Hitchens goes to meet his Maker

Christopher Hitchens Dies at 62...

"The author and prominent atheist Richard Dawkins described him as the "finest orator of our time" and a "valiant fighter against all tyrants including God

He maintained his devout atheism after being diagnosed with cancer, telling one interviewer: "No evidence or argument has yet been presented which would change my mind. But I like surprises."

And, indeed, I believe he will be surprised. I wont speculate as to what happens now.
However...  God evidently has a sense of humor.
How else to explain Jesus' statement to Peter: "Upon this rock I build my church."   At once both a pun and highly ironic, as Peter had just denied Christ three times.

I've read Dawkins and I've read Hitchens.  Dawkins rails a lot against God,  a  more accurate depiction of Hitchens' views would be 'Religion Poisons Everything'.  I don't think that is true but, on general terms, it's not incorrect, either.  And I defy the most devout religionist to negate THAT.   Especially if you follow contemporary news.
But EVERYTHING?

No.  Compare and contrast, for discussion's sake, the Shaker Cult v the Amish community.
Religion poisoned the Shakers.  Where is the malignant effect on the Amish?

If Hitchens cited the Westboro Baptist freakshow.. or the global mission of the devout to kill, convert or gather tribute from all 'Infidels' he has a valid point.
Like I say, though, that isn't God, that's man's Religion.

 I've observed over many years, that there are two general types of Atheist:  Those who don't believe because they don't 'see' hard and fast proof of the greatest mystery of the universe.. and those who deny to avoid self-judgement and guilt. Of course it is usually a blend of philosophies, but with Hitchens I think it was mainly the former..

NPR, of all media, may help save us yet!

Like most conservatives I developed a deep mistrust of government funded public broadcasting.  The last thing a free society needs is an 'Official News Agency' and that has been borne out time and again by several small scandals within NPR and CPB showing they indeed carried water for 'Progressive' (read Socialist) interests.

But one thing that opened my eyes as to the credibility of NPR in particular was its handling of Congresswoman Giffords' shooting.
Unlike many commercial outlets, specifically the steaming pile at MSNBC, there was no jumping to conclusions as to the agenda and motives of the shooter. Indeed many of the blogs I read, usually labelled 'Right Wing Hatemongers' by the knuckledragging left, linked to NPR's coverage during the immediate hours afterward and not a few praised them for the factual coverage as opposed to fevered speculation that the shooter was somehow tied to Tea Party or Sarah Palin.

Of course it was quickly proven that the guy was simply a mentally ill nutjob despite the local sheriff's attempts to link him somehow to the right.
NPR, however, stayed the course in its news coverage and deserve all credit for not jumping to conclusions based on whatever political views the writers may have had. I, of course, recognize that not all the programming on NPR was as objective but I can separate opinion from news when I see or hear it.

Now that organization has put up several other interesting items of interest to Conservatives and Libertarians:

Libs, Warming and the Money Train

Cartoon by Josh...From Bishop Hill blog

One thing you can say about the devout of any religion, they will never change their views based on science or even fact put right in their faces. Despite serious papers such as this:
Submission to the Inquiry into Carbon Tax Pricing Mechanisms

There is in fact no empirical evidence that global warming is mainly man-made. If there was, we would have heard all about it. Tens of billions of dollars has been spent looking for it.
Climate scientists readily concede that there is no direct evidence that global warming is caused by our carbon dioxide. Instead, they say that our knowledge of how the climate works is embodied in their climate models, and the climate models say that global warming is man-made.
Models are logically equivalent to someone punching in numbers and doing sums on a calculator - models are calculations, not evidence. The problem is that the models contain many guesses and assumptions about how things work, and some of them are wrong.

Here are four bits of evidence that the climate models are fundamentally flawed...

Read the entire article

And they tend to project this irrationality upon their opponents without regard to logic or even the tendency of people to take the easy way out whether it applies to income or just self image.  And they never want to apply simple rules of life experience to their own beliefs.

People who wouldnt think of investing in some crackpot scheme promoted by email spammers or have their driveways sealed by some guy in a pickup truck holding a garden sprayer will bite on 2 cents out of 100 dollars worth of CO2 sending the planet into a burning inferno.
At the same time they see no urgency when their own government's annual budget is written on IOU's.

Warmists claim that  skeptics are either ignorant or financed by big oil and energy interests ignoring the fact that all their heroes depend on urgency in taxing carbon for thier livelihoods.

Who is gonna spend tax money on proving that there's no emergency and even if there is, there's really nothing we can  do about it?

I'm finding that I am settling intto 'elderly curmudgeon' mode now and I really get irritated by people who dont address these simple flaws in human nature.  Not so much the devout.. they are who they are.  But the people who believe they may be right.  The agnostics, as it were.

Let's face it.. the 'climate scientists' who promote this most urgently are exactly the same as the scantily clad woman standing more than 15 minutes on a street corner in a seedy neighborhood. 
They arent waiting for a bus, they arent checking out the weather.. they're promoting their income and protecting their lifestyles.
They are whores.

As for me, I dont believe man is causing climate change to any significant extent.  If carbon was doing it, the continued rise in carbon dioxide would show at least in rising ocean temperature.  It isnt.
Not only that, the computer models on which all their religion is based did not predict what is happening now. More importantly, they predicted things that are not happening now.

All the extreme weather events they point out arent extreme and arent unusual when addressed historically.

And guess what... I dont really care if the earth is warming so I dont have anything invested in denying it.  It wont affect me .. I'll be dead.
And somehow I think my kids and grandkids will have more urgent things to deal with.  Like trying to live in more than a subsistence manner while trying to pay back the huge federal debt my generation ran up, supposedly in their name.