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"Try and live your life as if you were a Free Person, that you didn't have to wonder what anyone else's opinion was; that you should take the risk of believing that if you were the only person who thinks what you think, that that still might well mean that you were right." - Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens - The Courage to Believe in Yourself

Why Christianity Is Impossible To Believe - Christopher Hitchens

Remastered by 2010 upload.
Christopher Hitchens "Antitheist Anthem" 
Music Video: http://youtu.be/a0ot00779RM

Song lyrics from: Christopher Hitchens vs Tony Blair - Munk Debates 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddsz9XBhrYA
Instrumental: Little People "Moon"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH6jX2haJpM

Transcript / Lyrics: 
Ladies and Gentlemen, Brothers Sisters, Comrades, Friends,

Here's my proposition,

What we have here, picked from no mean source, is a distillation of precisely what is twisted and immoral in the faith mentality.
Its essential fanaticism, its consideration of the human being as raw material, and its fantasy of purity.

Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes us objects, in a cruel experiment, whereby we are created sick and commanded to be well. I'll repeat that. Created sick, and then ordered to be well.

And over us to supervise this, is installed a celestial dictatorship; a kind of divine North Korea. Exigent, I would say, more than exigent greedy for uncritical praise from dawn until dusk. And swift to punish the original sins with which it so tenderly gifted us in the very first place. An eternal, unalterable, judge, jury and executioner, against whom there could be no appeal. And who wasn't finished with you even when you died.
However! Let no one say there's no cure! Salvation is offered! Redemption, indeed, is promised, at the low price, of the surrender of your critical faculties.

Religion, it might be said, must be said, would have to admit, makes extraordinary claims, but, though I would maintain that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, rather daringly provides not even ordinary evidence for its extraordinary supernatural claims. To insist that we are created and not evolved, in the face of all the evidence.

Religion forces nice people to do unkind things and also makes intelligent people say stupid things.

Handed a small baby for the first time, is it your first reaction to think, "Beautiful, almost perfect. Now please hand me the sharp stone for its genitalia, that I may do the work of the Lord"? No!

As the great physicist Stephen Weinberg has aptly put it, "In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you'll need religion.

Religion, and in fact any form of faith, -because it is a surrender of reason, it's a surrender of reason in favor of faith, is a fantastic force multiplier. A tremendous intensifier, of all things that are in fact divisive rather than inclusive. That's why its history is so stained with blood. Crimes against humanity, crimes against womanhood, crimes against reason and science, attacks upon medicine and enlightenment, all these appalling things.

There is no conceivable way that by calling on the supernatural, you will achieve anything like your objective of a common humanism, which is I think you're quite right to say, our only chance of, I won't call it salvation.

Thank you.

Christopher Hitchens - Antitheist Anthem (320 kbps)

Credo Public Talk - Semester 2, Week 5 (2014)
Talk given by Rob Elder.

What Would Jesus Say To Christopher Hitchens?

Christopher Hitchens offers introductory remarks at Revolution: A User's Manual, part of the 2006 PEN World Voices Festival.


Why Christianity Is Impossible To Believe - Christopher Hitchens

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