Sunday Sermonette: Deathbed Conversion?
Christopher Hitchens was a brilliant polemicist. I rejoiced when our views aligned, because his were always better thought out and far better expressed then my own. I despaired when we disagreed, such as on the necessity of regime change in Iraq, for the same reason. Whatever you may have thought of him, his was a brilliant and incisive voice in public debate.
It’s been almost five years since Hitch died, too young. It’s a given that the moment a celebrated atheist dies, some believer will claim that he saw the light just before his own went out, repented his manifold sins and wickednesses, and now rests in the bosom of Abraham. Hitchens spoke of the prospect of an afterlife at a debate in 2011, the year he died. “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.”
“Fuck that, is what I’ll say, and will say if it’s my last breath,” Hitch concluded.
In May of the same year, Hitchens wrote a letter to be read at the American Atheists convention, apologizing that his failing health did not let him appear in person.
Dear fellow-unbelievers,
Nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument I am currently having with the specter of death. Nobody ever wins this argument, though there are some solid points to be made while the discussion goes on. I have found, as the enemy becomes more familiar, that all the special pleading for salvation, redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before. I hope to help defend and pass on the lessons of this for many years to come, but for now I have found my trust better placed in two things: the skill and principle of advanced medical science, and the comradeship of innumerable friends and family, all of them immune to the false consolations of religion. It is these forces among others which will speed the day when humanity emancipates itself from the mind-forged manacles of servility and superstition. It is our innate solidarity, and not some despotism of the sky, which is the source of our morality and our sense of decency…
The letter ends, “Don’t keep the faith.”
But these clearly stated rejections didn’t stop Christian evangelical Larry Taunton from recently publishing a book titled The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World's Most Notorious Atheist in which he strongly hints that Hitchens repented at the end. “Christopher had doubts ... and those doubts led him to seek out Christians and contemplate, among other things, religious conversion.”
“At the end of his life, Christopher’s searches had brought him willingly, if secretly, to the altar,” Taunton wrote at the end of the book. “Precisely what he did there, no one knows.”
Taunton had been a minor debating opponent of Hitchens in the three years leading up to his death, and claimed to have had many private conversations with the man. I don’t know what led him to the morally repugnant act of publishing those private and unrecorded conversations long after Hitch could defend himself, but it’s a shabby and rather ghoulish thing to do.
Taunton’s main argument for Hitchens’ possible recantation is that he had evangelical friends, and he read the Bible. This strikes me as a very slender reed - the man had many friends with whom he cordially disagreed, and many atheists are very familiar with the Bible. Again, despite what the Christian press is saying, Taunton merely suggests that Hitchens might have recanted. He has no evidence that any such thing took place and wasn’t at the bedside at the end.
Hitchens’ wife Carol Blue was. She was unequivocal. There were no doubts. “He lived by his principles until the end. To be honest, the subject of God didn’t come up.”
But let’s say for the sake of argument that Hitchens, in the opiate haze and pain of his terminal esophageal cancer, decided to recant on his deathbed, confess his sins, and accept Christ as his personal savior. So what? What would that mean?
Not a damned thing. I am not an atheist because I think Christopher Hitchens was ever so smart and I want to appear to be smart too. I am an atheist because I see no evidence for the existence of a god or gods. That’s it. The words a dying man says or doesn’t say are irrelevant. They’re not evidence of anything.
In Hitchens’ biography of Thomas Paine, he wrote,
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?
I am forced to conclude that this book is not intended to convert atheists from our unbelief. This is a book written by a believer to reassure other believers. The very existence of atheists causes believers existential dread. Death is inevitable, unpredictable, and above all final, and atheism threatens the comforting stories that the religious tell themselves about an afterlife. It’s comforting for them to imagine that a famous atheist reached out for God at the last. Someone like Larry Taunton already believes far more improbable things.
It’s been almost five years since Hitch died, too young. It’s a given that the moment a celebrated atheist dies, some believer will claim that he saw the light just before his own went out, repented his manifold sins and wickednesses, and now rests in the bosom of Abraham. Hitchens spoke of the prospect of an afterlife at a debate in 2011, the year he died. “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.”
Click to view“Fuck that, is what I’ll say, and will say if it’s my last breath,” Hitch concluded.
In May of the same year, Hitchens wrote a letter to be read at the American Atheists convention, apologizing that his failing health did not let him appear in person.
Dear fellow-unbelievers,
Nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument I am currently having with the specter of death. Nobody ever wins this argument, though there are some solid points to be made while the discussion goes on. I have found, as the enemy becomes more familiar, that all the special pleading for salvation, redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before. I hope to help defend and pass on the lessons of this for many years to come, but for now I have found my trust better placed in two things: the skill and principle of advanced medical science, and the comradeship of innumerable friends and family, all of them immune to the false consolations of religion. It is these forces among others which will speed the day when humanity emancipates itself from the mind-forged manacles of servility and superstition. It is our innate solidarity, and not some despotism of the sky, which is the source of our morality and our sense of decency…
The letter ends, “Don’t keep the faith.”
But these clearly stated rejections didn’t stop Christian evangelical Larry Taunton from recently publishing a book titled The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World's Most Notorious Atheist in which he strongly hints that Hitchens repented at the end. “Christopher had doubts ... and those doubts led him to seek out Christians and contemplate, among other things, religious conversion.”
“At the end of his life, Christopher’s searches had brought him willingly, if secretly, to the altar,” Taunton wrote at the end of the book. “Precisely what he did there, no one knows.”
Taunton had been a minor debating opponent of Hitchens in the three years leading up to his death, and claimed to have had many private conversations with the man. I don’t know what led him to the morally repugnant act of publishing those private and unrecorded conversations long after Hitch could defend himself, but it’s a shabby and rather ghoulish thing to do.
Taunton’s main argument for Hitchens’ possible recantation is that he had evangelical friends, and he read the Bible. This strikes me as a very slender reed - the man had many friends with whom he cordially disagreed, and many atheists are very familiar with the Bible. Again, despite what the Christian press is saying, Taunton merely suggests that Hitchens might have recanted. He has no evidence that any such thing took place and wasn’t at the bedside at the end.
Hitchens’ wife Carol Blue was. She was unequivocal. There were no doubts. “He lived by his principles until the end. To be honest, the subject of God didn’t come up.”
But let’s say for the sake of argument that Hitchens, in the opiate haze and pain of his terminal esophageal cancer, decided to recant on his deathbed, confess his sins, and accept Christ as his personal savior. So what? What would that mean?
Not a damned thing. I am not an atheist because I think Christopher Hitchens was ever so smart and I want to appear to be smart too. I am an atheist because I see no evidence for the existence of a god or gods. That’s it. The words a dying man says or doesn’t say are irrelevant. They’re not evidence of anything.
In Hitchens’ biography of Thomas Paine, he wrote,
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?
I am forced to conclude that this book is not intended to convert atheists from our unbelief. This is a book written by a believer to reassure other believers. The very existence of atheists causes believers existential dread. Death is inevitable, unpredictable, and above all final, and atheism threatens the comforting stories that the religious tell themselves about an afterlife. It’s comforting for them to imagine that a famous atheist reached out for God at the last. Someone like Larry Taunton already believes far more improbable things.