Tuesday, February 22, 2011

If Essene It Once, Essene It a Thousand Times

I do not often find myself in the position of defending Christopher Hitchens, and I'm not really going to start now, but I will say that this is the most transcendently ridiculous and immaculately overdetermined piece of casuistry I have ever read. The whole thing plays like a transmission from beyond Narnia. It is as magnificently absurd as a Gaudi. The author proposes that the existence of Jews proves the realness of their god, an exercise in question-begging that curiously applies to Jews and only to Jews, and he says that questioning the biblical accounts in Exodus is literally the same as Holocaust denial. Then he says:

Hitchens’ anti-Judaic diatribes may yet prepare the way for another Holocaust.
May yet! Oh, Lulz. I may yet go home later today to find Johnny Weir, a sling, and a five-day-bender-worth of poppers. Go tell it on the mountain!

20 comments:

A Non-Imus said...

D'jew really read that whole thing?

Charles F. Oxtrot said...

I dunno... it's very wordy, lengthy, and has footnotes. Looks academic and serious to me. Ergo, true.

Anonymous said...

Whew. Thank god IOZ is fighting the good fight against the thugs at OrthodoxyToday.org. Without him I might not even have ever known this essay existed!

Christopher said...

As I shall strive to prove in what follows, it is my contention that Hitchens’ anti-theism cannot be divorced from his virulent anti-Judaism. Indeed, the latter invariably leads to the former.

So, we're going to prove that anti-Jewish sentiment inevitably leads not just to atheism, but to an active and vocal dislike of organized religion in general.

So, I can just stop reading there and know I'm not missing anything. That's a time saver, alright.

Anonymous said...

From the linked revelation:

"This was even the official view of Soviet historiographers for a time."

Red-baiting! Is there anything it won't improve?

Anonymous said...

"Orthodoxy Today". Kinda oxymoronic, isn't it?

lucid said...

Right, because there is so much archaeological evidence supporting the exodus myth... Sheesh, there are even entire departments of archaeology at universities in places like Tel Aviv who's principle work proves there is no empirical support for an Egyptian enslavement...

Anonymous said...

I think this is my favorite line:
And if there is no God, then why did the Israelites alone among all the nations of the world develop such concepts as sin, atonement, and moral rectitude?

Well, I'm convinced.

stillnotking said...

If there is no Marduk, then why did the Sumerians alone among all the nations of the world develop beer?

Anonymous said...

Let's pretend that when you are arguing with an orthodox Jew you are arguing with something disagreeable, but nonetheless better than a paranoid, ethnic supremacist fruitbat.

Tomorrow, IOZ replies to David Duke about some shit.

Jim said...

Sidereally, I like that the religious claim for current, ongoing hegemony of Jewish Israelis over Palestine amounts to, "Those times we kicked other people's asses? Those were awesome, and they totally count! Those times we got our own asses kicked? That shit wasn't fair, and it needs to be rectified."

IOZ said...

Um, yo, @8:04, you fucking nitwit, you know a lotta Jews named George Michalopulos? It's a Christian publication.

TGGP said...

Oddly enough, the two Holocaust deniers I'm most familiar with also don't think Jesus ever existed. Surely there is a connection.

rob payne said...

U iz a regular tyrana-thesaurus Rex!

Anonymous said...

Um, yo, @8:04, you fucking nitwit, you know a lotta Jews named George Michalopulos?

Oops. Miscategorized fruitbat. My apologies to paranoid, ethnic supremacist Jewish fruitbats.

Anonymous said...

[Hitchens] has taken an emotional tone... rather than the cold and precise voice that is called for in justifying the alternate belief in materialism.

Telling people what voice they should be using and then slating them for using another: priceless.

boetian said...

The story of Israel is the story of human civilization and the morality which makes civilization possible.

He's onto something here, though not for the reasons he thinks.

respjrat said...

this is almost literally second graders arguing about forcefields. hitchens' whole yawning crusade included.

mp said...

You're wrong about this. Jews have long depended on the Orthodox church to both identify and save them from atheistic drunken newspapermen with an exaggerated sense of their importance and intelligence.

tdaschel said...

this Hitchens guy mus' be some complicated fella: backing a Likud-inspired foreign policy while being a fierce hater of Jews.

.. but, um, for all the author's tawk about the Holocaust, i've got to wonder what lessons he derives from it. i would *hope* that it's something along the lines of "no more master races" and "Never Again .. to anybody."