Reply #108: Well, he recently expressed his admiration for Marx and Lenin, and

[humblebum]

he admits that he was a trotskyite, and many former trotskyites did reject the tenets of the Fourth International and moved farther to the right and actually describe themselves now as neo-conservatives, but still atheist.And I didn't mention Stalin. In any case, I will stand by everything I said. And I certainly mentioned nothing about classical Ionia, but Logical Positivism and the modern scientific method both came out of the Vienna Circle or to be more precise were defined and quantified there, and Logical Positivism and its applications are especially attributed to A.J. Ayer, another atheist. And if you want to drag Stalin into the mix, his policy of "Scientific Atheism" was fashioned directly from the Logical Positivistic model that came out of the Vienna Circle, e.g.'The Origin of Life' by Alexander Oparin. Last I knew most atheists base their beliefs or lack of them on objective , empirical scientific "proof" and Logical Positivism aka logical empiricism is exactly that, and by definition it considers anything that cannot be sensed or experienced such as metaphysics, intuition, or a priori knowledge to be "non-sensical." Pure materialism.

BTW, Hitchens' "ridicule, hatred, and contempt" exhortation is at about the 4:15 mark
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2-CPsFwJwU