At age seventy, my episodic memory can rarely replay events I have witnessed. But every detail of October 8, 2011, is engraved in my mind. On that evening, at the Texas Freethought Convention in Houston, Christopher Hitchens received the Richard Dawkins Atheist of the Year Award. Five hundred atheists and onlookers attended the awards banquet, all in quiet anticipation of seeing Hitchens one last time. We also looked forward to Richard Dawkins speaking in person, presenting the award to Hitchens.
Before the meal was served, I grabbed a front row seat with the late Victor Stenger at my table. We shared a couple bottles of wine, which was fortunate, because the alcohol helped me absorb the shock of seeing Hitchens walking to the stage, somewhat disheveled, barely able to speak. Every stumble, every cough, struck fear into my heart. His eyes were hollow, and he fidgeted nervously. Was this really the erudite, confident man whose words had fostered my rationality for thirty-five years? Could he really be dying? I had never seen any friend in this condition, let alone Christopher Hitchens. In previous public appearances and debates, he had smoothly responded to every tough question, and as a correspondent, he had reported lucidly from war zones all over the world.
Richard Dawkins introduced Hitchens. But it was Dawkins at his best: perhaps the planet’s most intelligent human being honoring Hitchens with humility, humor, and compassion.
Dawkins’s introductory speech was beautifully crafted, eloquently expressing—in only thirteen minutes—the audience’s love for Hitchens. As Hitchens noted, some people, especially his academic adversaries, view Dawkins as an overly rational, “strident” polemicist. As an antidote, these critics should watch the YouTube video of his presentation that night. Dawkins’s long hugs, his eyes, his pursed lips all expressed the bittersweet emotions we were all feeling that night. Or they should read Science and the Soul, in which Dawkins not only defines soul but reveals to readers some of his own “internal self,” his own “soul.” (See my review in American Atheist Magazine, v 4:2017.)
On the other hand, as Hitchens reminded us that evening, Dawkins, like all atheists, must be strident if we are to protect our children from the “alchemy” of creationism and teach the truths of evolutionary biology. We must, as Hitchens once wrote, never “be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish … [or be] a spectator of unfairness or stupidity.” Instead, we must even “seek out argument and disputation for their own sake” because “the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.” Today these are especially relevant words for younger generations that view “safetyism” as their “sacred value” and who often chastise each other for expressing “words that elicit any type of emotional discomfort” (Lukianoff and Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind).
During his self-described “terse” acceptance speech, Hitchens expressed envy for the younger generation, who could now learn the truths of evolutionary biology by simply visiting the Smithsonian’s Hall of Human Origins and observing the “Tree of Life.” He encouraged the whole audience to pursue the “revolutionary and transformative” power of evolutionary biology, as well as the new truths being revealed by scientific cosmologists such as Lawrence Krauss. Hitchens said that these truths—challenging our primacy and supremacy in the biosphere—“magnetized, charmed, and gratified me to think about.” But when he declared “I won’t quit until I absolutely have to,” I was saddened in knowing that Hitchen’s envy was grounded in his wish to live long enough to know more, to digest more of the evidence uncovered by those who—in his words—“have a gift for physics.” Whose thirst for knowledge ever exceeded that of Christopher Hitchens? And who better understood that any intellectually defensible brand of atheism requires a scientific understanding of the universe’s and humanity’s origins?
After Hitchens completed his speech, my distress and sadness were momentarily alleviated when Dawkins, by lucky chance, pointed to me for the first “question,” and I was able to publicly express my thanks to Hitchens. But two months later, on December 11, Hitchens died of cancer. Despite the clear imminence of his death, I was, like so many others, devastated. Today, during my darkest moments, I click on his YouTube videos to bolster my hope for the future of the planet and humanity. And it occasionally helps that I have a West Highland terrier named in his honor. Among passersby who ask my dog’s name, potential friends reveal themselves with flickers of recognition upon hearing me answer “Hitch.”
Of course, Hitchens has had many critics. Some criticism has merit: his defense of Bush’s invasion of Iraq, even after it had precipitated chaos there, was driven by Hitchens’s deep conviction—stated in Houston—that it is “our job” to “repudiate” “totalitarian solutions” offered by “grand rabbis, chief ayatollahs, infallible popes … great leaders.” Nobody would argue that all these types (Saddam Hussein included) are—in Hitchens’s words—“great imposters.” The question, however, is at what cost can they justifiably be deposed? Given the human, economic, and political costs of the Iraqi invasion, many would argue that Hitchens needed to rebalance his mental equation.
On the other hand, even thoughtful critics have often misinterpreted Hitchens. It’s easy to do. For example, his much-maligned essay “Why Women Aren’t Funny” must be read in light of evolutionary theory and what it suggests about the different roles served by men and women in propagating our species. Or consider his apparent hyperbole that “religion poisons everything.” Phil Zuckerman once wrote that he “disagreed” with Hitchens, given religion’s social and emotional benefits. Hitchens, however, knew that religion, like all opiates, offer people a pleasurable escape from capitalist society: in Houston, he called it “idiotic bliss.” To him, religion was a “poison” because it replaced individuals’ thoughts and actions with theologically based rules that required people (again, in his Houston words) “to give up their freedom of inquiry,” to “abandon their critical faculties,” and to make decisions that are ultimately self-destructive. In his books that show how secular societies suffer fewer social problems and have happier lives in contrast to religious societies, Zuckerman ironically proves Hitchens’s point.
Ten years ago in Houston, Dawkins began by stating that Hitchens’s “name will be joined in the history of our movement with those of Bertrand Russell, Robert Ingersoll, Thomas Paine, and David Hume.” All these “great minds”—and many others—made secularism possible today. Proud of our history and grateful for their lives, we should ensure that our children remember—and read—them too.