The matter of the freedom of speech and expression is not just at the heart of economic growth but also of development. I make no apologies about my unconditional and eternal support of free inquiry, speech, and expression. If the exercise of free speech offends someone, then that person belongs to a lower order of existence than that of a human. I have written about the absolute necessity of the freedom of speech. Among the many reasons for my distaste for monotheism is that it prohibits free speech, free expression and free inquiry. By its very nature, monotheism is totalitarian and dictatorial and hence it is anathema to me.
I have had my disagreements with Hitchens, of course. His endorsement of the invasion of Iraq by neocons I vehemently reject. Better sense did prevail over him. It was a momentary lapse of reason. No one is infallible, and we all make mistakes. But I endorse Hitches without reservations on his take of the evils of monotheism, and I place him in the company of the greats such as Gore Vidal and V. S. Naipaul.
There is little gained by not listening to one of the greatest polemicists of our age talk about free speech and the evils of monotheism, Mr Christopher Hitchens. Go watch the video.
Life is a Random Draw 
Atanu,
Question,
Why support free speech ?
Atanu’s response: See the answer in my next post.
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Atanu you have never provided a single ascertained reason for your critique of invasion of iraq.(its questionable if it was even a critique.
Atanu’s response: I opposed the invasion of Iraq because it was a transparent plot for the neocons to gain control of oil based on false advertising of WMD and a spurious claim that the dictator Saddam Hussien was linked to the mythical Al Quaeda. I opposed it because it was a costly exercise — hundreds of billions wasted and tens thousands of lives lost. I opposed it because even the fake objective of bringing democracy to an Islamic society was doomed from the start.
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Atanu – “His endorsement of the invasion of Iraq by neocons I vehemently reject. Better sense did prevail over him. ”
Did Hitchens reverse his intellectual support for the Iraq experiment?
If yes, he is a coward of the first order.
Atanu’s response: Changing one’s mind is not necessarily an indication of cowardice. It could mean that one is capable of learning.
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Atanu
Bickerings on this thread should be enough to convince you that virtues of unbridled freedom of speech are often overrated.
Atanu’s response: No, just because people bicker (as you put it) over matters does not shake my conviction that freedom of expression is an absolute necessity for human progress. Bickering is a small price to pay for the benefits of unbridled freedom of expression. Who knows where the gem of an argument is hidden in all the piles of bullshit.
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I have deleted a bunch of comments. The author of a few of the comments thought he went overboard and asked me to delete the comments. Which I did. Then I also deleted the responses to his comments as they were not relevant any more.
The policy on this blog is free expression, naturally. Being civil makes it better all around. We can’t be civil to all all of the time but we can try. I try and sometimes fail. So there.
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Dude he didnt go overboard he simply revealed his pedigree in public.
Atanu’s response: Perhaps the notion of pedigree is overrated.
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If it was a transparent plot to take control of oil, where was the effort towards that. Iraqi oil is still about the same as the prewar level.
Huseins link to “mythical”(as if it didnt exist) Alquaida had started forming as part of the war chessboard. Hussein did realize value in becoming a Pakistan like country for survival, as was doing so.
He had started inviting terrorist in as other countries were asking them to go into hiding.
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Atanu – There is no proof that the neo-cons went into Iraq only for oil.
For all we know, they truly believed that Iraq was the best candidate for change.
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And even if they did do it for the oil.So what? Are we so naive to think that nations like America, where we immigrate to in droves, became rich by doing good deeds?
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Atanu ..why not post the classic response of Keynes about changing opinions?:)
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you said,”Religious fanaticism is purely a monotheistic phenomenon. Monotheism accords special status to the ONE TRUE GOD(TM) and its followers the monopoly on truth and goodness.
Abhay, I think it is not just poverty. You have to have poverty and monotheism. That is why Islam has bloody borders right from the beginning.”
this was in response to my comment posted on indianeconomy.org.. do you see anything wrong in here..? in your logic?..you say povery + monotheism = religious fanaticsm..right?
then to explain RSS kind of fanaticsm.. you say religious fanaticsm= monotheism..
anyway in my opinion the bigger mistake you are making is to employ western terms like monotheism, which itself is so limiting in nature, to explain other socieites.. to the extent you have declared islamic societies and religion totally worthless..they can be done away with..that kind of thinking is in its nature so totalitarian..
coming back to your logic..and limits of the terms you use.. when you are being cornered you are changing the meaning of the term..I liked your writing because you could clear the mist around words.. but now , at least here.. you are completely lost in them.. do something..
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Anuj & Athanu,
I don’t think Hitchens ever changed his mind – he still says invading was worth it (at least for the kurds – and he is big kurd nation proponent), but he says, rightly, it was screwed up because of incompetency of Rumsfeld, who Hitchen criticizes for failing to keep peace after defeating Saddam’s forces.
BTW, I supported the invasion to remove the murdering dictator (not for made up wmds) but became dubious about Bush and his team’s competency soon after. (I think someone should take out that another murdering dictator in the north of korea.) Failure in Iraq is not about oil (if it was why aren’t neocons pumping all of it now – they still are below where Saddam was with sanctions) or lack of muslim democracy (clearly iraqis voted in elections for their candidates). It’s clearly Bush and his coterie wanting to do things on the cheap early on enabling a civil and terror war.
Btw, the speech was classic Hitchens and excellent. Thanks for posting it.
Atanu’s response: Entirely off-topic question. Why do South Indians add “h’s” to words? So ‘Atanu’ becomes ‘AtHanu’ and ‘jayanti janta’ becomes ‘jayantHi jantHa’? Been an eternal mystery for me.
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Chandra wrote:-
“It’s clearly Bush and his coterie wanting to do things on the cheap early on enabling a civil and terror war”
What they did was by no means not cheap,(and they knew it) and the coterie was as sadly a ‘central’ and almost Washington ‘establishment fixture’
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I find linkage of poverty here dishonest.
Middle Eastern Countries are Not poor compared to global standards they are wealthy.
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to illustrate further on the limitation of a term like monotheism and its imagined meaning..
in India too we have monotheism..if you translate it you will get a word which is called advaita.. I hope you are familiar with it.. its most famous propogator shanakara.. who denied the apparent world as maya and beleived only in one brahma.. has written loads and loads of odes and prayers to shiv, devi, ganesha and others.. was he ‘monotheistic’ or what?
then hindoos who beleive in many Gods.. who are not ‘monotheistic’.. carry the potential to be extremely violent..take active part in riots.. and you will find economically poor and ‘monotheistic’ aryamasamaajis quite peace loving.. how is that?
you have chosen a word that already has an accepted meaning.. now to explain a complex phenomenon you are pushing extra meanings into the word that don’t exist. and at the same time you are simplyfying the complexities of realty by chopping away the edges that don’t fit in with the word that you have chosen..
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you wrote…”Abhay:
I do think that you should ask me to delete your comment. It is logically incorrect. If I were you, I would be very embarrassed to publicly display such incompetence in simple logic.
Only if you don’t wish to retract this comment, I will respond to it.”
I wrote..”would be glad to know what is wrong with my logic.. at least I will correct myself.. and I am not ashamed or embarrassed to display what I feel or think.. ready to learn from you.. sir!”
you wrote,..”Yes, yes, it is all good to learn and stuff. But like toilet training and learning to play the trumpet, basic logic learning should not be done in public. Best to do it behind closed doors.
By basic logic, I mean one should distinguish between necessary and sufficient conditions, learn what a syllogism is, learn the simple rules. Also one should be wary of logical fallacies. These are traps and one can easily stumble into them. Here’s a handy list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy
I searched and found this one http://www.logicalfallacies.info/ to be useful.
Cheers,
Atanu”
instead of doing this toilet training behind the closed doors.. do it here in public forum.. I being a complete imbeicle don’t mind it..
here is my response..
“you seem offeneded.. by my stupidity.. I am not.. by yours.. i would suggest you to be a little tolerant in your views..and not so fanatic… please igonre my comments if they are so bothersome for you.. and if you are concerned enough to mail me.. then instead put a response on your site.. we don’t know each other.. so this kind of informality is unwarranted..”
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instead of going further and further on the worng path.. and being so egotisitcal.. why don’t you simply accept that you made a mistake.. and say sorry to your readers.. it will lighten you up..
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“In India too we have monotheism..if you translate it you will get a word which is called advaita.. I hope you are familiar with it.. its most famous propogator shanakara.. who denied the apparent world as maya and beleived only in one brahma.. has written loads and loads of odes and prayers to shiv, devi, ganesha and others.. was he ‘monotheistic’ or what?
”
Advaita is monistic not monotheistic.
Arya Samajis critisize idol worship, but are not monotheistic by any strecth of imagination.
Rioting is different from massacres which is different from holocaust
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so if no one is monotheistic in hindoo religion.. then hindoos can’t be fanatics.. is that what atanu means..?
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He means that monotheism (or as I prefer to call Abrahamic creed) has inherent tendency due to ideas inscribed in them to be fanatic. Although it is an act of presumption on my part, I doubt whether he is absolving hindus or anyone else, but yes Hindus are less likely to carry out genocides and ethinc cleanesing (AFAIK there is no such incident in history).
Hinduism has problems but it is totally different from Abrahmic creed.
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Abhay,
“Hind oo”
Why the archaic spelling?
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@Atanu, my apologies! It was entirely an oversight on my part. And I have similar complain as you do with respect to an added h and the like in names nowadays.
@Guru, of the more half a trillon spend by US, Iraq got a few 10 of millions/year in infrastructure rebuild or security forces. It was all plugged right back into US military complex which is expensive to keep up. And clearly from early looting, and when various forces were testing water early on in early 2004, US didn’t have enough troops present to deal with them (unlike, say, Indian army in much smaller J&K).
@Anuj, “Hindoo” is a Christian white imperialists spelling and I am sure Abhay knows exactly what he’s doing.
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Gaurav,
Strictly speaking, Advaita is not monostic. It is non-duality (for not-two). It could mean anything, even allowing for shunyavadis of Buddism!!! However, the “popular” Advaita refers to the non-diverse aspects of inner-spirit and the universal-spirit. The following verse (from Shankara’s Vivekachudamani) summarizes the definitions of Advaita:
Brahma Satyam: Unity of Brahman
Jagan Mithya: Illusory concept of the perceived world
Jeevo-brahmaiva naa-paraah: Non-diversity of inner-self with the supreme-spirit.
==
Abhay, Please read the Wiki entry on Advaita, atleast.
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Amar,
Not being scholar of scriptures (my knowledge limited to Wiki) I defer to your opinion. However I do think that historically atleast Advaita was in philosophical opposition with Buddhism.
Also I believe that Adi-Shankara was accused of plagiarizing* Gautam Buddha, who was accused of plagiarizing** Upanishads.
*,**I speak tongue in cheek
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a tad off topic [pardon me]: below is a passage [page 19] from Hitchens’, “letters to a young contrarian”.
“Homer was wrong,” wrote Heracleitus of Ephesus, “Homer was wrong is saying: ‘Would that strife might perish from among gods and men!’ He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe; for if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away.”
These are words on which superhumanists should meditate. Aspiring towards a consistent perfection, they are aspiring toward annihilation. The Hindus had the wit to see and the courage to proclaim the fact; Nirvana, the goal of their striving, is nothingness. Wherever life exists, there is also inconsistency, division, strife.
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Anuj,
I very much doubt that Nirvana is nothingness.
Further I also doubt that Nothingness as such is cornerstone of Hinduism (Or vedic dharma), There is something called Shunyata is Buddhism which is mistaken for Nothingness, but apparently is not.
Aside I find Nasadiya Sukta very interesting.
PS Wiki is ofcourse just for reference and not an absolute authority
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Atanu is at it again.. you can see … yes inspite of his economic brilliance… a bias towards anything Hinduism. His previous posts – all of them tend to justify anything associated with Hinduism…
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Gaurav,
You are probably right.
However, the main thrust of Hitchens’ argument in said passage is that strife i
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Listen or watch the great Amanpour
Why Why Why cant any Stupid person ever conclude that IT is about ISLAM
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