"Unrepentant Christopher Hitchens is now roasting in hell!"

[dmallind]

4. Somewhat torn on the responses

Certainly expected gleeful Christian pratings, so no worries there.

On the vitriolic nature of them, I have always considered it deceitful, cowardly and facile to respond to someone a day after their death any differently than you did the day before. I considered Falwell for example an evil, vicious charlatan when he was alive and said so readily when he was dead. The idea of "respect" for the recently deceased, regardless of how much respect you had for them ante mortem is as artificial a custom as insisting that anything but high tea precisely at 4pm is booorish and low class. I don't mind believers saying they loathed the man if they said the same before he died.

Where I do find them wanting is in the insistence that he must now see the truth of their invisible friend. That's not honesty but guesswork and superstition. By all means hate a guy after death you hated before his death, but it's tacky at least and quite possibly psychotic to try tospeak for him while you are doing it.