To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.
Interpretation
Emphasizing the value of skepticism and experience over blind belief.
In this quote, Christopher Hitchens critiques the tendency to favor dogma and unquestioned faith, suggesting that this approach neglects the richness of lifeβs experiences and the wisdom gained from doubt. He uses the metaphor of discarding a fine vintage for a less valuable, superficial alternative to illustrate the folly of rejecting critical thinking in matters of belief and understanding.
In practice
During a philosophical discussion, one might use this quote to argue for the importance of questioning beliefs.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way β because itβs had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But youβve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.
One of the deepest motives (as you are aware) in the human beast (so deep that many have failed to detect it) is Alliteration.
Science will never be able to reduce the value of a sunset to arithmetic. Nor can it reduce friendship to formula. Laughter and love, pain and loneliness, the challenge of beauty and truth: these will always surpass the scientific mastery of nature.
We have stopped believing in progress. What progress that is !
If you suffocate my blackness, you've got to realize that's supremacy.
The irony of New Testament lordship is that only in slavery to Christ can a man discover authentic freedom.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.