Watch Hitchens vs Berlinski on C-SPAN 2

Debate: How Atheism Poisons Everything with Christopher Hitchens and David Berlinski.

Saturday, September 18th, 7pm ET.
Sunday, September 19th, 8am & 10pm ET

Program Information (booktv.org)

A Call for Earthly Justice

Holding the Catholic Church accountable for its crimes.
By Christopher Hitchens

"Reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's extraordinary and limpid new work Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (a history informed by a general, if Anglican, sympathy for its subject), I came across the following passage from Cardinal John Henry Newman's classic statement of belief, his Apologia Pro Vita Sua:"
Read more (Slate)

‘Atheism Poisons Everything’: A Report

By Larry Taunton

A few days ago, Fixed Point Foundation sponsored its eighth major debate, our third in Birmingham, Alabama.  The participants on this occasion were Dr. David Berlinski and Christopher Hitchens.  The topic of the debate was this:  Is a purely secular society preferable to a religious one?     Read more (fixed-point.org)

Photos from the event (photos.al.com)

Also

My Father's Debate with Christopher Hitchens
By Claire Berlinski

Read her article here. (ricochet.com)

Hitchens Returns to the Arena

By D.B. Grady (The Atlantic)

" Hitchens is currently undergoing his fourth chemotherapy treatment, which, he is pleased to report, has shrunken his outer tumors. He is now consulting with doctors over the equally perilous choices of irradiation or surgery, or whether, he says, "I am wasting my time."
Read more

Does Atheism Poison Everything?

Christopher Hitchens debated David Berlinski in Birmingham, Alabama on Sept. 7, 2010.

"Hitchens, author of "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," defended atheism as a moral stance in a debate attended by about 1,200 at the Birmingham Sheraton Hotel with David Berlinski, author of "The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions." Read more. (blog.al.com)



Hitchens spoke at a luncheon with David Berlinski, author of "The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions."  Read more (blog.al.com)


Pre-Order 'Does Atheism Poison Everything? DVD here. (fixed-point.org)

Free Exercise of Religion? No, Thanks.

The taming and domestication of religious faith is one of the unceasing chores of civilization.
By Christopher Hitchens


A recent blizzard of liberal columns has framed the debate over American Islam as if it were no more than the most recent stage in the glorious history of our religious tolerance. This phrasing of the question has the (presumably intentional) effect of marginalizing doubts and of lumping any doubters with the anti-Catholic Know-Nothings, the anti-Semites, and other bigots and shellbacks. So I pause to take part in a thought experiment, and to ask myself: Am I in favor of the untrammeled "free exercise of religion"?
Read more (Sept. 6, 2010, Slate)

Hitchens' verdict on Tony Blair's memoir

"The righteous will evidently never tire of the pelting and taunting of Tony Blair."


Read more. (The Guardian, Sept 5, 2010)

From A Friend To Hitchens

Hugh Hewitt posts an email sent to him following "Unanswerable Prayers".

Christopher Hitchens in his column in the new Vanity Fair dismisses those who have been praying for him. He adds that on September 20th, somehow designated "Pray for Hitchens Day", no one should bother to "trouble deaf heaven with your bootless cries. Unless, of course, it makes you feel better". He is quoting from Shakespeare's Sonnet # 29.
Read more.

No 'Collision' in Ottawa Pub

By Kenyon Wallace

An Ottawa pub has refused to host an Anglican church group’s film night, fearing the movie’s debate over the existence of God may offend religious pub-goers.

The Heart & Crown pub says it decided to pull the plug on St. Alban’s Anglican Church’s showing this week of the movie Collision — a documentary featuring well-known atheist Christopher Hitchens and evangelical theologian Douglas Wilson — after seeing a pamphlet advertising the film.

Read more: http://life.nationalpost.com/2010/09/03/pub-refuses-anglican-movie-night-because-relgiousanti-relgious-nature-of-feature/#ixzz0yYdI9o86

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.

Continue reading. (Vanity Fair)

Coming Up: Hitchens vs Rabbi Shmuley

"Is There An Afterlife"? CH debates Rabbi Shmuley in New York on Thursday, September 16, 2010.

Followed by a press conference to discuss the debate, and a book signing.

For tickets and info click here.

White Fright

Glenn Beck's rally was large, vague, moist, and undirected—theWaterworld of white self-pity.


One crucial element of the American subconscious is about to become salient and explicit and highly volatile. It is the realization that white America is within thinkable distance of a moment when it will no longer be the majority.
Continue reading

Hitchens & Al Sharpton on Hardball (2007)

Hardball with Chris Matthews, MSNBC, June 28, 2007

(1/3)

For Christopher Hitchens

By The Thinking Atheist