Volume 1 Number 3

In Memory of Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011

In Memory of Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011

Christopher Hitchens: iconoclast, critic, essayist, columnist, editor, author, and outspoken and unapologetic atheist, died from pneumonia as a complication of esophageal cancer at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas on December 15. He was 62.

I had the good fortune to meet Hitchens a few times. When I was an editor with Free Inquiry magazine Hitchens was a columnist. He had come to Amherst, New York, where Free Inquiry is published, to speak at the Center for Inquiry. We had taken him to dinner where he had, not unexpectedly, imbibed quite a bit of alcohol. He seemed to have not been affected much by it because he shortly thereafter delivered an excellent speech, focusing largely on threats of Islam throughout the world.

The Turbulent Universe

The Turbulent Universe

A radical change in understanding nature occurred when humans recognized that supernatural explanations could not account for natural phenomena. The earliest pre-Socratic philosophers in ancient Greece sought to explain events by reference to natural causes. They appealed to reason and observation to interpret nature, not faith or revelation, miracles or theology, uncorroborated by objective evidence. Modern science did not develop until the Renaissance. The ancients used reason and common sense (for example, Aristotle observed a lunar eclipse and reasoned that Earth must be a sphere because it cast a round shadow).