"Look: inequalities in wealth had nothing to do with Beslan or Bali or Madrid"

Hitch may claim that "socialism left him," but this statement puts the lie to that. Socialism has always, by definition, attributed all social ills to inequality of wealth. If you don't believe that, then you're not a socialist, ipso facto. That's why he's not a socialist anymore: he's changed his mind. It's entertaining, though, that he won't admit it.

I wouldn't bat an eyelash if Camille Paglia (re) joined the church, either.

Dream on! Catholicism gives you nothing that you can't find on your own. Been there, done that. He found the truth on his own.

Robert:

Obviously he hasn't and he sure seems uncomfortable freeloading.

Isn't he a friend of Dorothy's?

Robert:

You can go home again.

Robert -- You should right that up and nail it to a Cathedral door.

Mr. Hitchens has found that what he's been looking for in life cannot be found in or perpetuated through Socialism, which is a (hu)man made movement. Perhaps he will admit that truth to himself and start searching for a more sure place to put his faith, a place not made by human minds. I pray that he will seek and find that only in God's divine movement will he discover what he's looking for. I believe that religious faith gives us what we cannot find on our own-- ultimate hope, meaning and purpose upon which to build our lives; along with abundant love, mercy and peace to sweeten our lives. I don't regreat my allegiance to God. In fact, I can only see dark emptiness, lonliness and despair were it not for my relationship w/God.

--end of sermon.

Um, sorry, no. Christopher Hitchens will not convert to Catholicism.

To believe so is a serious misapprehension of character, wishful thinking aside (though if the prognosis were made in jest, it just might be amusing).

Muggeridge and Waugh. Both saw clearly the evil that was Stalin when no one else did. Both became Catholics.

Hitch may have put on a pair of glasses, but he still has the same old wonky eyes.

Hitch has just begun to emerge from his permanent self-imposed adolescence. His conversion will be along the lines of Olivier's Marchmain: desperate, silent acceptance at the threshold of death.

Barry:

That's where his hero Orwell was headed and Waugh and various others--he'll get there too.

It's amazing to me how much mental energy you religious expend convincing yourselves that any atheist who adopts the same moral values as you must necessarily "complete the circle" and adopt your religious beliefs also. It is almost as if you are threatened more by morally conservative atheists than you are by the nihilistic athiests that confirm your bias and your belief in the indispensability of religion.

I was a serious Catholic until my early 20s. My faith just left me, over time. It is like one of those optical illusions that your mind can interpret one way or another, like the vase that switches to two faces. There is a secular way to look at the world, and a religous way. For me, the secular way won out, and the religious way faded into the background. It was never a question of moral values, my values have, if anything, become more conservative.

Robert:

You needn't accept Christ right now, just acknowledge you're freeloading. You'll come back to the fold if you're serious about the morality. You're reasoning your way to faith.

Gee, you're making me feel guilty, just like those pledge hounds on PBS. You will be about as effective.

Faith is the path to moral truth, moral truth is not the path to faith. If you've arrived at moral truth, you are there. If you got there without faith, no matter.

the recognition that there is moral truth is faith.

It is faith that has brought Mr. Hitchens to this point in his life, though he certainly, like Robert above, wouldn't put it that way. Yes, vast numbers of people who call themselves atheists and agnostics live moral lives. Religious folks do not have a monopoly on moral truth.

The question which each and every human being must face is, what happens when ones faith in a moral truth, say socialism, crumbles? Does one just jump to another truth? There are a plethora of "isms" from which to choose. Or, does one begin to search for the One (Divine Power/God) who first spoke of and established moral truth.

"Moral" behavior has material consequences making it more likely to produce favorable outcomes for individuals than "immoral" behavior.

Religion puts a God-gloss on common sense.

Jeff:

No it isn't. Morality is anti-pragmatic and anti-material. Killing your sick wife will save you money, but is immoral. It's also not pragmatic because then folks will be looking to unplug you ASAP.

Religion is God's tool for reminding us that He gave us common sense when He created us.

Anonymous

What happens when a faith in a god-based moral truth crumbles? What happens when you were brought up to believe that God intended for the white man to own black slaves, and then that God-based society is destroyed by war?

You don't find moral truth by searching through isms. You find it in the events of your own life, in the struggles and conflicts within your own conscience and the decisions that you make and the consequences you experience. As Jeff said, God is just a gloss to that process of moral growth. For someone who won't let himself go through that ordeal of self-examination, God talk is meaningless. If it facilitates your journey to moral truth, then go with it.

The most common complaint I have heard from people leaving the Church is they believe that its leaders are hypocrites. Of course they are hypocrites. All have fallen and come short of the glory of God. They must be hypocrites, for they are human.

I struggled, too; but, I found no philosophically satisfying alternative and decided to take a second look. So I started re-reading the Bible and realized that Moses said that energy (void) existed before the earth (matter), and that light existed before the sun and the moon and the stars.

From the very first chapter, I regained my faith.

Now, faith is a gift of God. If you don't have it, you don't have it. But remember, as Jesus said, Seek and you shall find.

Robert:

That's just the need of some to imagine themselves important. The long struggle brings you to the morality your fathers taught you and the same basis--you just imagine you arrived at it independently.

"Morality is anti-pragmatic and anti-material."

That is narrow minded nonsense. You have caricatured the argument by insisting the only material benefits in life are money and sex. If that is so for you, then you have my deepest sympathies.

As we all now know, marriage is a God-sanctified relationship between one man an one woman. Being God-sanctified, that must be true for all people everywhere, and not subject in the least to material considerations, right?

In the Papua New Guinea highlands there are some tribes that both suffer high male mortality rates and entertain the quaint belief that children are the sums of all the fathers who mated with a woman.

The result is polygany, where women "exploit" the notion of shared paternity to ensure continuted protection and support of their children in the face of the aforementioned male mortality.

Since God's views on this subject are clear, and morals have no material basis, these people are clearly acting immorally.

Of course, some Christian Missionaries could come in and show them the error of their ways.

Which would make them both moral and extinct.

Jeff:

It's not immoral if you're ignorant of God's laws. Morality is anti-natural.

Better extinction, then, huh?

Morality is not anti-natural. People who are conventionally moral are far more likely to live longer and wealthier than those who don't.

What is so unnatural about that?

Jeff:

No, they aren't.

These anti-theists just aren't paying attention. The value of faith-based morality is that it makes for more, not less freedom. The commonality are incapable of working out an effective system of morals on their own. If they don't believe in divine authority they always imagine that they can get over on the system.

In which case, society requires intrusive and repressive external control systems in order to function or even to survive. Those systems hamper progress and innovation and doom the civilizations which practice them to stagnation and extinction. We need do no more than to contrast the manner in which Christian civilization and Confucian civilization dealt with the age of exploration or with the invention of gunpowder to see the operation of this principal.

Lou:

We are paying attention just fine.

The price of a faith based morality comes with shoving it down the throats of the differently faithed.

Why don't you rewind your clock to see the kind of intrusive repression and complete suppression of innovation that comes with a faith based society.

Spain, right about 1500.

Jeff:

The moment it emerged from oppression into greatness? What an odd argument.

The Muslim nations are a faith based civilization, what happened? Spain was temporarily wealthy and powerful, but never great.

OJ:

Learn some of that history stuff. Spain's oppression lasted for centuries and had knock-on effects in terms of literacy right up to the 20th century.

Its emergence into "greatness" was due solely to theft.

Now there is something to be proud of.

Jeff:

Cuba's literate--it's a dump. Spain was great from the period you cite for centuries. America's greatbness proceeds from the theft of Indian lands. Big deal.

Spain's greatness was solely due to theft--after the gold was exhausted, there was nothing left.

America's greatness did something with the theft.

Or hadn't you noticed?

Jeff:

Spain was doing well 500 years after the date you cite. Let's see if we are.