Zitate von Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Geburtstag: 13. April 1949
Todesdatum: 15. Dezember 2011
Andere Namen:Christopher Eric Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens war ein britisch-US-amerikanischer Autor, Journalist und Literaturkritiker.
Aufsehen erregte er unter anderem mit Publikationen über Henry Kissinger, in denen er die seiner Meinung nach aggressive, interventionistische US-Außenpolitik der 1970er Jahre massiv kritisierte und eine Strafverfolgung des ehemaligen US-Sicherheitsberaters und Außenministers als Kriegsverbrecher forderte.
Nach den Terroranschlägen vom 11. September 2001 wurde er zum Befürworter des US-amerikanischen „Kriegs gegen den Terror“ und des Irakkriegs ab 2003. Gleichzeitig kritisierte er die amerikanische Linke für eine von ihm unterstellte Weichheit gegenüber dem islamistischen Terrorismus, den er „Islamfaschismus“ nannte, woraufhin sich zahlreiche frühere Weggefährten von ihm distanzierten.
Er engagierte sich zeit seines Lebens vehement für eine säkulare Weltsicht und machte Religion für zahlreiche Missstände und Fehlentwicklungen in der heutigen Welt verantwortlich.
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britischer Schriftsteller, Essayist und JournalistZitate Christopher Hitchens
„That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.“
— Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Context: Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
Variant: "What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof." in
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." appears by itself in God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007).
Translation of the Latin phrase "Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.".
„Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.“
— Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
„The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.“
— Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian
„I'll give you all the miracles and you'll still be left exactly where you are now, holding an empty sack.“
— Christopher Hitchens
Context: I'll grant you that it would possible to track the pregnancy of the woman Mary who's mentioned about three times in the Bible and to show there was no male intervention in her life at all but yet she delivered herself of a healthy baby boy. I can say— I don't say that's impossible. Parthenogenesis is not completely unthinkable. It does not prove that his paternity is divine and it wouldn't prove that any of his moral teachings were thereby correct. Nor, if I was to see him executed one day and see him walking the streets the next, would that show that his father was God or his mother was a virgin or that his teachings were true, especially given the commonplace nature of resurrection at that time and place. After all, Lazarus was raised, never said a word about it. The was raised, didn't say a thing about what she'd been through. And the Gospels tell us that at the time of the crucifixion all the graves in Jerusalem opened and their occupants wandered around the streets to greet people. So it seems resurrection was something of a banality at the time. Not all of those people clearly were divinely conceived. So I'll give you all the miracles and you'll still be left exactly where you are now, holding an empty sack.
"Does God Exist?" debate http://hitchensdebates.blogspot.com/2010/11/hitchens-vs-turek-vcu.html vs.
„Emancipate yourself from the idea of a celestial dictatorship and you've taken the first step to becoming free.“
— Christopher Hitchens
Context: Religion is the outcome of unresolved contradictions in the material world. If you make the assumption that it's man-made then very few things are mysterious to you: It would be obvious to you why there are so many religions; You will understand why it is that religion has been such a disappointment to our species - that despite innumerable revivals, innumerable attempts again to preach the truth, innumerable attempts to convert the heathen, innumerable attempts to send missionaries all around the world - that the same problems remain with us. That nothing is resolved by this. If all religions died out, or were admitted to be false, all of our problems would be exactly what they are now: How do we live with one another? Where, indeed, do morals and ethics come from? What are our duties to one another? How shall we build the just city? How shall we practice love? All these questions would remain exactly the same. Emancipate yourself from the idea of a celestial dictatorship and you've taken the first step to becoming free.
Christopher Hitchens vs. William Lane Craig, 04/04/2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KBx4vvlbZ8&t=1h45m56s
„What is it like to lie to children and tell them that they have an authority, that they must love and be terrified of it at the same time. What's that like? I want to know.“
— Christopher Hitchens
Context: On our integrity, our basic integrity, knowing right from wrong and being able to choose a right action over a wrong one, I think one must repudiate the claim that one doesn't have this moral discrimination innately, that, no, it must come only from the agency of a celestial dictatorship which one must love and simultaneously fear. What is it like to lie to children and tell them that they have an authority, that they must love and be terrified of it at the same time. What's that like? I want to know. And that we don't have an innate sense of right and wrong, children don't have an innate sense of fairness and decency, which of course they do. What is it like?
Christopher Hitchens vs. Alister McGrath, 11/10/2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq-KiDdYvsY&t=15m17s
„If it is a plan or a design, the planner must be either very capricious - really toying with his creation; and/or very clumsy, very tinkering and fantastically wasteful - throw away 99.9% of what you've made; or very cruel and very callous; or just perhaps very indifferent“
— Christopher Hitchens
Context: If this was the plan - was it made by someone who likes us? And if so, why have 99.9% of all the other species that have ever been created already died out? And part of what plan was that?; If it is a plan or a design, the planner must be either very capricious - really toying with his creation; and/or very clumsy, very tinkering and fantastically wasteful - throw away 99.9% of what you've made; or very cruel and very callous; or just perhaps very indifferent; or some combination of all the above. And so it's no good saying that He moves in mysterious ways, or that He has purposes that are opaque to us, because even that kind of evasion has to make itself predicate on the assumption that the person saying this knows more than I do about the supernatural, and I haven't yet met anyone who does have a private line to the creator, of the sort that would be required even to speculate about it. In other words, I haven't met anyone, in holy orders or out of it, who isn't also a primate. And neither have you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVvJf9wTQXo
"Does Religion Poison Everything?", Festival of Dangerous Ideas, October 2009.
„You either accept the principle of royal intervention or you don't. And if you don't, you always have the choice of an actual 'Commonwealth' - the beautiful and resonant name given by the English revolutionaries to the most forbidden passage of our history after the removal of the Stuarts.“
— Christopher Hitchens
Context: The evidence is that on 'Commonwealth' questions Her Majesty reserves a certain autonomy when it comes to the expression of an opinion. But you can't have it both ways. Queen Victoria used to browbeat poor Mr Gladstone most dreadfully when it came to overseas or, as they were then called, 'imperial' matters. Either this is proper or it isn't. You either accept the principle of royal intervention or you don't. And if you don't, you always have the choice of an actual 'Commonwealth' - the beautiful and resonant name given by the English revolutionaries to the most forbidden passage of our history after the removal of the Stuarts.
„Is there anything that is forbidden to anybody who says they have God on their side?“
— Christopher Hitchens
Context: Is there anything that is forbidden to anybody who says they have God on their side? Who says they have God with them? Is there any evil that they forbid themselves to do? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSeHsCPayXM?t=37m36s
"Is Christianity the Problem?", debate with Dinesh D'Souza, 22/10/2007.
„If this was the plan - was it made by someone who likes us?“
— Christopher Hitchens
Context: If this was the plan - was it made by someone who likes us? And if so, why have 99.9% of all the other species that have ever been created already died out? And part of what plan was that?; If it is a plan or a design, the planner must be either very capricious - really toying with his creation; and/or very clumsy, very tinkering and fantastically wasteful - throw away 99.9% of what you've made; or very cruel and very callous; or just perhaps very indifferent; or some combination of all the above. And so it's no good saying that He moves in mysterious ways, or that He has purposes that are opaque to us, because even that kind of evasion has to make itself predicate on the assumption that the person saying this knows more than I do about the supernatural, and I haven't yet met anyone who does have a private line to the creator, of the sort that would be required even to speculate about it. In other words, I haven't met anyone, in holy orders or out of it, who isn't also a primate. And neither have you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVvJf9wTQXo
"Does Religion Poison Everything?", Festival of Dangerous Ideas, October 2009.
„I haven't met anyone, in holy orders or out of it, who isn't also a primate. And neither have you.“
— Christopher Hitchens
Context: If this was the plan - was it made by someone who likes us? And if so, why have 99.9% of all the other species that have ever been created already died out? And part of what plan was that?; If it is a plan or a design, the planner must be either very capricious - really toying with his creation; and/or very clumsy, very tinkering and fantastically wasteful - throw away 99.9% of what you've made; or very cruel and very callous; or just perhaps very indifferent; or some combination of all the above. And so it's no good saying that He moves in mysterious ways, or that He has purposes that are opaque to us, because even that kind of evasion has to make itself predicate on the assumption that the person saying this knows more than I do about the supernatural, and I haven't yet met anyone who does have a private line to the creator, of the sort that would be required even to speculate about it. In other words, I haven't met anyone, in holy orders or out of it, who isn't also a primate. And neither have you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVvJf9wTQXo
"Does Religion Poison Everything?", Festival of Dangerous Ideas, October 2009.
„The first False Issue one normally encounters is the claim that it has 'no real power'.“
— Christopher Hitchens
Context: The first False Issue one normally encounters is the claim that it has 'no real power'. One never quite knows what 'real' is intended to mean here, but the conventions of the False Issue lead one to guess that the word is doing duty for 'formal'. Thus is the red herring introduced. A moment later, the same speaker is telling another listener of all the good things that monarchy is a 'force' for. These good things invariably turn out to be connected to power. They are things like 'stability', 'unity', 'national cohesion', 'continuity' and other things for which powerless people would find it difficult to be a force. Edmund Wilson would have had little trouble noticing, furthermore, that all the above good things are keywords for conservative and establishment values.
