It turns out that tomorrow is Towel Day, a memorial to author and geek icon Douglas Adams. That’s a neat coincidence, because on my note cards of topics to bring up in discussing Christopher Hitchens and so on, I had noted that Hitchens seems to be audtioning for the role of Oolong Coluphid in reality’s unfolding production of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
If you’re going to be an atheist — and I don’t doubt that you have a long list of good reasons, I’ve heard most of them, please trust me on this — you might as well take Douglas Adams for your model rather than the bombastic assassins of honest discourse. When Hitchens informs Prof. Glaude that the Princeton professor has been speaking “white noise,” I recognized a great deal more than what CH seems to have thought he was saying; Hitchen’s incapacity to make sense of Glaude’s points was very white indeed, and arrogant, and peevish.
Why not rather be gentle, funny, self-deprecating, and endearing? I don’t have anything particular against atheists, but I have developed a pronounced antipathy to Christopher Hitchens and his apologists. Tomorrow, I’ll raise a towel to Douglas Adams, with respectful disagreement.