"The children of God should not have any other country here below but the universe itself, with the totality of all the reasoning creatures it ever has contained, contains, or ever will contain. That is the native city to which we owe our love." --Simone Weil
Friday, December 16, 2011
Reflection on Hitchens' Death At Religion Dispatches
I have a brief reflection on Christopher Hitchens' death at the Religion Dispatches blog. Check it out here if you're interested.
I always found the sheer quality of Hitchens' articulation beguiling. The man could certainly frame a sentence. And I liked his contrarian insistence on putting challenges before us. I like to call myself an agnostic, but his claim was always that this term is unhelpful, and even cowardly. When I say I don't believe in fairies in my garden, I don't feel the need to add, but actually I'm agonistic about this. So is using the word agnostic for God belief an unnecessary politeness, and indeed a misleading one? I'm not entirely sure how I would answer that.
I always found the sheer quality of Hitchens' articulation beguiling. The man could certainly frame a sentence. And I liked his contrarian insistence on putting challenges before us. I like to call myself an agnostic, but his claim was always that this term is unhelpful, and even cowardly. When I say I don't believe in fairies in my garden, I don't feel the need to add, but actually I'm agonistic about this. So is using the word agnostic for God belief an unnecessary politeness, and indeed a misleading one? I'm not entirely sure how I would answer that.
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