it is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists
Interpretation
This quote critiques individuals who compare their beliefs to extreme historical regimes to justify their positions.
Christopher Hitchens highlights a paradoxical tendency among some individuals of faith who, when challenged, resort to defensively asserting that they are not as morally reprehensible as figures like fascists, Nazis, or Stalinists. This suggests a self-awareness of their beliefs, yet also a troubling effort to mitigate criticism by drawing comparisons with historically violent ideologies, rather than asserting the positive values that faith should ideally embody.
In practice
In a debate about the role of religion in society, one might reference this quote to discuss the moral implications of belief systems.
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.
We know that we are not collectively guilty, so how can we accuse any other nation, no matter what some of its people have done, of being collectively guilty?
We are a nation that has a government-not the other way around. And that makes us special among the nations of the earth.
Each band or level, being a particular manifestation of the spectrum, is what it is only by virtue of the other bands. The color blue is no less beautiful because it exists along side the other colors of a rainbow, and "blueness" itself depends upon the existence of the other colors, for if there were no color but blue, we would never be able to see it.
There's not some idea I'm going to create a work that's going to change everybody's consciousness.
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our life, which is inaccessable to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.
And of the Witch? In the life of a Witch, there is no "after", in the "ever after" of a Witch there is no "happily"; in the story of a Witch, there is no afterword. Of that part that is beyond the life story, beyond the story of the life, there is-alas, or perhaps thank mercy-no telling. She was dead, dead, and gone, and all that was left of her was the carapace of her reputation for malice.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.