On Friday I read in The Washington Times that Christopher Hitchens died on Wednesday night @ the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, @ age 62, of pneumonia, a complication of his esophageal cancer.
The last time Carol & I saw Hitch was when he debated Tony Blair in Toronto in 2010 over whether religion is a force for good in the world – some of the meanest lowest people I know hide behind religion portraying themselves as good when they are anything but.
Hitchens was an atheist & his presentation the night of the debate won over the audience on this topic over the Catholic convert former Prime Minister Tony Blair – an excellent debater as we all surely know.
"I love the imagery of struggle," Hitchens wrote about his illness in an August 2010 essay in Vanity Fair. "I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient."
Hitchens became an American citizen on his 58th birthday in 2007. Although he could tolerate seeing the American flag burned (it clearly identifies our enemies – both foreign & domestic - as I have written many times myself) Hitchens wrote that he would take an American flag stamp off an envelop & turn it right side up if he had inadvertently put it on upside down.
It was people like Christopher Hitchens who made me think quite some time ago, that when you look @ all the wonders of the world, that it really takes more faith to believe in atheism, like Hitch did, than to believe in God.
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