I just saw it on the NY Times, but there was no link...

His ideas and prose were widely followed and discussed on this site... Not unexpected, but sad nevertheless...

Edit: Vanity Fair has a notice as well, but clicking on the link gave a "server may be down" message...

http://www.vanityfair.com



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/2011 12:31AM by SL Cabbie.

I just read that too.

Damn.

RIP Hitch xx

He was unafraid to take public positions that were unpopular even with many atheists (those being topics of a political nature that we won't go into here).

But Christopher was courageous, eloquent, informed, unflappable, outspoken, tough-minded and a tight reasoner. He was brutally incisive and wickedly quick-witted, who on many occasions left his out-matched opponents in shreds with his rapier approach to exposing the dangers and superstitions of irrational religious thinking.

Theists despised him, which was certainly a good reason in my book to admire him.

An unfortunate loss to a world that needed him.



Edited 10 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/2011 01:34AM by steve benson.

Here's one from the BBC.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16212418

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

I always enjoy a dynamic speaker and person with strong opinions and good ideas.

I was just looking yesterday at a book of some of his speeches, or writing excerpts, not sure which. I was going to put it in my Christmas stocking but ended up not buying it, yet.

It's always tough to get such a cruel diagnosis but people can be incredibly courageous and noble in the midst of gruesome challenges.

I would wish he could have had more time.

He was brilliant and fearless.

What a loss. Thousands of years of mythology have gripped every culture, and we are finally in large numbers rejecting these antiquated ideas. Hitchens helped push the world along in the right direction.

He will be missed.

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,367622

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,367705,367705#msg-367705



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/2011 07:51AM by steve benson.

I'm really going to miss that guy.

Here's the yahoo article

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/christopher-hitchens-dies-62-051006229.html

So sad to hear this. I loved his quick wit and persistent rationality. He will be sorely missed. :(

The world has lost a great man that taught us how to think instead of what to think.

Cheers Hitch!

It's odd to me that I am mourning him as if I knew him personally... I had only recently discovered him and began watching videos of various debates and reading his articles. This news makes me feel like I have lost a friend.

and he said what he meant and he meant what he said. And he was unashamed to take that stand... and that is what a good friend is and does.

As a Christian Agnostic Naturalist, I will miss Hitchin's smacking Tim Tebow Types (my silly literalist brothers and sisters in Christ) between the eyes with cognitive dissonance. Rest in peace, Beloved Infidel!

Maybe you would like to add some more oxymoronic combinations.

Here's the blog post from PZ Myers:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/12/16/hitch-is-not-in-heaven/

Excerpt:
"But I do not say farewell to Hitch. I do not say “rest in peace”. I definitely do not say that he has gone to a better place. I actually find myself already bracing myself for the next sign of deep disrespect that is destined to appear soon: the hackneyed political cartoon that draws him standing at the pearly gates."

Pastor Rick Warren has already weighed in with a disrespectful comment: "Now he knows the truth."

The twitter hashtag #GodIsNotGreat has created a worldwide cyber storm.

As one blogger noted:
"This morning I woke up to the terrible (although not completely unexpected) news that Christopher Hitchens had died. The rational community has, of course, lost one of its most erudite and interesting members. But it seems that Christopher had one last trick up his sleeve.

"As with most breaking news these days, I found out about his death from Twitter. I checked my Twitter feed as I got up at about 6am. A few people that I follow were already awake and discussing it. As a mark of respect, many of those tweets were tagged with the name of Hitchens’ best known book “God Is Not Great“. And then more and more people started to do that. And before too long, the hashtag #GodIsNotGreat was listed as one of Twitters worldwide trending topics. At which point it started to go a bit weird.

All around the world religious people who knew nothing at all about Christopher Hitchens, his books or his death were looking at Twitter and seeing the tag #GodIsNotGreat. And that annoyed many of them immensely. So they started tweeting on the subject. Their tweets seemed to largely fall into three categories.

1/ What is this? And why is it trending?

2/ Attempts to inject their own beliefs into the stream – “God isn’t just great – he’s the GREATEST!!”

3/ Threats to kill whoever had started the hashtag (all very Christian) [UPDATE: Replaced a tweet with a rather NSFW background with another expressing the same sentiment]

Of course, all of these new tweets all included the hashtag. So that just helped ensure that the hashtag became even more popular. Hitchens fans replied, pointing out why the hashtag was trending (and inviting them to read the book) and the hashtag was tweeted and retweeted and commented on and argued over more than pretty much any other hashtag I’ve followed all year. For most of the morning the Tweetdeck column I set up to follow the tag was moving too fast for me to follow it.
...

One tweet in particular from luketadams summed things up for me.

Hitchens dies. His book #GodisNotGreat trends. Religious people threaten violence. The point of his book is proven. Hitchens for the win....

[End excerpts from blog post]

Direct link to the memoriam printed in Vanity Fair:

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011

The article contains numerous links to Hitchens's most recent articles, and links to video at the end.

Video: http://www.vanityfair.com/video/2011/12/1329955421001

Unfortunately, the video begins with a short ad for fragrance, but the video is well worth watching. It's a compilation of some of Christopher's best moments.

Later, there will be a thread "What are you drinking tonight".

Johnny Walker Black, as a salute to a man who made the world a slightly better place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP51NnoVErA&feature=fvsr

He will be missed.

I had to swear off visiting that place; it was getting to be like a magnetic barstool (and Hitchens, while I salute your taste in Scotch, I'll pass on drinking a toast. On the offbeat chance the atheists are wrong, I'll expect you to spring for shots in heaven, however). Probably a hundred of them were mine, and I see RFM-er Cora Judd just posted something and commented that "Cam Poster" was still around... Hey Cora, you want to check in so we know you're all right?

And the faithful seem to have made sure my stuff was buried deep...

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/10/is_mormonism_a_cult_who_cares_it_s_their_weird_and_sinister_beli.html?wp_login_redirect=0

There's a "beauty" in this one if one if one is willing to dig deep. I brought up the issue of "Lying for the Lord," and "Cam Poster" insisted they'd never heard of it... Then CP claimed not to be a Mormon and was continuously offering up nonsensical interpretations of the factual history I presented... I must've gone through have a case of brand new bullchip filters...

So now CP is saying,

>I realize that you're not supposed to turn down callings, but if you hated those other things so much, why did you keep doing them? There is a little peer pressure for sure, but I'm at 0% home teaching for the last year or so. My FHE lessons are about 5 minutes long.

Five minutes? I'm doubtful the ones on honesty are even that long...

I learned a lot from him. RIP, Hitch.

My heart is broken this morning. I was hoping a hopeless hope. I once told Richard Packham that I wished he would live forever and I had the same sentiment for Christopher. These are the two men I have come to admire most. I have no doubt that in years to come that Christopher will be seen as the main figure who thrust a fatal blow to religious fanaticism over the whole earth. Christopher said towards the end that all he wanted was to know that he had been vindicated. You are more than vindicated my friend for this ex-mormon and literally millions of others owe you a great debt for yanking their minds out of the mental prisons of comfortable delusions.

This great debt can only be repaid by passing the torch of logic, reason and common sense to our progeny so that the coming generations never forget who stood up and kicked the religious boogeyman in the crotch and showed human kind that the Emperors of religion have no clothes.

I swear to all that there is that before this day ends I will purchase a bottle of Jonny Walker Black. Around the neck of that bottle I will place a heartfelt note. “Rest in peace Christopher my more than vindicated friend. I am with you.”

Very well said AMIDARK;

Hitch will be remembered throughout history unless humans are successful in bringing about the Armageddon for which so many yearn.

I feel a sense of great loss. He was one of my (few) true heroes. He helped me along greatly in my quest for truth and reason.

One of my favorite video clips of Christopher Hitchens talking about dying, and about what people feel free to say to him as a result of his illness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOAjGtD0yVQ

It's quite short, but pithy.

He notes the emotional blackmail behind the supposedly sympathetic comments of some people.

Over the years my family has lost six members to cancer.
Now I add one more, as Christopher was my brother in spirit.
librarian

R.I.P. Christopher. You were key in my recovery.

Christopher Hitchens making closing remarks in one of his last debates:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgIcJb8i4m8