Unidentified Audience Member: You know, I just have something to say. You know, I feel like I'm a bacteria here in this process. But what I know is that, as much as I know, I know nothing about the process of God and what have you. But I find your arrogance just overbearing. And I think that
--
Christopher Hitchens: I hear that all the time.
Unidentified Audience Member: -- I just -- I think someone needs to say that really, what we know is so little, and you pretend you know so much. And I just find it
offensive.
Christopher Hitchens: Well, no --
Unidentified Audience Member: Because I know so little. You know,
I've experienced things in study of Buddhism and what have you that have made me closer. But yet, I don't know anything. And I know a lot more than I think
perhaps you do. And I really -- I'm just offended by you. And excuse me for
--
Christopher Hitchens: Please. It takes a lot more than that to make my cry, or even turn over in bed, actually.
Unidentified Audience Member: You know what? You know what? I would say that -- I won't say it.
Christopher Hitchens: Go on.
Peter Collier [David Horowitz Freedom Center program director]: Okay.
Unidentified Audience Member: I won't say --
Christopher Hitchens: Do not be afraid of hurting my feelings, sir.
Unidentified Audience Member: No, I would just --
Christopher Hitchens: I promise you.
Unidentified Audience Member: I would just say you are probably the
most offensive person that I have come across of any --
Christopher Hitchens: That's better. That's much better.
Well, I couldn't care less what you think, as you can obviously tell.
Like Hitchens, I'm an atheist and a number of people have expressed dismay that I can hold my theological opinions with as much confidence as I do. Unlike Hitchens though, I'm very interested in what other people think when they disagree with me as profoundly as the audience member disagrees with Hitchens. What makes them do so? Mrs. RSI is a fairly orthodox liberal Catholic. I've always been interested in the mixture of Irish ethnicity, socialization, special circumstance, taste, and other factors that make her belief something that I find preposterous. Yet, Mrs. RSI and her liberal Catholic friends are all wonderful, warm, generous, loving people. If being good people were proof of the validity of Catholic Christianity, I'd line up to become Catholic.
Likewise, I'm also very curious about what would lead people to reject me to the extent that they would say something like "you are probably the most offensive person that I have come across." The fact that Hitchens has no such interest in the opinions of his fellow beings makes him an arrogant prick. In fact, Hitchens arrogant disdain for a guy who was obviously struggling makes him offensive in my eyes as well. Unfortunately, Hitchen's arrogance is an occupational hazard of being an atheist and in some ways of being a leftist as well. A lot of the atheists I know adapt a sense of superiority in relation to the religious people among us. Rejecting a mode of belief held by the vast majority of people in American society, they tend to reject the vast majority of society as not being worth their time or concern. That's how you can be an atheist and an arrogant prick.
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Yeah being an atheist is kind of like being that jackass in elementary school with the big crayon box when everybody else has the small ones, you're just so on point and with it you can't help but be an arrogant prick all the time. If being a fucking schmuck was required to be an atheist why was Vonnegut so damn likeable even to religious readers?
Obviously, I don't think all atheists are arrogant pricks like Christopher Hitchens. I'm an atheist myself. But there is a temptation to arrogance that inheres in rejecting the views of the vast majority of our society. I just think that temptation should be avoided.
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