Hitchens: Our worst enemy is a faith based one.

[Neo Atheist]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWaHjy14u80

Christopher Hitchens debates former Ohio Secretary of State and also former Dallas Cowboy Kenneth Blackwell (unlike the people of Ohio, the Cowboys didn't give him the opportunity to ruin anything). Blackwell tries to claim that this country's founders were really the Pilgrims, not the actual founding fathers...

[Webster Green]

1. Hitchens is spot on with his views on religion..

Though I disagree with plenty of other stuff he's said, notably his support for the war in Iraq.

I detest Blackwell. He should be in prison for his part in the obviously rigged 2004 election. :mad:

[Neo Atheist]

2. I too disagree with Hitchens's support of the Iraq War

I just wonder what the other stuff you disagree with him.

[Occam Bandage]

3. His support for the American wars in the Mideast are almost entirely based on his views on religion.

He thinks that radical right-wing Islam is the greatest threat to civilization, and he wants a Western-instilled secularist, democratic presence in the Mideast to counter it. :shrug:

[Neo Atheist]

4. He also thinks radical right wing judaism and radical right wing christianity are threats

He's written heavily recently on the disturbing track Israel has started to follow, and he's been very critical of the fascist supporting Maronite Catholics. He finds the radical right wing religious groups of the Middle East to be threats to civilization, and quite frankly I can't find much to disagree when it comes to the idea of right wingers with sanguine feelings towards the idea of the apocalypse possessing nuclear weapons.

[Occam Bandage]

5. Certainly. Of all the criticisms that might be leveled against Christopher Hitchens,

and there are certainly many, "intellectually dishonest" is not one of them. He is a firm and principled opponent of tyranny--especially tyranny rooted in religion--wherever it exists.

[Sal316]

6. Technically, he's almost right.

Blackwell tries to claim that this country's founders were really the Pilgrims, not the actual founding fathers

The technicality coming in the difference between planting and founding, if you define founding as the immediate time period prior to the revolution and the the adoption of the Constitution.

The Protestants scattered when Queen Mary came to power, and one of the places they found refuge was in the reformed Calvinist areas of Europe. When Elizabeth I came to power, they returned and took the lessons of Geneva back to England. They tried to reform the church into something alot stricter, and when they didn't succeed, they took off for the "new world".

So, technically, the MBC was founded to be a Christian Theocracy in the Reformed Calvinism tradition.

[Neo Atheist]

7. I define the founding as the founding, not when people first stepped on this island

As their name points out, where the pilgrims landed and set up shop and then migrated to were colonies, so it was simply an extension of England, not founding America. Planting is different than founding, as Hitchens pointed out.

[Occam Bandage]

13. I think American culture existed before 1787.

There wouldn't have been a Revolutionary War had America not seen itself in some way as a distinct entity from Britain.

[OutNow]

8. Pilgrims - NOT

Well then, the first to arrive (other than the native population of course), would be Leif Erikson. So Blackwell should encourage Viking culture in our country if he wants to be "accurate".

As for me, I like Ben Franklin.

[Sal316]

10. That's an asinine argument.

[Occam Bandage]

12. The Viking culture in the New World entirely died out.

The Pilgrims, on the other hand, were the beginning of the American cultural line, which continues to this day. "Leif Erikson" is not a reasonable counterargument.

[Meshuga]

9. If the founding of America is not attributed to the founding fathers

Then what makes the first white people who arrived in the the land founders of America? The fact that they were white Christians?

[Sal316]

11. Quite honestly it's a technicality...

...and one not worth getting all worked up over.

Some historians look to the first permanent settlement(s) as being the start of the founding, hence the MBC and even Jamestown.