What the man meant to me.

So like I said in yesterdays post, I wanted to share what Christopher Hitchens meant to me. Here goes.

Christmas day 2007 (I believe that was the year, I'm never good at remembering dates and such.) I got a book as a present from my mother. The book was titled, "God is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything. Reading the cover and the first few sentences I became horribly exited, this looked like the exact thing I was looking for. At this point I had definitely been on the path to atheism for a while. I started questioning the faith I was raised in, Lutheranism, since I was around seven or eight or so, and I existed on a healthy diet of George Carlin.

Reading that book over the next few days I learned a lot. I learned that it wasn't just Christianity that was crazy and harmful. I learned for every contradiction in the bible, there were hundreds of people dying. I learned, like the title suggested, just how poisonous religion can be. He also taught me that hate is a powerful thing that I shouldn't hide or be afraid of, but to embrace and use as a tool. To this day my mother fights me on this, insisting that not every religious person is bad and worth the hate I feel. "It's not the people mom, it's the religion." She told me I should honor his death my trying to help continue his work which I responded, "Then I need to hate mom, that's what he would have done."

I could never be Hitchens and I don't know if anyone else could be, but him dying makes me want to try somehow to at least aspire to be as awesome as he could be, and maybe then some.

Try, try again and putting the rest in R.I.P

So I will briefly touch on something a few of you might be wondering, another blog? Really? I've had many over the years on so many sites. Most I write in a few times then lose interest, forget the password or something and move on. In this case I was perfectly willing to continue the use of my other blog but I had forgotten I had started two separate Google accounts and I discovered, you can't log into both at the same time. So fuck it, starting over. Maybe this time I can do better?

Christopher Hitchens died. I know this isn't news to anyone reading this, and I can almost guarantee he meant something to you to one degree or another. This isn't another blog in his honor or in tribute (though he did mean a lot to me and I may write a separate entry on how.) This entry is about how we should treat the dead.

Along with any internet-faring atheist, I belong to a few groups on the respective social media sites I belong to, groups where fellow atheists and I share ideas, jokes, maybe even debate a little. A member of one of these groups, the day after Hitchens had died posted a question asking, "Why do people keep saying RIP? You know he's not coming back to life right?" He then went on to suggest that us saying 'RIP' was no better than religionists suggesting he was in Heaven or Hell. I didn't answer him really on my thoughts, I simply said that at least we aren't saying "He's in a better place." The conversation went on in my stead but I lost track.

What is the proper treatment of the dead in the atheist world? I personally think Rest In Peace is perfectly reasonable. In the most literal sense that is what the dead are doing. And when we say it we all know that as atheist we don't think he'll come back from the dead, whether as a zombie or a ghost. We're not stupid (at least I'd like to hope we aren't.) We aren't saying it for him either, we know he can't see or hear it. We say it for his family, his friends, his other fans. The hundreds of people affected and influenced by his work and his life. What else is there to say? Do we stick with, "He's in a better place?" or "I'm praying for him and his family?" Or do we say nothing? We may not believe in god(s), but we're still human. We still love and admire and need to mourn and until someone can come up with something better to say, I'm fine with R.I.P.