Christopher, meet G-d.

Christopher Hitchens, devout atheist (or "antitheist", as it were), journalist, literary critic, editor, and author of numerous titles, including God Is Not Great, was forcibly summoned into the presence of the Great and Eternal One yesterday afternoon. He was 62. Hitchens said that one, "could be an atheist and wish that belief in god were correct," but that "an antitheist, a term I'm trying to get into circulation, is someone who is relieved that there's no evidence for such an assertion." Yes, this man, known for his vast intellect, was "relieved" that there was "no evidence" for the existence of G-d. I imagine he found himself a bit more anxious Thursday evening. Hitchens also said, before he passed, "redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before." It has been reported that Hitchens was working on a book on the Ten Commandments - this from the man who, in God Is Not Great, wrote, "Very importantly, the divorce between the sexual life and fear, and the sexual life and disease, and the sexual life and tyranny, can now at last be attempted, on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse. And all this and more is, for the first time in our history, within the reach if not the grasp of everyone." It's too bad we lost this charming fellow.

As if being an ardent "antitheist" weren't enough, Hitchens, who was Jewish (matrilineally), fancied himself a fervid Anti-Zionist, as well - a terrific example of how one mode of ignorance informs the next. He once said, "I am an Anti-Zionist. I'm one of those people of Jewish descent who believes that Zionism would be a mistake even if there were no Palestinians." While he maintained that the Israel-Palestine conflict was nothing more than a "trivial squabble" that has become "so dangerous to all of us" because of  its "faith-based element.", he viewed Zionism "as an injustice against the Palestinians" and once said, "I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable." How gravely mistaken and misguided this man was - about a great many things.

Christopher Hitchens, when accepting the Atheist Alliance of America's Freethinker of the Year Award, said, "We have the same job we always had: to say that there are no final solutions; there is no absolute truth; there is no supreme leader; there is no totalitarian solution that says if you would just give up your freedom of inquiry, if you would just give up, if you would simply abandon your critical faculties, the world of idiotic bliss can be yours."