Awoke this morning to hear the sad news that Christopher Hitchens has passed away. As a great thinker, writer and polemicist his work has enlightened me more than any religious text, teacher or encounter in the first four decades of my life. His masterwork “God is not Great – The case against religion”, reveals a passionate man following in the philosophical tradition of Bertrand Russell using a unique acute clarity to reveal the cold man made construct that has enslaved many millions for generations. It is Russells words that come to mind on the passing of a great man, an Englishman who died in Texas as America’s greatest Atheist and one of the worlds great thinkers
“I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.”
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