God May Not Be Great, But Who Doesn't Love Santa?

In honor, sort of, of the season, The Onion's AV Club posts an interview with Christopher Hitchens, one of the so-called 'new atheists'. If you have a free 20 minutes or so, it's definitely worth a read.

Hitchens is the most frustrating of the new atheists, to me. There are four most commonly mentioned ones - Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. Dawkins (of The Selfish Gene fame) is a brilliant scientist, but not very good as a commentator on other topics. He tends to bloviate quite a bit when talking about non-science topics, although his scientific writings (I particularly recommend The Extended Phenotype) are absolutely top-notch.

Dennett is simply, and incredibly, arrogant - the man wrote a book called Consciousness Explained, for Pete's sake - and is fairly easy to dislike for that reason, even if you agree with him, as I generally tend to. I don't have a strong opinion on Harris, as I've never read anything of his.

But Hitchens, oh, Hitchens is a shifty one. For one, he's far-and-away the best writer. He has a magnificent gift for rhetoric, which of course makes it very difficult to disagree with him sometimes. He has that talent that I've heard applied to Antonin Scalia, although in Scalia's case I don't really see it - the ability to make an argument so persuasive that, even though you disagree with every fiber of your being with the conclusion, you cannot find fault with any step of the argument and are left stuttering 'but, but, that's just not right!'

Also, as seen in this argument, he can be quite sensible, smart, and funny. But, usually, he just goes for the ridiculous, over-the-top rhetoric, which I guess he thinks (probably correctly) will sell more books. It's damn frustrating, as I said, because I think he could be so much more. If his public persona was more like the person in the interview I linked to, I think he could be ever-so-more persuasive...