AGAINST ALL OTHERS: CNN

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Christopher Hitchens on Rev. Jerry Falwell's death

Christopher Hitchens on the Anderson Cooper 360 show talking about Reverend Jerry Falwell and his death of the previous day. Recorded on 15-May-2007.

Christopher Eric Hitchens (born April 13, 1949, in Portsmouth, England) is an Anglo-American author, journalist and literary critic. Currently living in Washington, D.C., he has been a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Nation, Slate and Free Inquiry; additionally, he is an occasional contributor to other publications and has appeared regularly in the Wall Street Journal. His brother is British journalist Peter Hitchens.

Hitchens is known for his iconoclasm, anti-clericalism, atheism, antitheism, anti-fascism and anti-monarchism. He is also noted for his acerbic wit and his noisy departure from the Anglo-American political left. He was formerly a Trotskyist and a fixture in the left wing publications of Britain and America. But a series of disagreements beginning in the early 1990s led to his resignation from The Nation shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks. He is also known for his ardent admiration of George Orwell and Thomas Jefferson, and his iconoclastic criticism of Mother Teresa.

While Hitchens' idiosyncratic ideas and positions preclude easy classification, he is a vociferous critic of what he describes as "fascism with an Islamic face," and his critics have been known to describe him as a "neoconservative". Hitchens, however, refuses to embrace this designation. In 2004, Hitchens stated that neoconservative support for US intervention in Bosnia and Iraq convinced him that he was "on the same side as the neo-conservatives" when it came to contemporary foreign policy issues. He has also been known to refer to his association with "temporary neocon allies".

Hitchens no longer considers himself a Trotskyist or a socialist; yet he maintains that his political views have not changed significantly. He points out that, throughout his career, he has been both an atheist and an antitheist, and that he has always remained a believer in the Enlightenment values of secularism, humanism and reason. Hitchens has launched a detailed attack on Religion in his book god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. He has also stated that, while he "was very much in rebellion against the state" during his youth, he is now "much more inclined to stress... issues of individual liberty."

Hitchens became a United States citizen on his fifty-eighth birthday, April 13, 2007.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Richard Dawkins on CNN Connect the World

Richard Dawkins tore into religious comfort zones with his claim that God is a delusion, and it seems the British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author will stop at nothing to provoke intelligent debate about the truth of our existence.

Richard Dawkins writings have inspired and angered many a reader and now hes back with more.

The fervent atheist and anti-creationist is often referred to as Charles Darwins rottweiler. Now, to celebrate Darwins bi-centenary, Dawkins has published a new book: The Greatest Show on Earth offers scientific evidence to back-up his own theory of evolution.