple and the Dutchman, no question.
Showing posts with label Hitchens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hitchens. Show all posts
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Sunday, September 30, 2007
But I thought religious people were morons?
From yesterday's National Post, in their story on Father Neuhaus: "First Things has no charts and photos, just words." What, not even cute little New Yorker-type cartoons? How on earth can anyone stay awake long enough to read it? Surely they must leave the TV on in the background or something. This calls for further research - paging Dr. Hitchens!
UPDATE: By the way, for whatever it's worth, I think Neuhaus is mistaken about the Charter being too American - if only! I don't know about y'all, but I for one wouldn't mind a constitutionally-guaranteed right to free speech (and to bear arms!) myself.
UPDATE: By the way, for whatever it's worth, I think Neuhaus is mistaken about the Charter being too American - if only! I don't know about y'all, but I for one wouldn't mind a constitutionally-guaranteed right to free speech (and to bear arms!) myself.
Friday, August 17, 2007
"The Tory Party never was a 'right-wing' party, let alone a 'rightwing' one."
Remember this? Well, as the line goes, say it better with Hitchens:
"There never was a Tory swing to the right. The Tory Party never was a 'right-wing' party, let alone a 'rightwing' one. Nor will it ever be. It was an effective machine for putting well-bred gentlemen into office, and would always do what was necessary to achieve that end. Now it is an ineffective one. There was, on the other hand, a very significant change in Labour, from being a reformist working class-based party, to being a middle-class radical party bent on profound social, moral and cultural change. That required a new form of opposition - one that both understood what New Labour was about, and fundamentally disagreed with it. The Tories had got used to being vaguely, habitually against the Old Labour package of union rights and nationalisation. They thought the old slogans and habits of mind would carry on working against the new version.
They never cottoned on to how important comprehensive schools and political correctness were. The party that does grasp these things, and is prepared to combat them, has yet to come into being, but the omens are, for the moment, surprisingly good."
(Via)
"There never was a Tory swing to the right. The Tory Party never was a 'right-wing' party, let alone a 'rightwing' one. Nor will it ever be. It was an effective machine for putting well-bred gentlemen into office, and would always do what was necessary to achieve that end. Now it is an ineffective one. There was, on the other hand, a very significant change in Labour, from being a reformist working class-based party, to being a middle-class radical party bent on profound social, moral and cultural change. That required a new form of opposition - one that both understood what New Labour was about, and fundamentally disagreed with it. The Tories had got used to being vaguely, habitually against the Old Labour package of union rights and nationalisation. They thought the old slogans and habits of mind would carry on working against the new version.
They never cottoned on to how important comprehensive schools and political correctness were. The party that does grasp these things, and is prepared to combat them, has yet to come into being, but the omens are, for the moment, surprisingly good."
(Via)
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
"religion is not primarily about God"
"but about the sacred"
Please, please, please read this essay by Roger Scruton! Excuse my enthusiasm, but this is my thing, I wrote like fifty papers on this exact topic, on the persistence of sacred myths in secular literature, I am thrilled to see Scruton write such a wonderful piece on the topic.
Some more key quotations:
"A myth does not describe what happened in some obscure period before human reckoning, but what happens always and repeatedly. It does not explain the causal origins of our world, but rehearses its permanent spiritual significance."
"you could subtract the gods and their stories from Greek religion without taking away the most important thing"
"According to Girard, the need for sacrificial scapegoating is implanted in the human psyche, arising from the attempt to form a durable community in which the moral life can be successfully pursued. One purpose of the theatre is to provide fictional substitutes for the original crime, and so to obtain the benefit of moral renewal without the horrific cost."
"The experience of the sacred is not an irrational residue of primitive fears, nor is it a form of superstition that will one day be chased away by science. It is a solution to the accumulated aggression which lies in the heart of human communities."
" the experience of the sacred can be suppressed, ignored and even desecrated (the routine tribute paid to it in modern societies) but never destroyed. Always the need for it will arise, for it is in the nature of rational beings like us to live at the edge of things, experiencing our alienation and longing for the sudden reversal that will once again join us to the centre."
There's much more, please do check it out! (h/t: ALDaily)
UPDATE: Here's something I wrote a while back on Moby Dick which I think is relevant:
"Finally, at the chapter’s end [the chapter 'The Whiteness of the Whale'], he discovers the answer, and the answer to Melville’s central question about the ongoing human reliance on mythology: Ishmael’s greatest fear is not that the whale represents any one thing, but that it represents nothing. He senses that there is nothing there for it to signify, that there is nothing meaningful in the 'heartless voids and immensities of the universe,' nothing except a pointless and inevitable 'annihilation' (282). It is not a specific sinister meaning that he fears, but the absence of any meaning at all; it is 'atheism from which we shrink' (282). The chapter ends with his fear that color (and thus meaning) is but an illusion that the human mind imposes on a colorless (meaningless) world, that beauty and purpose are not innate to nature but 'only laid on from without' to mask 'the charnel-house within' (283). Like those who insist on masking the blinding whiteness of the sun with colored glasses, so Ishmael senses that humans mask the emptiness of life with myths of meaning. The 'Albino Whale' is the symbol of this blinding whiteness, of the indifference of the universe to man’s storytelling, and that is why he is so feared and why he must be killed.[1]
Melville’s Moby Dick portrays mankind’s fundamental need for meaning, which it creates through myth. The only thing more frightening than an inescapable fate is no fate at all, and Melville shows that men will drive themselves to madness and death in the creation of myth, rather than face the void of an existence deprived of meaning. But there are some funny parts, too!
[1] The irony being that Moby Dick has already become a myth in himself. This shows that myths will never die: even thoroughly anti-mythical figures will end up being thought of in mythical terms. "
UPDATE 2: And an excerpt from an introduction to a paper on Melville and James:
"Rather than have their unwitting heroes inadvertently play into the hands of inescapable fate, their protagonists are deliberately and self-consciously mimetic. This is not Oedipus, fulfilling the prophecy of the gods despite himself, but a modern-day protagonist in a world without manifest gods or fate nonetheless choosing to live as if prophesied. This idea of accepted, even expected, fate permeates Melville’s Billy Budd and is present to a lesser extent in James’ The Portrait of a Lady. In either case, classic, ancient tragedy – the inability to escape the fate assigned by the gods – is supplanted by the absurd, modern kind: the enthusiastic acceptance of divine fate in a world without gods."
UPDATE 3: Thank you to Ambivablog for the link and the kind words! Please see her post for links to much better posts on the topic.
Please, please, please read this essay by Roger Scruton! Excuse my enthusiasm, but this is my thing, I wrote like fifty papers on this exact topic, on the persistence of sacred myths in secular literature, I am thrilled to see Scruton write such a wonderful piece on the topic.
Some more key quotations:
"A myth does not describe what happened in some obscure period before human reckoning, but what happens always and repeatedly. It does not explain the causal origins of our world, but rehearses its permanent spiritual significance."
"you could subtract the gods and their stories from Greek religion without taking away the most important thing"
"According to Girard, the need for sacrificial scapegoating is implanted in the human psyche, arising from the attempt to form a durable community in which the moral life can be successfully pursued. One purpose of the theatre is to provide fictional substitutes for the original crime, and so to obtain the benefit of moral renewal without the horrific cost."
"The experience of the sacred is not an irrational residue of primitive fears, nor is it a form of superstition that will one day be chased away by science. It is a solution to the accumulated aggression which lies in the heart of human communities."
" the experience of the sacred can be suppressed, ignored and even desecrated (the routine tribute paid to it in modern societies) but never destroyed. Always the need for it will arise, for it is in the nature of rational beings like us to live at the edge of things, experiencing our alienation and longing for the sudden reversal that will once again join us to the centre."
There's much more, please do check it out! (h/t: ALDaily)
UPDATE: Here's something I wrote a while back on Moby Dick which I think is relevant:
"Finally, at the chapter’s end [the chapter 'The Whiteness of the Whale'], he discovers the answer, and the answer to Melville’s central question about the ongoing human reliance on mythology: Ishmael’s greatest fear is not that the whale represents any one thing, but that it represents nothing. He senses that there is nothing there for it to signify, that there is nothing meaningful in the 'heartless voids and immensities of the universe,' nothing except a pointless and inevitable 'annihilation' (282). It is not a specific sinister meaning that he fears, but the absence of any meaning at all; it is 'atheism from which we shrink' (282). The chapter ends with his fear that color (and thus meaning) is but an illusion that the human mind imposes on a colorless (meaningless) world, that beauty and purpose are not innate to nature but 'only laid on from without' to mask 'the charnel-house within' (283). Like those who insist on masking the blinding whiteness of the sun with colored glasses, so Ishmael senses that humans mask the emptiness of life with myths of meaning. The 'Albino Whale' is the symbol of this blinding whiteness, of the indifference of the universe to man’s storytelling, and that is why he is so feared and why he must be killed.[1]
Melville’s Moby Dick portrays mankind’s fundamental need for meaning, which it creates through myth. The only thing more frightening than an inescapable fate is no fate at all, and Melville shows that men will drive themselves to madness and death in the creation of myth, rather than face the void of an existence deprived of meaning. But there are some funny parts, too!
[1] The irony being that Moby Dick has already become a myth in himself. This shows that myths will never die: even thoroughly anti-mythical figures will end up being thought of in mythical terms. "
UPDATE 2: And an excerpt from an introduction to a paper on Melville and James:
"Rather than have their unwitting heroes inadvertently play into the hands of inescapable fate, their protagonists are deliberately and self-consciously mimetic. This is not Oedipus, fulfilling the prophecy of the gods despite himself, but a modern-day protagonist in a world without manifest gods or fate nonetheless choosing to live as if prophesied. This idea of accepted, even expected, fate permeates Melville’s Billy Budd and is present to a lesser extent in James’ The Portrait of a Lady. In either case, classic, ancient tragedy – the inability to escape the fate assigned by the gods – is supplanted by the absurd, modern kind: the enthusiastic acceptance of divine fate in a world without gods."
UPDATE 3: Thank you to Ambivablog for the link and the kind words! Please see her post for links to much better posts on the topic.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
The New Atheists are a bunch of obnoxious jerks
If you're as big a Barbara Kay fan as I am (and you should be!), make sure not to miss her latest article, here, some very good stuff. (via HotAir)
For whatever it's worth (and it ain't worth much!), my earlier comments on this, as a very reluctant atheist thoroughly embarrassed by the company I must keep, are here.
For whatever it's worth (and it ain't worth much!), my earlier comments on this, as a very reluctant atheist thoroughly embarrassed by the company I must keep, are here.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
The Essence of Conservative Thought
From Peter Hitchens' thoughts on his brother:
"Liberal world reformers make the grave mistake of thinking that if you abolish a great force you don’t like, it will be replaced by empty space."
Human nature cannot be changed, no matter how many diplomas are held by the members of the committee decreeing the improvements. One irrationality is simply and inevitably replaced by another. The difference is that the original irrationality, which has been around for thousands of years, is by now mostly harmless and may even have a social importance we cannot immediately understand, whereas the new irrationality will more likely than not turn out to be quite dangerous indeed.
UPDATE: I must link to an old post from Asymmetrical Information. This is probably my favorite blog post ever, and may be one of the greatest essays on conservative thought there is (really!). I used to be more libertarian than I now am, reading this was a major factor in that change. So please do read the whole thing!
"Liberal world reformers make the grave mistake of thinking that if you abolish a great force you don’t like, it will be replaced by empty space."
Human nature cannot be changed, no matter how many diplomas are held by the members of the committee decreeing the improvements. One irrationality is simply and inevitably replaced by another. The difference is that the original irrationality, which has been around for thousands of years, is by now mostly harmless and may even have a social importance we cannot immediately understand, whereas the new irrationality will more likely than not turn out to be quite dangerous indeed.
UPDATE: I must link to an old post from Asymmetrical Information. This is probably my favorite blog post ever, and may be one of the greatest essays on conservative thought there is (really!). I used to be more libertarian than I now am, reading this was a major factor in that change. So please do read the whole thing!
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Apparently, I have no morals
Look, I am not one of those obnoxious, humorless atheists who goes about trying to rewrite the Pledge of Allegiance and ban nativity displays. My dad is in the Christopher Hitchens camp of 'all religion is idiotic and harmful,' but, while I do like Hitchens quite a bit, I have a lot more respect for religion than he does. Flannery O'Connor is my favorite author. Relapsed Catholic is my favorite blog. I simply do not have a believing temperament, but I am very drawn to the beauty of Christian (usually Catholic) writing and thought.
So I usually stay out of fights about religion, and when I do get involved I almost always attack the atheist side, since many of the most vocal atheists are just plain childish. However, in the wake of Falwell's death, after having sat through hours of talk radio and now a HotAir thread in which countless Christians have gone on about how atheists are not even immoral but literally incapable of morality, I'm a little angry. So, as an atheist who lives pretty much an Amish lifestyle (no drink, drugs, sex, or buttons), who is pro-life and who would love nothing more than to die for his country (no, not Canada, the real country), I would like to try and clear this up.
The Judeo-Christian tradition plays a crucial role in upholding morality (one of my favorite quotations, about the importance of respecting tradition and not placing our egos above the hard-learned lessons of our ancestors, from Chesterton I believe, is "Tradition is the democracy of the dead"). However, morality predates religion. It is innate; religion can preach it and reinforce it, but religion did not beget it.
Take the Ten Commandments (please!). Let's say, "Thou shalt not kill." Is it at all conceivable that God could have commanded to Moses, "Thou shalt kill"? That God, in His omnipotence, could have decreed murder to be moral? Of course not. Because God was simply revealing the preexisting morality to Moses, not creating it. God would be bound by that morality just like anyone else. There is not a single one of the Commandments in which it is possible God could have commanded the opposite - they ruled over Him, not vice-versa. You don't honor your parents because God says so, you do so because it's right, and God just reminds you of it or teaches you about it if you're not sensible enough to figure it out for yourself. That's my take on it, anyway.
Back to Hitchens for a moment. My main problem with the attack on religion is the fact that many people, out of loneliness, fear of death, the desire to belong, or whatever other reason, end up needing to believe in something. And if it's not traditional religion, it'll be the cult of global warming, or some evil totalitarianism, or celebrity worship, or something else really harmful or stupid. I would much rather have all those people as decent Jews and Christians than as annoying wacko greenies. So lay off the faithful, Hitch, because the alternative is very likely a great deal worse.
So I usually stay out of fights about religion, and when I do get involved I almost always attack the atheist side, since many of the most vocal atheists are just plain childish. However, in the wake of Falwell's death, after having sat through hours of talk radio and now a HotAir thread in which countless Christians have gone on about how atheists are not even immoral but literally incapable of morality, I'm a little angry. So, as an atheist who lives pretty much an Amish lifestyle (no drink, drugs, sex, or buttons), who is pro-life and who would love nothing more than to die for his country (no, not Canada, the real country), I would like to try and clear this up.
The Judeo-Christian tradition plays a crucial role in upholding morality (one of my favorite quotations, about the importance of respecting tradition and not placing our egos above the hard-learned lessons of our ancestors, from Chesterton I believe, is "Tradition is the democracy of the dead"). However, morality predates religion. It is innate; religion can preach it and reinforce it, but religion did not beget it.
Take the Ten Commandments (please!). Let's say, "Thou shalt not kill." Is it at all conceivable that God could have commanded to Moses, "Thou shalt kill"? That God, in His omnipotence, could have decreed murder to be moral? Of course not. Because God was simply revealing the preexisting morality to Moses, not creating it. God would be bound by that morality just like anyone else. There is not a single one of the Commandments in which it is possible God could have commanded the opposite - they ruled over Him, not vice-versa. You don't honor your parents because God says so, you do so because it's right, and God just reminds you of it or teaches you about it if you're not sensible enough to figure it out for yourself. That's my take on it, anyway.
Back to Hitchens for a moment. My main problem with the attack on religion is the fact that many people, out of loneliness, fear of death, the desire to belong, or whatever other reason, end up needing to believe in something. And if it's not traditional religion, it'll be the cult of global warming, or some evil totalitarianism, or celebrity worship, or something else really harmful or stupid. I would much rather have all those people as decent Jews and Christians than as annoying wacko greenies. So lay off the faithful, Hitch, because the alternative is very likely a great deal worse.
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