Amazing PerplexityChristopher Hitchens states:
“I didn’t expect, when I started off on my book tour, to be as lucky as I was and I, Jerry Falwell died my first week on the road, that was amazing.”
Sam Harris, very enthusiastically and laughingly,
“Yes, that was amazing luck!”
This must be far too erudite and or in-house atheist humor because I am simply perplexed. I just do not understand what was “amazing.”
I have asked for elucidation at Prof. Richard Dawkins’ website (487. Comment #130681) and am currently awaiting a response.
In the meantime, and I do mean “mean,” it may be of interest, or morbid curiosity, to note the following report by David Limbaugh from, The Paradoxical Hatred of Christopher Hitchens:
“Hitchens refused to back down from his excoriation of Falwell on the very day of his death, saying, ‘I don’t care whether his family’s feelings are hurt or not. But if they are, they can take comfort from the extraordinary piety and stupidity, and generally speaking, uniformity of the coverage of the man’s death.’ Hitchens’ response to CNN’s Anderson Cooper’s question of whether he believed in heaven and whether ‘you think Jerry Falwell is in it.’ Hitchens said he did not believe in it, but ‘I think it’s a pity there isn’t a hell for him to go to.'”
Anonymous Confession of an Atheist Clergyman
Prof. Richard Dawkins mentions that Dan Barker is compiling a “collection of clergymen who have lost their faith but don’t dare say so because it’s their only living, it’s the only thing they know.” Sam Harris claims to have been in contact with precisely ONE such person. This is as fascinating as Sam Harris’ ability to name precisely ONE secular charity as a counterbalance to the hundreds of thousands of religious ones. He is aware of precisely ONE single clergyman out of all of the clergymen on the planet and this is supposed to make some sort of point.
Well, it actually does make a point: the book will be about dishonest and hypocritical unbelievers. Yet, between Prof. Richard Dawkins’ statement and today Dan Barker published yet another book based on his old, tired and only self-appointed claim to fame the good old , “I’m an ex-preacher” routine.