Christopher Hitchens: No Deathbed Conversion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask

Athe­ist Christo­pher Hitchens was asked ear­li­er this year how his strug­gle with can­cer has affect­ed his views on the ques­tion of an after­life. “I would say it frac­tion­al­ly increas­es my con­tempt for the false con­so­la­tion ele­ment of reli­gion and my dis­like for the dic­ta­to­r­i­al and total­i­tar­i­an part of it,” he respond­ed. “It’s con­sid­ered per­fect­ly nor­mal in this soci­ety to approach dying peo­ple who you don’t know but who are unbe­liev­ers and say, ‘Now are you gonna change your mind?’ That is con­sid­ered almost a polite ques­tion.”

Hitchens spoke (see above) dur­ing a debate on the ques­tion, “Is there an after­life,” with Sam Har­ris and Rab­bis David Wolpe and Bradley Shav­it Art­son at the Amer­i­can Jew­ish Uni­ver­si­ty in Los Ange­les on Feb­ru­ary 15. (You can watch the entire event here.) Hitchens’ views on the sub­ject have remained con­sis­tent over the years. “It’s a reli­gious fal­si­fi­ca­tion that peo­ple like myself scream for a priest at the end,” Hitchens said before he was diag­nosed with stage four esophageal can­cer in the sum­mer of 2010. “Most of us go to our end with dig­ni­ty.”

Hitchens writes mem­o­rably of one such fig­ure in his 2006 book, Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man: A Biog­ra­phy:

Paine’s clos­ing years, piti­ful as they were, con­tained one clos­ing tri­umph. He might have become a scare­crow-like fig­ure. He might have been forced to sub­sist on the char­i­ty of friends. He might have been denied the right to vote by a bul­ly­ing offi­cial, when pre­sent­ing him­self at the polling sta­tion, on the grounds that the author of Com­mon Sense was not a true Amer­i­can. But as the buz­zards began to cir­cle, he ral­lied one more time. It was wide­ly believed by the devout of those days that unbe­liev­ers would scream for a priest when their own death-beds loomed. Why this was thought to be valu­able pro­pa­gan­da it is impos­si­ble to say. Sure­ly the sob­bing of a human crea­ture in extrem­is is tes­ti­mo­ny not worth hav­ing, as well as tes­ti­mo­ny extract­ed by the most con­temptible means? Boswell had been to vis­it David Hume under these con­di­tions, because he had been reluc­tant to believe that the sto­icism of the old philoso­pher would hold up, and as a result we have one excel­lent account of the refusal of the intel­li­gence to yield to such moral black­mail. Our oth­er account comes from those who attend­ed Paine. Dying in ulcer­at­ed agony, he was imposed upon by two Pres­by­ter­ian min­is­ters who pushed past his house­keep­er and urged him to avoid damna­tion by accept­ing Jesus Christ. ‘Let me have none of your Popish stuff,’ Paine respond­ed. ‘Get away with you, good morn­ing, good morn­ing.’ The same demand was made of him as his eyes were clos­ing. ‘Do you wish to believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God?’ He answered quite dis­tinct­ly: ‘I have no wish to believe on that sub­ject.’ Thus he expired with his rea­son, and his rights, both still staunch­ly defend­ed until the very last.

via 3 Quarks Dai­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Mar­tin Writes Song for Hymn-Deprived Athe­ists

Christo­pher Hitchens Revis­es the Ten Com­mand­ments