I suggest you check out theNational Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine... those holy quacks get $1.2 billion of our tax money every year to research things like prayer healing and coffee enemas... I am not making this up...
that's our tax money we could be spending on real science... that's the issue— where the money goes... and it has a direct effect on material reality...
Complementary, big difference.
Otherwise, they would be healing you by telling you how pretty you look today!
Yep. I am moreso focusing on the actual plant vs. chemical argument of medicine. I feel that broaching religion clouds the more practical argument of the medicine itself. That was my main point. I am a big fan of plants and herbs for healing and am against the alarming chemical medication that is rampant in modern society. That is more where I am coming from.
I'm with you. In fact, I'll take it a step further. My wife is an ICU nurse. A ventilator specialist. We both see the merit in healing to prolong life when it doesn't prolong suffering and the blurry line between the two depends partially on the dollar sign (so, I suppose RT's point is actually relevant to some degree) but also on the liability for lawsuit. Enter religion. We both believe that prolonging suffering by keeping people alive is our stubborn effort to hold control over keeping life on this plane of existence. It's the denial of our Father's effort to bring us home when He says it's time. Translated to other beliefs, it disallows us to move on to a higher plane of existence or it disallows us to move on to our next life when it's time. All of these perspectives offer one unanimous truth: medicine is only effective when it facilitates healthy living, whether that be herbal or modern
Pharmaceuticals aren't something I normally advocate these days but I will say that I'm pleased with what my doctor prescribed to me. It's helped me to gain control over uncontrollable anxiety and I'm sleeping much better. Also, my marriage is thriving now because there are no frustrations and arguments. There's only healthy dialogue now. She took a stern two hours to assess my condition and asked me what I was comfortable with before prescribing anything.
I've chosen the "herbal" road, if you know what I mean, and although it definitely got that aspect under control, there was no way to regulate the dosage or its affect on my chemistry and since abandoning that alternative I learned one very important thing: you cannot escape life's trials, tribulations and problems. It disarms you of your ability to withstand and deal with them. They don't go away, rather they wait for you so that you can deal with them later after they've compounded. Anxiety returns in full force.
Both choices have their advantages. Both can be toxic to one's being if abused.
Actually, the issue is relative to the assessor. And the issue that I believe sirdroseph was pointing out is the fact that Hitchen's tries to turn the diversity between modern medicine and cultural medicine into a focus on religion's cause and effect on both. His statement in associating religion with both of these very different approaches to healing is nothing but an addenda to facilitate his hate and ignorance about religion. I might be wrong about SD's assessment but money most definitely has nothing to do with this.
Yep. I am moreso focusing on the actual plant vs. chemical argument of medicine. I feel that broaching religion clouds the more practical argument of the medicine itself. That was my main point. I am a big fan of plants and herbs for healing and am against the alarming chemical medication that is rampant in modern society. That is more where I am coming from.
I suggest you check out theNational Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine... those holy quacks get $1.2 billion of our tax money every year to research things like prayer healing and coffee enemas... I am not making this up...
that's our tax money we could be spending on real science... that's the issue— where the money goes... and it has a direct effect on material reality...
Actually, the issue is relative to the assessor. And the issue that I believe sirdroseph was pointing out is the fact that Hitchen's tries to turn the diversity between modern medicine and cultural medicine into a focus on religion's cause and effect on both. His statement in associating religion with both of these very different approaches to healing is nothing but an addenda to facilitate his hate and ignorance about religion. I might be wrong about SD's assessment but money most definitely has nothing to do with this.
What happens to the faith healer and the shaman when any poor citizen can see the full effect of drugs and surgeries, administered without ceremonies or mystification? Roughly the same thing as happens to the rainmaker when the climatologist turns up, or the diviner from the heavens when schoolteachers get hold of elementary telescopes...
Now see I don't agree with this because it discounts the difference in the medicine itself between the Shaman and modern medicine regardless of the ritual which of course is another discussion but an important one. That is more a discussion of plants vs. chemically altered and man made produced medicine. I see Hitchens point, but think that it ignores or diverts this more important discussion in relation to modern medicine vs. indigenous natural plant remedies.
...but there were also intellectual powers about him that I respected, and he could be very interesting and entertaining— he did not go gentle into that good night... and he had cajónes...
Rest in peace, "Hitch". I hope in the end that you made some peace with yourself, at least.
Yeah, I know what you mean... the dude had flaws, and there were positions he took that I disagreed with... the eulogies I posted were basically de mortuis nihil nisi bonum...
but there were also intellectual powers about him that I respected, and he could be very interesting and entertaining— he did not go gentle into that good night... and he had cajónes...
Hitchens, Christopher (2007), God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, New York: Twelve Books Chapter 5: A Note on Health, to Which Religion Can Be Hazardous (p.46)
The attitude of religion to medicine, like the attitude of religion to science, is always necessarily problematic and very often necessarily hostile. A modern believer can say and even believe that his faith is quite compatible with science and medicine, but the awkward fact will always be that both things have tendency to break religion's monopoly, and have often been fiercely resisted for that reason. What happens to the faith healer and the shaman when any poor citizen can see the full effect of drugs and surgeries, administered without ceremonies or mystification? Roughly the same thing as happens to the rainmaker when the climatologist turns up, or the diviner from the heavens when schoolteachers get hold of elementary telescopes...
HITCH by Jane Mayer The New Yorker December 16, 2011
Christopher Hitchens was a supernova in Washington. Amidst the dreary, self-editing power-seekers, he was a wild and beautiful boy, out to seduce, provoke, and dazzle. The thirty or so years that we were friends are studded with indelible memories. Here's just one that can't be forgotten:
On assignment in Palm Beach, Hitchens scored an invitation to dine at the town's most exclusive, and allegedly anti-Semitic, country club. Though he admired Trotsky, truth be told Hitch revelled in the high life. But having discovered his own Jewish heritage late in life, he was hell-bent on making the most of it. After generous libations at the bar, Hitchens and a small party of friends, including his wife Carol Blue, were ceremoniously seated at a table in the midst of the stuffy dining room. Surrounded by billionaires politely nibbling at Crab Louis with their families, Hitch was presented with the establishment's menu. There was a pause, as he scanned the entries. Then, at a volume designed to be heard on all eighteen holes of the adjoining golf course, Hitch handed back the menu to the waiter and boomed, "This won't do. I NEED THE KOSHER MENU!"
After the ensuing commotion, the member who had hosted Hitch was suspended, and a new club-house rule was passed: added to the list of social taboos from that day on was an absolute ban on journalists.
Hitch lived so large, and so beyond the rules, that his mortality seems especially hard to accept. I remember the day some eighteen months ago when he told me that he was mortally ill. He had missed a few stops on his book tour, which wasn't like him, so I called to see if he was all right. "No," he said frankly. "I'm not. I have cancer." I was so stricken for the next few days that I couldn't get much work done. Then I noticed that during the time that I was using his illness as an excuse to procrastinate, he had himself authored a handful of brilliant pieces. I couldn't work, but he couldn't stop working. He was a born writer, whose irrepressible talent and verve put most of the rest of us journeymen to shame.
My opinion is stated as just that. My opinion. I sit here and read time and time again about atheists proclaiming their stance on religion and I accept and respect their views. I even read, on occasion, remarks ridiculing Christianity by people that I consider intelligent and respect-worthy. I enjoy the personalities that exist here in this community and enjoy taking part in communicating with you all. Well, now I have mine. So I'm laying it down:
Christopher Hitchens appears to me to have been a self-conflicted, self-motivated hater who used misguided brilliance to spout anger towards religion, among other things. I believe that he struggled with it internally so intensely that he used his career to engage it, battle it and justify his own selfish perspective. He's revered by so many as a man that spoke up against oppression from organized religion but on many occasions, he verbally struck directly at God Himself and argued about a concept that he only half-understood. He was a glass-half-empty person who's tendency to over-imbibe illustrates to me his intent on numbing internal conflict. His own self-medicating lifestyle is the very one that killed him in the end.
I have no respect for this man. After listening to his interviews, the sound of his voice started to damper my mood. His arrogant, stoic, abhorrent attitude was less than digestible to even empathize with by the end. This "eulogy", specifically pertaining to the country-club event labels him a hypocrite as far as I'm concerned. His provocative behavior, spiteful choice of disrespectful words when conversing with others and his use of the word "hate" represented nothing that I could use to sway my perspective of his work at this point beyond useless.
In short, he seemed like an unlikable guy who ran his mouth way too much and contributed really nothing other than a contentious tirade against religion that brings so many people comfort and strength. My religion specifies unconditional love and acceptance. It's a moral foundation for the lifestyles that most people (including good folks here) live by and don't even realize it. It's an offering, not force, of grace through the eyes of the Creator that wants nothing more than love back from His people. It seems to me that so many people speak against it when they have absolutely no understanding of it other than the negative perspective that they maintain to justify rejecting it.
Rest in peace, "Hitch". I hope in the end that you made some peace with yourself, at least.
Hitchens' demonization of religion was as irrational as the religions he attacked. Religion for him was the ultimate scapegoat, the ultimate straw man to pass the buck for all of humanity's problems. It's easy to appoint an abstract, complex system of beliefs as your villian, and then tear it to shreds. But none of these atheist crusaders ever think about what happens AFTER religion is banished (and than goodness for the "God is Great" episode of South Park which brilliantly pointed that out). For the militant atheist like Hitchens, abolishment of religion IS his End Times eschatology, and it's just as bad as the book of Revelations. Apparently, everything will be solved as soon as religion is abolished. Well, anyone who thinks that is an utter fool.
I say this as an atheist who doesn't harbor any illusions about human nature, and isn't dumb or reductionist enough to think everything goes down to religion. If anything, religion is the symptom of other underlying social and economic problems, not the ultimate cause. With his hysterical attacks and fetish for demonizing them, Hitchens gave religions way too much credit.
As for his support for Iraq, that was unforgivable, and remains completely unforgivable. It's disgusting that serious intellectuals continued to support him after he took such a reprehensible position on a war that was based completely on lies.
I see your point, religion does not create all of the troubles of the world, but it in my mind it is the MVP of all reasons for the ills of the world and I thought Hitchens rocked! I think Lennon had it right.
HITCH by Jane Mayer The New Yorker December 16, 2011
Christopher Hitchens was a supernova in Washington. Amidst the dreary, self-editing power-seekers, he was a wild and beautiful boy, out to seduce, provoke, and dazzle. The thirty or so years that we were friends are studded with indelible memories. Here's just one that can't be forgotten:
On assignment in Palm Beach, Hitchens scored an invitation to dine at the town's most exclusive, and allegedly anti-Semitic, country club. Though he admired Trotsky, truth be told Hitch revelled in the high life. But having discovered his own Jewish heritage late in life, he was hell-bent on making the most of it. After generous libations at the bar, Hitchens and a small party of friends, including his wife Carol Blue, were ceremoniously seated at a table in the midst of the stuffy dining room. Surrounded by billionaires politely nibbling at Crab Louis with their families, Hitch was presented with the establishment's menu. There was a pause, as he scanned the entries. Then, at a volume designed to be heard on all eighteen holes of the adjoining golf course, Hitch handed back the menu to the waiter and boomed, "This won't do. I NEED THE KOSHER MENU!"
After the ensuing commotion, the member who had hosted Hitch was suspended, and a new club-house rule was passed: added to the list of social taboos from that day on was an absolute ban on journalists.
Hitch lived so large, and so beyond the rules, that his mortality seems especially hard to accept. I remember the day some eighteen months ago when he told me that he was mortally ill. He had missed a few stops on his book tour, which wasn't like him, so I called to see if he was all right. "No," he said frankly. "I'm not. I have cancer." I was so stricken for the next few days that I couldn't get much work done. Then I noticed that during the time that I was using his illness as an excuse to procrastinate, he had himself authored a handful of brilliant pieces. I couldn't work, but he couldn't stop working. He was a born writer, whose irrepressible talent and verve put most of the rest of us journeymen to shame.
Hitch is dead. Not, obviously, his brilliant body of work, or the stunning examples of a grand and unfettered intellect that will forever survive him, as will the indelible record of his immense wit and passion. But, sadly, a life force that I had assumed as an indissoluble part of our political and literary landscape, as well as my own close circle of friends, has ended, and with it an indispensable element of our collective moral code...
He was a great man, perfect in his intellectual courage, but I am reminded more of the writer, profoundly dedicated to his craft and committed, for all of his sparkle and bouts of excess, to a prodigious workaday effort at making this a better world...
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Dec 17, 2011 - 12:10pm
Beaker wrote:
ScottN wrote:
Very sad to lose this unique commentator on the political and social scene. I will remember meeting him on the pages of The Nation. He was so very good at fileting the policies of the "Great Communicator." It's a cliché he wrote that I remember best, though he was a very good writer, imo. At the end of an article on Reagan, Hitchens rhetorically asked "How can you tell when he is lying" and answered himself with "when his lips move".
Too bad he got Iraq wrong, imo, but hey, he made a cogent , if insufficient, argument for his position. R.I.P
A little early too make this call, I'd say. The same thing (Arab Spring) could have happened sooner and organically to Saddam as Mubarak and in Tunisia. To say the "Arab Spring" would not have happened w/o the Iraq war is a stretch, imo. A case can be made for the opposite. But that is what made Hitchens so provocative and wonderful to read. He had a probing intellect. He'd change his mind,and he had discipline in his thinking. Sometimes he would even say "I was wrong".
Iraq was a mistake on so many levels. You can start with 4000+ dead Americans plus all the (many, many more) dead, injured and displaced Iraqis for a starting point. History will sort it out for both of us.
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Dec 17, 2011 - 11:14am
Very sad to lose this unique commentator on the political and social scene. I will remember meeting him on the pages of The Nation. He was so very good at fileting the policies of the "Great Communicator." It's a cliché he wrote that I remember best, though he was a very good writer, imo. At the end of an article on Reagan, Hitchens rhetorically asked "How can you tell when he is lying" and answered himself with "when his lips move".
Too bad he got Iraq wrong, imo, but hey, he made a cogent , if insufficient, argument for his position. R.I.P
I think Lennon had it right.
