After an enforced absence for the last few months, a gaunt and tired looking Christopher Hitchens made his first public appearance last weekend.
The renowned author and philosopher who is suffering from esophageal cancer accepted the “Richard Dawkins Freethinker of the Year” award at the annual convention of the Atheist Alliance of America and Texas Freethought.
Hitchens, who is along with Dawkins known as one of the “Four Horsemen of the Counter-Apocalypse,” because he uses his undoubted intelligence and erudition to passionately denounce all matters of faith. Over the last few years, Hitchens has engaged a number of leading Christian thinkers in debate.
In giving the award, Dawkins praised Hitchens for his continuance of atheism even in the face of death, proving that there were indeed, “atheists in foxholes.”
The author of ‘God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything’ and ‘Is Christianity Good for the World?’ coughed his way through his speech and admitted his weakened state by quoting the words of a Roman poet, “I’m not as I was.”
“And though as I know as well as you do, there’s no point in arguing about the actual date, or time of departure, because I would like to think there would be no good time.”
“I feel very envious of someone who’s young and actually starting out in this argument,” he smiled. “Just think of the extraordinary things that are happening to us, go for example to the Smithsonian Museum... to the new hall of human origins, magnificently curated.”
“What a wonderful thing to be starting out in this tremendous new field of endeavor.”
“We have the same job we always had,” Hitchens added, “to say that there are no final solutions; there is no absolute truth; there is no supreme leader; there is no totalitarian solution that says if you would just give up your freedom of inquiry, if you would just give up, if you would simply abandon your critical faculties, the world of idiotic bliss can be yours.”
Hitchens said “grand rabbis... infallible popes, mutant quasi political religion and worship,” should be shunned, saying,“We have no need of any of this and looking at them and their record and the pathos of their supporters, I realize it is they who are the grand imposters...”
(Image from file).