Thursday 5 April 2012

Amazing Hitchslap Index: part 6

Here is the next instalment of 'The Amazing Hitchslap Index', summarising the content of the next 7 of the 66 'Hitchslaps' uploaded to Youtube by Loy Machedo as explained here.  For each Hitchslap, I summarise the content in the form of direct quotations and summaries, list co-stars and 'authorities' called upon.  This series should help you to find that one perfect Hitchslap to send to someone who you are debating.

Hitchslap 37 - The great debate with Tony Blair

Hitchslap 37 Religion is insanity.  6:54
A text from Cardinal Newman.  
"The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say 'should be lost', but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one farthing without excuse."
What we have here is a distillation of precisely what is twisted and immoral in the faith mentality.
Its consideration of human being as a raw material in a cruel experiment where we are created sick and then ordered to be well
Installed about this is a celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea
Greedy for uncritical praise 
Swift to punish the original sin with which it so tenderly gifted us in the first place.
Redemption is promised at the low price of the surrender of your critical faculties.
Is it good for the world to appeal to our credulity and not our skepticism? (and a list of other things)
Birth place of mono-theism . . . should be enough room for two states in the same land . . .  but the parties of god have a veto on it.
People kill each other's children for ancient books and caves and relics.
What will happen when messianic fanatics get hold of an apocalyptic weapon?
‘Co-stars’: Tony Blair debate
Cited: Cardinal John Henry Newman's Apologia, Steven Weinberg, Iran, Tsarism in Putin's Russia
Link: http://youtu.be/SBqdaDXQW2A

Hitchslap 38 Waging war on the world.  5:42
Clinton administration intervened to prevent Iranians from invading Afghanistan.
Al Qaeda is a highly sectarian organisation which regards Shia as heretics who can be slaughtered at any time in the name of God.  Doesn't have a chance of winning hearts and minds.  Its defeat is certain
Named plaintiff on the wire tapping case.
Water-boarding self-evidently crossing the line that constitutes torture.
We have no right to throw away our ancient liberties.  All we need is to be very patient and very intelligent and of course very ruthless.
You advocate withdrawal and surrender.
...reduced Afghanistan to complete peonage and slavery.  50% of the Muslim population – the female part – is regarded as sub-human.
‘Co-stars’: Justin Ramondo
Cited: Al Qaeda, Hazara, Shia, East Timor
Link: http://youtu.be/PovQ2TCHVeM

Hitchslap 39 The cure for poverty.  4:34
In fairness no-one was arguing that religion should or will die out in the world.
It would be better if there was a great deal more by way of an outbreak of secularism.
We know that the cure for poverty is the empowerment of women to control the rate at which they reproduce.
Name me one religion that stands for that or ever has.
If I was a member of a church that preached that AIDS was not as bad as condoms I would be putting some conscience money into Africa too.
You may think its a bit cracked to think that Joseph Smith found another bible in up-state New York, but you should see our missionaries in action.
Great deal of charitable work is nothing compared to the harm that they do, but it is a great deal all the same
Don't require divine permission to know right from wrong. Don't need commandments administered to us ten at a time and in tablet form.
I have done my best – believe me, I have more.
‘Co-stars’: Tony Blair debate
Cited: Roman Catholics, Mormons, Rabbi Hillel, Confucius, Socrates, Wahhabi , Shia, Joseph Smith, Mamas Hesbullah
Link: http://youtu.be/r8YLfhtac9k

Hitchslap 40 The after life.  4:41
We know our chemical composition.  We are made out of stardust.
Will my dog or cat be there in heaven too? (Never ask about that hellish tabby being reassembled in the infernal regions.)
Wishful thinking for heaven is hedonistic, but why would people who are wish-thinking want hell?
Farrakhan in 1985 said “Remember Jews – when god puts you in the ovens it is for ever”– great moan and groan of pleasure that came from that audience.
Stupidity and nastiness and criminality of this religious nut bag
Call someone an imam or a priest or reverend and there is nothing that they can't get away with in our cultrure.
When someone gets up and says I'm a person of faith . . . means “I'm a person who will believe practically anything on no evidence at all”
You would think that the Lord himself would have had enough of the songs of praise after the first 5 billion years.
Tertullian on hell and heaven . . . From heaven you can go to the edge and look down on the torments and endless tortures of the damned.  That is a founding statement of Christianity  You can't disown it now. 
Ratzinger – an over-dressed little ponce who was himself a member of the Hitler youth
‘Co-stars’: Rabbi Schmuley Boteach, 
Cited: Dinesh's clever case for the afterlife, Louis Farrakhan, Tertullian, Ratzinger, Hitler Youth
Link: http://youtu.be/jQG3y_C_J_c

Hitchslap 41 Jesus's teachings are not moral.  5:56
Birth of Jesus in the bible – virgin 
List of virgin births.  No end to the way in which this kind of thing can be fabricated.
Potency and pungency of the story . . . inviting you not to rely on your thinking faculties but on straight out credulity.
Appear to be part of the hard and soft wiring of legend in our mammalian primate history 
If you want to have a prophet it is better if his mother is a virgin.
Joseph Smith never made that claim but Mrs Smith was well enough known to make it rather unlikely that that thing could be sold.
Revolting idea of human sacrifice, scape-goating and vicarious redemption.  Repulsive immoral idea.
C S Lewis on forgiveness. Asinine fatuity being the description of his conduct.
Either a lunatic or the devil of hell, a madman or something worse.
Lewis can't complete a syllogism, and never could.  Paltry logic.
‘Co-stars’: Dinesh D'Sousa
Cited: Demigod Perseus, Jupiter, Buddha, Aztec god, Attis, Genghis Kahn, Krishna, Horus, Mercury, Romulus, Virgin Mary, Joseph Smith, C S Lewis, Thomas Jefferson
Link: http://youtu.be/6qPxh0JJwhk

Hitchslap 42 The insult of religion.  3:57
Relieves you of the idea that plagues are punishments as the church used to preach.
Free yourself from appalling burden of superstition from our primate past.
Study plate tectonics – you won't do what the Archbishop of Haiti did.
Earthquake in Haiti – quarter of million victims.  God had something to say to Haiti and this is the way he chose to say it.
Responsibility to take on learning to free ourselves of superstition.
Crucial events happened 3000 to 2000 years ago in illiterate desert Arabia and Palestine and at that moment only, the heavens decided that it was time to intervene.
If I don't believe it I wouldn't have any source for ethics or  morality.
Please don't pile the insulting onto the irrational.
If I don't accept these sacrifices in the desert I have no reason to tell right from wrong.
God must have wanted the exile to be ended and we know that it was ended by Christian Europe throwing Jewish babies into furnaces
Some rabbis used to claim that the holocaust was a punishment for exile.
Dinesh asked his father Everyone else seems to be Hindu, why are we Christians  Because Portuguese inquisition got to this part of India first.
To leave the C of E behind, believe me, is no sweat.
George Herbert referred to “The sweet mediocrity of our native church.”
What do you get if you cross an Anglican with a Jehovah's Witness?  Somebody who comes to your door and bothers you for no particular reason.
‘Co-stars’: Dinesh D'Sousa
Cited: George Herbert, Archbishop of Haiti, Cardinal Archbishop of New York
Link: http://youtu.be/dfbWpaT78ZY

Hitchslap 43 Morals without God. 1:31
Invite the audience to join a thought experiment.
If it was conclusively demonstrated that [list of people] and all the other imposters are nothing more than legendary or mythical or fraudulent figures are you going to [list of 'sins'].  I submit that this is not so.
If there was no god, no prophets and no revelation, our moral dilemmas would be exactly as they are now.  Who doubts it?
‘Co-stars’: A panel
Cited: Jesus, Abraham, Moses, Mohammed, Joseph Smith and all the other imposters
Link: http://youtu.be/-D-cCNbMWxk

Hitchslap 44 Hitchslappin the 10 commandments.  8:07
Moses himself was a revisionist.  At least 4 versions of the Decalogue.
Commandment against the making of graven images upsetting to Catholics.
How do you take the Lord's name in vain?  Nobody has worked exactly how to obey this.  It is usually wise when promulgating eternal laws to be clear about what you mean.
Honour thy father and mother comes with an inducement.  Then you will have longer tenure of the land that has been promised to you.
Thou shalt not kill – but almost immediately afterwards Moses ordered murder of his supporters' friends and brothers.
Turkish government tried recently to make adultery a crime, but failed.
Don't know of any society that says it is ok to steal.
Idea of bearing false witness is and should be shocking to the entire human conscience – it may be the finest of the commandments.  Shows a rare and careful sense of the balance and scruple that is required for judgement and justice.
Last commandment forbids coveting.  Considers women equivalent to chattels.  Forbidden even to think.  Attempt to suppress a desire that must have been put into us by god.
Did god make men or did men make many gods?
Looking at a god who improvises, is jealous, short tempered, inconsistent.
A new ten commandments is read.
Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are.
Don't swallow your moral code in tablet form.
‘Co-stars’: 
Cited: Moses, 
Link: http://youtu.be/tiJqQE5WChk


Hitchslap Index posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9

The next parts coming regularly.  Check back for more!

Please add your comments, suggestions and corrections so that they can be included (with credit) in the final summary index that will be made up of these posts.

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