Christopher Hitchens: Requiescat in Pace

Christopher Hitchens has died.  It’s impertinent to add my small tribute, but I feel I must.

As a theist, I’ve felt that his intense thirst for life and truth was a sign of what good atheism can be, and a banner for the focus that can come with non-belief in the unknowable.

There are a few scrabbly points on which I disagree with him very intensely, mostly his interpretation of the religiosity of secularist tyranny. 

But I can never really grudge him his non-belief in things I believe in.  He was too plain and clear about the reasons for that disbelief, and plainness like that is no abomination but a truthfulness of a deep kind.  Eloquence is not equal to truth, but sometimes it clears away from the truth the cloudy, clinging vapors that belief drapes on it.  He could be really offensive, but especially after his cancer focused him, he was prepared to defend his ideas with lucidity.

Espophageal cancer got him in the end, ironically silencing that maddening and offensive silver-throated poet of ideas. 

Well, among theists, I for one will toast Hitchens.  If there’s anywhere to be after the last breath, lovers of truth might congregate there to see what’s what.  They might see it a little better than some of us who believe. 

And if there isn’t anything there, we can mourn for ourselves.  A very great light has gone out.