Well, if he does wake up in heaven he will be laughing his ass off and will have a ton of questions when the laughter slows down.
But he won’t. His legacy lives on, that’s the most any of us can hope for.
I say the same. Given that much of his career was spent praising mass murderers (such as Trotsky) and pushing for unnecessary wars (such as the invasion of Iraq), and that he pointedly refused to apologize to the victims of these atrocities or withdraw his statements, and that he savagely attacked many people who worked for freedom and peace, he will be in need of mercy.
I was thinking that I don’t want to dignify this with a response, but since it’s undignified regardless, I’ll respond anyway: I think you’re suggesting a person’s beliefs are expressed as some kind of marathon where the winner is whatever the person believes at the very end of his life. That’s not how it works. It’s one thing to hope a person reconsiders a break with friends or family or expresses regret for hurting other people, but to hope they reconsider a personal belief is something else. A while ago he said this about a deathbed conversion:
"The entity making such a remark might be a raving, terrified person whose cancer has spread to the brain. “I can’t guarantee that such an entity wouldn’t make such a ridiculous remark, but no one recognizable as myself would ever make such a remark.”
The other unfortunate part about saying “I hope he reconsidered” is that I don’t think any atheist would ever say this about a noted religious figure. I’ve never seen that and I don’t think I ever will. I’m not sure why anybody would wish for something like that and it suggests a very misinformed view of what atheism is and why people become atheists, and that’s probably a better topic for another thread.
I deeply enjoyed Hitchens’ writing about Mother Theresa. I was resentful about what he wrote about Iraq and I think he was generally wrong, but I respect the work he put into his opinions and I think that someone who thinks hard and expresses his views in such an intelligent way does enrich everybody.
Thanks for that, Marley.
Trotsky was a mass-murderer? What?
I’ll let him speak for himself on Iraq, hinges on the fact that the troops out there were fighting evil and making the country a better place to live. Which are good points even if you disagree with the invasion.
What people working for freedom and peace did he attack? Religious charities and such? Asked and answered.
Agreed. Very well said.
Or what? :rolleyes:
A true intellectual, even if I didn’t agree with his hawkishness on Iraq. He’ll be missed in bars the world over! 
“HA! I *KNEW *I was right!”
RIP. (rot in peace) said with respect and love.
A little early for that, isn’t it? After all, he only died yesterday. Are his remains likely to have already been buried?
Yes, Trotsky was a mass murderer.
Leon Trotsky—a man who was an active participant in and apologist for Lenin’s Red Terror, the inventor of the “blocking units” that would gun down Russian troops foolish enough to defy the commissars by retreating, and the author of such witty aphorisms as “We must rid ourselves once and for all of the Quaker-Papist babble about the sanctity of human life.”
And the result of that war is over a million dead, most of them civilians, and Islamic groups with greatly increased power over the lives of the people. I read several articles in Slate where Hitchens, being aware of these facts, proudly refused to retreat from his earlier support for the war. If he later changed his mind, I’m not aware of it.
I can’t watch the video right now because my computer’s sound driver isn’t working, but if what he says there is similar to what I’ve read from him elsewhere it’s not a very satisfactory answer. He happily attacked great people including Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders, Lech Walesa, Bob Hope, Oscar Romero, Joseph Bernardin, and many others. (He also misrepresented what many of them said and believed.) He also aggressively attacked any group or movement that opposed communism during most of his career or neo-conservative policy at the end of it, including the peace protestors who opposed the war in Iraq. In the 80’s, when the Polish people were trying hard to win their freedom from the Soviet Union, many people around the world supported them but Hitchens instead took the position that Poles sucked because they were Catholic.
(If you’d like to debate this further I’d suggest a GD thread.)
We have already had many threads on what a dangerous religious fanatic Mother Teresa was and how few people she actually helped . . . and as for Oscar Romero, I agree that he was *great *as the Joker and in all those Betty Grable musicals!
Again, I disagreed with him on any number of issues, but what the fuck does any of that have to do with this “pity” on him in some ethereal afterlife he, and many of us here, don’t believe in? I don’t shit on believers @their funerals – and I’ve gone to quite a few – or mock them on-line when they die, why are you doing the reverse?
As for Mother Teresa, she was scum – and he exposed her. Good on him. But like you say, open a GD thread if you want to shit on the guy further.
(emphasis added)
Is that a fact, Marley? I direct your attention to the following:
Fatuousness doesn’t really become you, Marley.
I’m not an atheist myself, but I respected Hitch’s attack on religious institutions and religious idiots in general. More than that, I was in awe of his wit, wisdom, tenacity and humanity.
Most important of all, he taught me how to make tea. In that, he had more impact on my day-to-day life than any other columnist, ever.
I enjoyed his passion, his wry humor, and his unapologetic nature. I did not agree with him on everything, but it was a pleasure sharing some enlightening years on this spinning globe with him.
I must have missed the part where these people were noted religious figures.
Since the posts you just quoted don’t address what I said in any way, I’m not modifying my opinion. I’ve seen dumb comments about religion before, including in this thread. I’ve never seen an atheist say they hope a religious person recanted on his deathbed.
I was impressed with how Hitchens’s friend and “opponent” Francis Collins described their relationship after Hitchens was diagnosed:
Even if you don’t agree with someone’s views on an issue like this, I think you can still respect them and still acknowledge that their loss is a loss to the world.