RUBBING their hands in glee, vindictive Christian fundies have been crowing for weeks over Christopher Hitchens’s cancer.
Christopher Hitchens, stricken with cancer
This comment is typical of the badly written garbage that’s been posted on the internet ever since news of his illness broke:
The militant God-hater, Christopher Hitchens, has been diagnosed with throat cancer … Hitchens is well known for his hatred of God and the Christian faith. Despite his irrational anti-theism, we admonish all followers of Christ who read this post to pray that the sovereign Spirit of God convict him that his worldview is entirely false, he has sinned against a just and holy God, and that he repent and receive Jesus Christ as God and Savior. It is not our place as Christians to say the specific reasons why Mr Hitchens has contracted this disease. We only know that God often uses illness as a means to bring people to repentance and faith. We can only hope Mr Hitchens responds.
Well, Hitchens has responded – but not in a way these rancid imbeciles would like.
In a videoed interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic Hitchens said:
How am I? I’m dying. Everybody is, but … the process has accelerated on me. So I’m looking for ways to try to die more like you.
The writer, who is undergoing treatment for oesophageal cancer, added:
There are bad days and then there are worse days, and I’m never quite sure whether the exhaustion comes from the treatment or from the tumor itself.
I’m a realist, I’m objective. It’s not a good cancer to get. The statistics are very depressing. Mine isn’t just in my oesophagus, either. It’s gone to my lymph nodes. I would be a very lucky person to live another five years.
Hitchens added that he would never become religious despite his looming mortality. If any such conversion was ever attributed to him, he said, it would be either a lie propagated by the religious community or an effect of the cancer and treatment that made him no longer himself.
The entity making such a remark might be a raving, terrified person whose cancer has spread to the brain. I can’t guarantee that such an entity wouldn’t make such a ridiculous remark, but no one recognizable as myself would ever make such a remark.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
August 12th, 2010 at 8:57 am
You realise that if there was a Ganesh, then this would be a great opportunity to have a really good public conversion of note.
August 12th, 2010 at 9:08 am
Feel that xtian love! The religious displaying their hypocrisy again; they harp on about peace, love and forgiveness except for those who disagree with them. I’ve seen these hateful messages all over the internet; shows how vile the credulous really are.
Mr Hitchens, if you are reading this I hope you recover so you can continue your good work.
August 12th, 2010 at 9:54 am
Ah. The warmth. You feel the warmth coming off of those loving comments? Just like their desire to imagine non-believers writhing in the pits of their hells. They love to imagine that their sky-pixie has delivered some terrible disease onto the non-believer for the sin of not believing the same worn out tradition+superstition=religion that they do.
“It is not our place as Christians to say the specific reasons why Mr Hitchens has contracted this disease. We only know that God often uses illness as a means to bring people to repentance and faith. We can only hope Mr Hitchens responds.”
Ah yes. That would be that loving, caring god that they harp on about so much. I feel all warm inside just reading that. Or should it read:
“It is *totally* our place as Christians to judge you based upon the fact that you don’t agree with our views and we hope that you die in as horrible a manner as possible because of that and while we’re hoping that we will do so using our beliefs as a thinly veiled excuse to do so therefore leaving our conscience fully clear.”
For shame. If they had any conscience to shame that is.
I can only hope that you make a recovery so you can serve more (lower case t) truths to them
August 12th, 2010 at 10:45 am
To lose such a giant prematurely would be an absolute tragedy. However, despite the above remarks I confidently anticipate reading in due course that Hitchens has suffered another of those “death bed conversions”, should his present illness prove terminal. I knew Christians who, like sort of “spiritual vultures”, made a speciality of visiting the sick and dying just to prey on them (sorry – “pray with them” - silly me!) in their vulnerable state. Glowing reports were given in public when the poor souls had shuffled off their mortal coil, and – surprise, surprise – they were inevitably “trusting” at the end!!
August 12th, 2010 at 10:52 am
Truth be told, a lot of Christians have been wishing him well and praying for his recovery. But both well-wishers and ill-wishers are hoping for a death-bed repentance. Like Vultures circling a wounded animal they prey on the ill and elderly at their most vulnerable.
Unseemly parasites the lot of them.
August 12th, 2010 at 10:59 am
All respect to the great man.
A friend’s father died in a hospice in Northern Ireland. Afterwards a nurse said… ‘He didn’t turn to god at the end. He was a fine man’. I hope the illness will let this fine man go into the darkness as he has lived, head held up, not bowed like a cowed child.
August 12th, 2010 at 11:05 am
It exposes them for what they are. Every time they crow about the misfortunes of others then it destroys them further. If there is any sort of a silver lining to this cloud it is that. Their meanness of heart and vindictiveness will ultimately destroy the religion of this so-called loving god that they blindly cling to, trying to deny that this is all there is.
I wonder whether the local hospital god botherer in Mr Hitchens’ hospital was torn between doing his job and going to see if Mr Hitchens needed spiritual counselling and knowing who he was and thinking, “Nah, think I’ll just skip this one.”
August 12th, 2010 at 11:11 am
@angieRS
My experience suggests there will be some kamikazi chaplain who decides that the ‘prize’ is worth the effort and has a go. The thought of their mental processes makes me vomit.
August 12th, 2010 at 11:39 am
Christopher Hitchins is a hero of mine and millions of others. Whatever happens his wonderful, reasoned, intelligent writings will go on to inspire those looking for enlightenment and forward thinking.
In 2004 I was diagnosed with acute leukaemia. I was given 12 weeks to live. Last week I was told I am cured thanks to the dedication and scientific skill of the doctors and nurses who treated me. However everything they did would have come to nothing without the selfless donation of an annonimous guy in London who donated near matching stem cells to me for a transplant. Please join a blood/stem cell/organ donor list. This is the future of medicine but all the major religions condemn it. They are stone age fools. The sooner more people shout it from the rooftops, like Christopher, that these are indoctrinated, very sad, not very bright and sometimes evil people, the better mankind will be.
Incidentally during my treatment while suffering from major organ failures and critically ill I was visited by a hospital chaplain (paid for by the NHS! WHY?). I told him he was a parasite and should go fuck himself. The look on his face as he scuttled away made me feel a lot better.
Good luck Christopher. Keep fighting till the end.
August 12th, 2010 at 11:49 am
Do these Christian clowns honesty believe someone of Mr Hitchens intelligence could possibly consider accepting any religion as a reality?
Changing the subject. I have read in the Telegraph that Noahs Ark creationist zoo have been given a department of education “quality badge”! why and how I don,t know. Peter Tachell is a patron of the Captive Animal Protection Society who are campaigning to stop these compassionate Christians imprisoning two elephant in their zoo. I seem these christian clowns want to profit from the poor animals misery. Please see the CAPS website <a href= "http://www.captiveanimals.org/....." Captive Animals Protection Society
August 12th, 2010 at 11:58 am
Religion of love, gentle Jesus meek and mild, turn the other cheek, forgive your enemies etc. etc…….. Sick, putrid, repellent garbage spewed out by human sewers wetting themselves with delight at the sickness of another human being.
They have the values of shit house rats – although I fear that is unfair to the rats.
August 12th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Proof that the practice of religion is the most evil thing imaginable.
I feel sick at the thought of this wonderful man who is suffering the way he is and how he has been treated by these heartless individuals.
Will this destroy them I do not know as they have so much power, but can such hatred last.
I hope Mr.Hitchens can feel our love and I feel priviledged to have shared some of his life and found out what a wonderful caring, compassionate man he is. I am in the process of reading his memoirs.
August 12th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
It is not our place as Christians to say the specific reasons why Mr Hitchens has contracted this disease. We only know that God often uses illness as a means to bring people to repentance and faith.
This is repulsive and wrong on every level…
August 12th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
“It is not our place as Christians to say the specific reasons why Mr Hitchens has contracted this disease. [go on to say the specific reasons why Hitchens has contracted the disease]”
Got to say by God smiting someone who spent their life inhaling carcinogens with throat cancer, Hitch has pretty much got the same sweet deal as the snake in the Garden of Eden as Ricky Gervais pointed out:
“And you [to the snake], you have to crawl on your belly.”
“But I already…Oh no! Aw, yep, yep, yeah, you’ve done me.”
August 12th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
Christopher Hitchens is likely to have got throat cancer from a combination of alcohol and tobacco. Same reason as my brother, a lifelong smoker, who died a few years ago after smoking most of his adult life. Nothing to do with god. The snide implication of god using illness etc is nauseating.
August 12th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Graham: That was mentioned on another thread here recently. It is also covered here:
http://www.robertsaunders.org......hQoG9R6UHs
And now the saintly Anne Widdecombe has become involved, to everyone’s great amusement!
http://www.robertsaunders.org......SswhSpIknW
August 12th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
My second cousin, he lost his voice box and some other parts of the larynx(i dont know what other areas) because of extremely heavy smoking and drinking, he contracted cancer.
Now, he uses a respirator, and has a hole in there.
August 12th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
“We only know that God often uses illness as a means to bring people to repentance and faith”
O’Brian used a cage fitted over the head which has in it two starving rats, to the same purpose in Room 101.
The man is 61 years old, he isn’t dieing of cancer he’s dieing of old
age. If the number seems small, that’s because the life was large.
August 12th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Yes, and “God” also causes his followers to have deformed and mentally handicapped children “to bring them closer to Himself”. Makes you want to vomit, doesn’t it?
August 12th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Any solace I need for dying, or suffering, will come from Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus and the many other Stoics. To sum it up: while I am here death is not; when death is here I am not. I will merge with whatever I was for the billions of years before I existed. Truly, we came from the stars and the fear comes from our egos. To fear death is to fear something we can never experience. Yes, I know that said like this it sounds glib but it points the way to prepare.
As for the so called Christian comfort? However, much they try to shut their mind to it, the other side of the coin from their imagined heaven is hell. And an eternity of torture is such a terrifying prospect. It is, of course, all nonsense. How could any life however bad justify that punishment; or any life however good justify an eternity of bliss. Apart, of course, from the little matter of how you experience these things when your body is consumed by worms. At what age does the knackered, aged christian enter heaven?
August 12th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
How could anyone be happy in Heaven knowing that their loved ones were being tormented in Hell? Christians have no answer to this, so have to ignore the dilemma. “God will work it all out!”
August 12th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
@barriejohn: Never thought of that aspect of it. Or, to be facetious – and what else is open to us with this nonsense – suppose you are in hell, facing an eternity of agony, and you know that some sanctimonious religiocrazy you detest is in paradise.
Valhalla sounds OK with all the booze and sex. I think you have to die in battle to have a chance of that.
Or what about muslims and the 72 virgins.
We really need to be able to examine our options and bid for what we want.
August 12th, 2010 at 7:26 pm
The fact is that their god has no power whatsoever, none. Good and bad stuff happens to people and places totally at random and the only way these idiots can be impressed by their god is by giving him the credit for stuff after it has happened. Those of us with a bit more sense are not impressed in the slightest.
August 12th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
You must be really sick in the head to be able to believe in a loving super-being who, just for kicks, makes someone suffer from an incurable disease. But read the papers, he got his jollies in China and Pakistan by killing thousands of people in floods, probably for not being christian, with starvation and disease in the follow-up.
August 12th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
“There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless.”
Ecclesiastes 8:14
Not that even wicked people “deserve” cancer, but I’ve always thought the above to be one of the few honest verses in the Bible. And it blows claims such as “We only know that God often uses illness as a means to bring people to repentance and faith” cobblers out of the water.
August 12th, 2010 at 8:34 pm
Ecclesiastes is the only book in the whole Bible that is worth reading. Chapter nine advises us to live our lives to the full because there is no after-life and this one short life is the only one you get.
August 12th, 2010 at 9:10 pm
I agree about Ecclesiastes, Stonyground, but some of The Book of Proverbs is well worth a read by rationalists as well. Most Christians give Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon a wide berth, but are now lumbered with them as “inspired men” decided years ago that they should form part of The Canon of Scripture!
August 12th, 2010 at 11:38 pm
What kind of deranged monster would invent cancer in the first place, and then inflict it on its own creation? Oh, that’ll be go, won’t it.
August 12th, 2010 at 11:39 pm
Actually, it’ll be god, not go. Oooops!
August 13th, 2010 at 1:09 am
Sheesh. Like Christians never get cancer. A plague on them!
August 13th, 2010 at 8:36 am
Christopher Hitchens is a very special and important figure a person of public importance an icon, With any social figure there are those who love and those who hate the individual, and usually many more who are entirely indifferent. Christopher Hitchens is a very special and important figure in the public sphere He is intelligent, brave, and willing to be face criticism.I hope I hope he recovers. As for the so called Christian-Religious snide bastards fuck you.
August 13th, 2010 at 9:03 am
‘It is not our place as Christians to say the specific reasons why Mr Hitchens has contracted this disease.’
It is my place as a rational human being to say the specific reasons why Mr Hitchens has contracted this disease. He is a heavy smoker, formerly of high tar-content cigarettes, and fond of extreme amounts of alcohol. There is also an inherited disposition in his family to this cancer and in a recent article for Slate he stated that it killed his father.
These w4nkers can’t beat the man in an argument and they are afraid of him, so they are overjoyed that his voice may be silenced forever. That’s what’s going on here. Nothing more and nothing less. We all know it, too. I hope for a surprise recovery or at least a brief remission, but it seems unlikely.
August 13th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Careful folks or you will be guilty of the same crime. This is a personal time for Christopher Hitchens and his family. Not an opportunity to score points off ‘Them’ whoever they are. Primary concern is a fellow human being returned to full health.
There will be those who would pay good money to be ‘there’ microphone in hand awaiting the final word, when ever that is. But, and here is a truth. It is not ours to judge. Who knows what each of us would say at that time in our lives or in that given situation.
August 13th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Saw on a muslim TV channel, Noor TV, a Moulana – a muslim religious learned man – while appealing for contributions towards the floods victims in Pakistan reminded that ‘we must remember these afflictions and disasters happen because we have sinned and been disobedient’
Hitchens is a great man and a principled man.
While belief and prayer may , if it at all does, may make better some individuals – so they say – medical science is for all, irrespective of race and creed.
We all have to go including the ‘the faith full ones’.
At this time when Hitchen is not well I and many many wish him well and are with his family in facing a hard time.
He has lived his life fully and maening fully till now and may he continue for many more
August 14th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
Isn’t there a (probably apocryphal) story about Voltaire who, on his death bed was asked by a priest to ‘repent of the Devil’. Voltaire slowly opened one eye and murmured, “Now’s not the time to be making enemies.”
August 17th, 2010 at 6:27 am
Get well soon, Hitchy. X
August 17th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
If god is good then he is not competent. If he is competent then he is not good.
August 26th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
Even at his most vehement and opinionated, Hitchens is never pious, which is a large part of his charm, nor has he ever seemed even mildly eager to be “liked” by the general public. I once noted that he appeared well “into his cups” on Bill Maher’s Realtime program, and he was still more lucid and reasonable than many talking heads could ever aspire to be. I didn’t agree with his stance on Iraq, but he’s one of the few “guests” or commentators that I’d actually tune in a TV show to hear. So, let the pious rant and cling to their mythologies. In the meantime, COURAGE, dear Hitch, and “Do not go gentle…”