when a company loses money, often the first person to receive blame is the CEO. by accepting a low salary, he becomes popular with the workers and gains support which helps him keep his job. this makes it for a board of directors to fire him, when it might have been a better for the company (and thus for the workers) to take on a new, better CEO. put it on the local news, and just try and fire him.

nobody turns down $1,000,0000 for the "sake of the company" when the ink runs red, they are doing it for the sake of their own job. he will wait it out and happily take the $5,000,000 a year again when the ink turns black. show me a CEO at the height of profit margins who accepts a lower salary than offered, and i'll point you to a "humanitarian". once again, by looking at everything skin-deep, the whole point was missed and a typical, "selfish", CEO is being praised as the next mother teresa.

sly CEO: 1
two dozen videosift posters: 0

You have been awarded 1 Power Point for fixing the embed code for Dead Pool video Christopher Hitchens "Debates" Bill Donohue on Mother Teresa. Thank you for helping maintain VideoSift's reliability.

Ok, I know I said it doesn't warrant a response, but who am I to argue with my own rhetoric? This may be food for thoughts for some of you on the brink of insanity from religious pressures of all kinds.

Semantics. You knew what was meant by "devil" in this context: someone who is out for themselves alone at the cost of all others.

That's also called simply a "criminal" or "psychopath". You're the one doing semantics. Calling a criminal or a psychopath the devil is a figure of speech. But only a religious mind could take this metaphorical equivalence as a fact. Which was my original point: that you fail at keeping different categories separated. Not that you can't use figures of speech.

Since you have it All figured out,

I don't, but thank you for the vote of confidence! I do think I have more things figured out than you do and that unlike you, I'll continue to figure out things in the future and even sometimes change my mind about things I thought I had already figured out. That's science, bitch.

After all, rules and laws are just made up by other people, as long as they can't or won't stop you (or don't see you) you're free!

I suggest (to all of you reading this and thinking "he's got a point", because quantumushroom himself is a lost cause IMO) that you read about evolutionary psychology and game theory. For a somewhat lacking analogy, ants don't kill other ants, yet there is no law or system of justice to punish them and they can't believe in God since they don't have cognition. Then why don't they kill each other? Oh wait, they do. They just don't kill ants of the same colony. If an individual ant thinks all other ants are of the same colony as her, whether or not they really are, then she will kill no one. In a nutshell, cooperation is a good evolutionary strategy, but not a perfect one (and there's nothing better on average).

But to you, we've got free will. Thus the burden is on you to say why I should want to kill my fellow human being. And I would like to know why you, a religious person, think I should want to kill my fellow human being. There are plenty of people, both religious and not, who want to kill each other for plenty of reasons. Why should I want to be one of them and for what particular reasons? "Being and atheist" is not a reason just as "because your religious" is not. Unless you can attach behaviors that are caused by "atheism" and "belief in a religion". But next we'll see why you can't do that with "atheism".

Do you really believe only religion is hypocritical while atheism is "honest"?

(Here religion is taken to mean "any system of belief which at least mandates belief in a God and/or higher beings, natural or supernatural")
Unlike religion, atheism is not a set of belief. It is a statement of unbelief. Thus you cannot ascribe behaviors like hypocrisy to "atheism", only to individual atheists. Likewise "religion" cannot be declared hypocritical at the outset, but individual religions can. And when most religions are hypocritical, we are authorized to say religion itself is hypocritical. That says nothing about individual religious practitioners obviously, but hypocritical things tend to attract hypocrites. At the very least those who come into power into those hypocritical institutions should be hypocrites themselves otherwise the system will crumble over time. Many churches/denominations and whole religions have crumbled over the centuries from this and other problems like it. No one misses them. And no one will miss your religion when its gone.

But who can say the same thing about atheism, since by definition once someone doesn't believe in your religion he is an atheist to you? Atheism was born with the first religious person and will be there to the last. It is not an institution and atheists only have one sure thing in common: they don't believe in a "God" or "higher beings". That's it, nothing more nothing less. Everything else is up to the individual.

So Hitler was just a "bad example" while Mother Teresa cannot serve as even a good example?

No. Mother Teresa was also a bad example. Her prayers were only useless, but the suffering she caused by letting the poor and needy suffer around her in unsanitary conditions is probably the worst amount of suffering directly caused by a single human being in the world. She wanted them to suffer so they could "earn" their place in "heaven". In her psychopathic mind, they were "destined" to suffer and of course she was "destined" to guide them to "heaven". Hitler (a practicing Christian by the way), thought himself "destined" to rid the world of the Jewish menace. And who thinks the Jews are a menace? Christianity and Islam.

FAITH IS NOT LOGICAL. That's why it's faith.

No. That's why it fails (it's the mother of all circular argument).

...with God, everything is permitted. Why? Because God provides a small number of very general rules. Everything else is fair game. And then you realize God didn't provide an interpretation of how and when to apply those few rules, so now everything becomes fair game!

With God, everything is doable, but there are consequences. Once again, atheists are choosing the parts of religion(s) they don't like and using them as walls to push against and build strength. You're trying to play the game with half a basketball.

Way to try and wrest your beliefs on the rest of the (sane) world.

The monsters of history were mostly atheists or believed they were God(s). That's fact. Now, once again, a disclaimer: there are good atheists and bad religionists.

Without belief in a higher power there is no "devil" to emulate. You fail at basic categorical logic since your devil is himself a higher power (an angel).

Semantics. You knew what was meant by "devil" in this context: someone who is out for themselves alone at the cost of all others.

Atheists are atheist about all gods and "higher beings", whatever you call them. They thus can't emulate them per se, but only emulate the characteristic behaviors ascribed to those entities by religious morons like you. Those behaviors are human, they are universal: they existed before religion and even before language, and they will unfortunately continue to exist for a long time.

And, per your uncreative insults, it's obvious that being an atheist lends no one automatic wisdom.

Since you have it All figured out, let me ask, since the limits of your behavior are defined only by getting caught or the fear of same, why aren't you out murdering people and taking their wallets when you need money? Why don't you kick children who are in your way? After all, since you're not a kid you can't be easily kicked back. Why don't you cut lines and jump subway turnstiles? Eat food off the shelves as you walk through the supermarket? After all, rules and laws are just made up by other people, as long as they can't or won't stop you (or don't see you) you're free!

To be an atheist is to believe that Hitler and Mother Teresa are now both equally dust and nothingness.

Let's see here... "for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (Gen 3:19) Oh, I guess you didn't read that? It's kind of near the beginning though.

That's referencing the mortal body, not the eternal soul. Genesis in this case, is not a new brand of Axe Body Spray or Phil Collins's old gig.

As for me I think Hitler, by showing us the darkest side of humanity and uniting the rest of the world against him has done a much better service to the world than the prayers of Mother Teresa or anyone else ever did. And if you really read history, you would know the Spanish Inquisition was more like Nazi Germany than anything else in recorded time.

So Hitler was just a "bad example" while Mother Teresa cannot serve as even a good example?

More people died under atheist-led regimes than in all the religious wars of history. The peaceful "philosophy" beyond-all-gods is swimming in an ocean of blood.

If people were capable of crystalline reasoning and not tricked by their own hearts, there would be no need to acknowledge a Higher Power.

This could be true if a higher, benevolent power spoke directly to us all at the same time. But as it is now, the representatives of that higher power are human and thus are bound to be "tricked by their own hearts" and incapable of crystalline reasoning.

You're building a straw man. I'm not telling anyone to believe any particular way, except to suggest that in this Age of Stupidity, one's own judgment and values may not be the wisest, and certainly not at all times. Atheism, in that way, has no room for growth. If you're a mote in a pointless universe, then what? You've narrowly defined who the representatives of God might be and also Who or What God is. You've made the God-concept in your own image so you can knock God down. I freely admit my words don't prove there's a God, but yours don't disprove either.

What they say is bound to be tainted by "humanity" even if they received a message from higher up (this is even truer if you think all lay people can be representatives of the higher power, like the protestant churches). Thus, whether or not there is really a higher being is a moot point. What matters is that some people truly believe in this illogical bullshit, for better or (mostly) for worse.

FAITH IS NOT LOGICAL. That's why it's faith. People who have only their own hearts to follow are angered when told they're tricked--constantly--by their own emotions. Religion addresses the forest of emotions. Logic addresses the acorn of reason.

What I said here is probably beyond your comprehension, but I thought it would do some good to someone (starting with me).

Since I've been an atheist, I've heard all this before. Atheism doesn't lead nowhere because there's nowhere to go, but because it can only accept Nowhere as the final destination.

This is the problem with religious freaks. They don't even know their own Bible. Hypocrites every one of them, IMHO.

Do you really believe only religion is hypocritical while atheism is "honest"?

In the words of one of my favorite movies, quantumushroom: "You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting."

Well then here's your movie quote reply, "I'm not even supposed to be here today."

I prefer clarity to agreement. Good evening.

>> ^Bidouleroux:
>> ^quantumushroom:
Without God, there is no good or evil. Everything is permitted.
Lol. The mushrooms you're smoking must be really good. While we're making blanket statements, Slavoj Zizek said exactly the opposite, that with God, everything is permitted. Why? Because God provides a small number of very general rules. Everything else is fair game. And then you realize God didn't provide an interpretation of how and when to apply those few rules, so now everything becomes fair game!
Without belief in a Higher Power, the only supernatural being man can emulate is the devil. Even history's greatest monsters thought of themselves as good people doing what they knew to be best.
Way to try and wrest your beliefs on the rest of the (sane) world. Without belief in a higher power there is no "devil" to emulate. You fail at basic categorical logic since your devil is himself a higher power (an angel). Atheists are atheist about all gods and "higher beings", whatever you call them. They thus can't emulate them per se, but only emulate the characteristic behaviors ascribed to those entities by religious morons like you. Those behaviors are human, they are universal: they existed before religion and even before language, and they will unfortunately continue to exist for a long time.
It's easy to make such proclamations when one is enjoying life and in good health. Those suffering through no fault of their own might not see it that way.
They might not see it your way either, so stfu.
Or read both. Religion is an intertwined driving force throughout history, in a world that demands meaning.
Only sane sentence in your whole post, bravo.
To be an atheist is to believe that Hitler and Mother Teresa are now both equally dust and nothingness.
Let's see here... "for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (Gen 3:19) Oh, I guess you didn't read that? It's kind of near the beginning though. As for me I think Hitler, by showing us the darkest side of humanity and uniting the rest of the world against him has done a much better service to the world than the prayers of Mother Teresa or anyone else ever did. And if you really read history, you would know the Spanish Inquisition was more like Nazi Germany than anything else in recorded time.
If people were capable of crystalline reasoning and not tricked by their own hearts, there would be no need to acknowledge a Higher Power.
This could be true if a higher, benevolent power spoke directly to us all at the same time. But as it is now, the representatives of that higher power are human and thus are bound to be "tricked by their own hearts" and incapable of crystalline reasoning. What they say is bound to be tainted by "humanity" even if they received a message from higher up (this is even truer if you think all lay people can be representatives of the higher power, like the protestant churches). Thus, whether or not there is really a higher being is a moot point. What matters is that some people truly believe in this illogical bullshit, for better or (mostly) for worse.

What I said here is probably beyond your comprehension, but I thought it would do some good to someone (starting with me).


This is the problem with religious freaks. They don't even know their own Bible. Hypocrites every one of them, IMHO.

In the words of one of my favorite movies, quantumushroom: "You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting."

>> ^quantumushroom:
Without God, there is no good or evil. Everything is permitted.

Lol. The mushrooms you're smoking must be really good. While we're making blanket statements, Slavoj Zizek said exactly the opposite, that with God, everything is permitted. Why? Because God provides a small number of very general rules. Everything else is fair game. And then you realize God didn't provide an interpretation of how and when to apply those few rules, so now everything becomes fair game!

Without belief in a Higher Power, the only supernatural being man can emulate is the devil. Even history's greatest monsters thought of themselves as good people doing what they knew to be best.

Way to try and wrest your beliefs on the rest of the (sane) world. Without belief in a higher power there is no "devil" to emulate. You fail at basic categorical logic since your devil is himself a higher power (an angel). Atheists are atheist about all gods and "higher beings", whatever you call them. They thus can't emulate them per se, but only emulate the characteristic behaviors ascribed to those entities by religious morons like you. Those behaviors are human, they are universal: they existed before religion and even before language, and they will unfortunately continue to exist for a long time.

It's easy to make such proclamations when one is enjoying life and in good health. Those suffering through no fault of their own might not see it that way.

They might not see it your way either, so stfu.

Or read both. Religion is an intertwined driving force throughout history, in a world that demands meaning.

Only sane sentence in your whole post, bravo.

To be an atheist is to believe that Hitler and Mother Teresa are now both equally dust and nothingness.

Let's see here... "for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (Gen 3:19) Oh, I guess you didn't read that? It's kind of near the beginning though. As for me I think Hitler, by showing us the darkest side of humanity and uniting the rest of the world against him has done a much better service to the world than the prayers of Mother Teresa or anyone else ever did. And if you really read history, you would know the Spanish Inquisition was more like Nazi Germany than anything else in recorded time.

If people were capable of crystalline reasoning and not tricked by their own hearts, there would be no need to acknowledge a Higher Power.

This could be true if a higher, benevolent power spoke directly to us all at the same time. But as it is now, the representatives of that higher power are human and thus are bound to be "tricked by their own hearts" and incapable of crystalline reasoning. What they say is bound to be tainted by "humanity" even if they received a message from higher up (this is even truer if you think all lay people can be representatives of the higher power, like the protestant churches). Thus, whether or not there is really a higher being is a moot point. What matters is that some people truly believe in this illogical bullshit, for better or (mostly) for worse.


What I said here is probably beyond your comprehension, but I thought it would do some good to someone (starting with me).

God does not exist, and never will.

You can't disprove the existence of God, either.

It is you who are evil, that sayeth believe in book written so long ago that you have to take on faith what is written in it as truth.

Without God, there is no good or evil. Everything is permitted.

There is no truth, there are no lies, there is no devil there is only us.

Without belief in a Higher Power, the only supernatural being man can emulate is the devil. Even history's greatest monsters thought of themselves as good people doing what they knew to be best.

Free your mind from the folly of religion and realize what happiness you have on this earth, this instant, gotten from the spinning of electrons around a nucleus.

It's easy to make such proclamations when one is enjoying life and in good health. Those suffering through no fault of their own might not see it that way.

Go read a history book, instead of a book on faith.

Or read both. Religion is an intertwined driving force throughout history, in a world that demands meaning.

To be an atheist is to believe that Hitler and Mother Teresa are now both equally dust and nothingness. If people were capable of crystalline reasoning and not tricked by their own hearts, there would be no need to acknowledge a Higher Power.

^I agree. I wish he would just say, 'Wright is my pastor and friend. I don't agree with everything he says, but he is my close friend regardless. If saying something rude or stupid was justification for ending a friendship, then no one on earth would have any friends, except for Mother Teresa and mute people.'

OK, maybe leave the mute crack out.

Maybe because a lot of religious people have secret doubts. Like Mother Teresa, who wrote in her diary things contrary to her public facade.

Actually, Kreegath, the letters Mother Teresa wrote about what Hitchens calls her loss of faith go all the way back to 1955. She reported a feeling of great spiritual darkness all through the years of her famous ministry.

I agree to some extent with Hitchens. I suspect that the real root of her "loss of faith," as Hitchens calls it (not entirely accurate), is that she was depending on a deity that ends up not exactly as advertised. I went through something similar myself at one point, and ended up leaving the faith.

That said, her perseverance in the face of doubt probably makes her an even more appropriate symbol of faith for modern Christians. From a Christian point of view, such endurance is incredibly praiseworthy.

Anybody who gets the world's ear only to call Mother Teresa a "douchebag" is my god damn hero!

ohhhh good point.

and seriously, mother teresa?

forget the UFO, did he invoke mother teresa??
that's bad, right?
http://www.videosift.com/video/Christopher-Hitchens-Hells-Angel-Mother-Teresa

This is sooooo infuriating, and this is why anyone and everyone who owns a televison should block out FAUX's f---in putrid bullsh-- channel. I happened to have known Mr. Rogers (RIP), and I feel that watching this assault is like an attack on one of my own family, or attacking someone like Mother Teresa, or anything that is just and good about mankind. How f--kin' LOW can you go??? If this was a real news channel, I would send them hate mail. Luckily for them, they are just trash.

In reply to this comment by smibbo:
read the book more than a decade ago. Its just NOW being turned into a movie?

The Hitchens movie about mother teresa was originally broadcast in 1994.
It was aried again october 23, 2007