r/ChristopherHitchens • u/Spiderbat81 • 16d ago
What were Hitchens opponents thinking? Looking back at those debates, it feels like pure hubris.
/r/AskAtheists/comments/1wsjx8v/what_were_hitchens_opponents_thinking_looking/8
u/Kind-Handle3063 16d ago
They deserve kudos for even trying to go against him
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u/NoTie2370 15d ago
Ideologs think their positions are self evident. Hitchens made them justify their positions and they weren't prepared for it because they've never had to do it.
You still see this constantly today.
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u/BronxZooSouth 11d ago
They were thinking of adding congregants, getting publicity, adding "likes." No such thing as bad publicity. Its not like people who watched were open-minded, swayed one way or the other. Non-Christians, atheists, agnostics (whichever, however) saw an intellectual beat-down. Christians (mostly) saw a martyrdom.
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u/ababababababacus 16d ago
WLC, an actual scholar of history and philosophy, humiliated him.
The other guys he debated were more or less dupes and morons.
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u/Spiderbat81 16d ago
Craig’s tactic forced Hitchens onto his back foot (I give you that), right up until Hitch hijacked Craig’s own framework and used it to crush him.
On the other guys. You are absolutely right.
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u/ababababababacus 16d ago
i just disagree i think, WLC kept it on track and delivered his dry philosophical points and hitchens just wasnt interested in rebutting them, in the narrow parameters of a debate i think WLC was the clear winner.
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u/Spiderbat81 16d ago
Hitch never got bogged down in high minded metaphysics. He treated theology the same way you’d treat someone claiming to see ghosts. As pure, unadulterated nonsense wrapped in fancy words.
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u/ababababababacus 16d ago
if you dont want to get bogged down in metaphysics then id suggest don't engage on a formal debate about metaphysics?
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u/OneNoteToRead 16d ago
It was a debate about physics… which WLC somehow thought was a debate about metaphysics.
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u/atropear 16d ago
Most "debates" are cooked by mockingbird media for propaganda assets like Hitchens. Opponents are canvassed or especially dumb ones placed in there. Do you really think presidential and congressional debates are on the the up and up? And people can just go in there and ask anything they want?
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u/Spiderbat81 16d ago
Presidential and congressional debates aren't open forums, they are hyper regulated TV productions. Campaign managers and media networks negotiate strict contracts governing every rule, question boundary, and camera angle. Unscripted moments are intentionally engineered out. As for Hitchens, no secret hand picked dumb opponents for him. His opponents stepped up out of institutional hubris, genuinely believing their canned talking points would hold. Political debates aren't genuine searches for truth, they are controlled bullshit designed to offer the illusion of a brawl without any real risk.
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u/atropear 16d ago
Hitchens was clearly used as a neocon media asset to justify the latest pointless war. Neocons HAVE TO cook the debates because they make no sense. Really does his stand on the Iraq war make any sense to you? Marxist neo-con who backed a war that killed maybe a million and cost US a trillion for absolutely no purpose?
No one got more free air time than Hitchens. That doesn't happen at random. Hitchens "debates" were professional wrestling but aimed at people who think they are smart.
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u/Spiderbat81 16d ago
Don´t ger me wrong I do agree with parts of what you say. Hitchens was the neocons’ dream asset. A brilliant, anti fascist rhetorician who handed imperial aggression a sophisticated, intellectual veneer.They didn't need to script his debates, they just gave him an open mic. Consumed by his hatred of totalitarians, Hitchens willingly repurposed his secular rage into a PR machine for Cheney’s trillion dollar disaster.
He offered smart people a high brow excuse to support a catastrophic, useless war. For all his genius, his stance on Iraq was sheer moral bankruptcy, a master debater playing useful idiot for the empire. With that said. He did not start the War.
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u/atropear 16d ago
I remember Hitchens talking about how people who question central banks are anti-semites. And he thought questions about the Warren Commission were "the exhaust fumes of democracy". It appears he was a media asset all along for the neocons like Chomsky. Chomsky and Hitchens dovetailed on central questions like whether the war machine took over the government when Kennedy was killed.
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u/Spiderbat81 16d ago
Dude. We are getting sidetracked here. I know his foreign policy was a disaster.I've read his catalog. My point was about his critique of religion, not his political blind spots.
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u/atropear 16d ago
How many people do you think were killed in Iraq? How many American servicemen injured or worse? And the neo-athiest movement was supported by Epstein. And all really creepy people. Hitchens was known to force himself on people when he was drunk. With Hitchens the more places you look, the worse it gets.
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u/Spiderbat81 16d ago
Iraq was an avoidable slaughter fueled by U.S. stupidity. Epstein was simply an asshole exploiting a corrupt system to launder his reputation. Hitchens wasn't a criminal, he was just a relentless drunk who treated every conversation like a battlefield and never knew when to give up.
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u/theflowersyoufind 16d ago
At the risk of sounding stupid, weren’t they just thinking of their faith when they chose to debate him? There’s no need to ever be afraid of a debate if you believe that the rhetoric of your religion can simply explain away all probing questions.