Thanks for your support at the T@tt Awards!

by Pecier Decierdo

So Long and Thanks for all the Hitch

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011), the spice and sting of the Four Horsemen, will be sorely missed. Hitchens did not have a deathbed conversion and his statements during the months before his death guaranteed that nobody is to take advantage of his death and sickness to further their personal agenda.

Hitchens the Dionysian.

But why expect a deathbed conversion from a bon vivant who uttered the following words?

“Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.”

Taunting a Dead Man

While Hitchens will be sorely missed, Rick Warren will be sorely with us still. In the wake of Hitch’s death, this “friend” of Christopher’s mustered up the gall to tweet the following words:

“My friend Christopher Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him constantly & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now.”

I believe it is one thing to be a Christian and to assert the superiority of your beliefs, and it is completely another thing to rub your beliefs on a dead man’s face. True, it is Warren’s right as a Christian to believe that Hitchens must be somewhat surprised right now to find himself in the afterlife. (Although we who know Hitch are sure that he can wit his way into heaven or hell, depending on whether he wants great climate or great company.) True, it is also his right to voice out this belief. True still, it is his right to place a thin veneer of taste over this belief by simply calling it “the Truth” with a capital T.  But doing it to someone who cannot answer back is simply going below the belt. Six feet below, to be precise.

Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.