We lost Christopher Hitchens last night.  Many of us have a feeling of emptiness today, we know how amazing he was.  Many of us have been influenced by his style, and because of this he will live on.  Because we read his books and use his arguments, quote him in arguments, and are influenced by him, he will live on.  Christopher Hitchens seems irreplaceable.  It's only in the strength of our collective voices do we consider the notion that we could possibly fill his shoes.  And we will try, this is obvious to us, all of us had a collective atheist head nod today.  We know we must pick up where he left off.  

I would like to recognize for a moment a new blogger on our website.  He reminds me a little of Hitchens, and ironically Hitchens is his greatest influence.  I posted this on Facebook an hour ago, but thought I should make a blog post for it.  

The winner of the most Hitch like new blogger on RRS for 2011 is Louis Cypher! 

Hitch lives on!  He lives on in all of us, but please check out Louis Cypher.  He's making waves, he's intelligent, known to curse from time to time, and not scared to confront any aspect of religion.  I'm so happy he's posting here and going to be an Atheism United blogger.  You can follow Louis Cypher via RSS feed if you want, or just go to Louis Cypher's Blog.

"But it was his out front, wholehearted and passionate stance on religion and theistic chicanery that captured my unabashed admiration for the man.  His no prisoners,  confrontational approach was a breath of pure oxygen. His skills at both lecture and debate were astounding in their clarity, wit, and sheer persuasiveness.  His presence alone on the stage was enough to make the most outspoken theist cringe in fear.  He stood astride the once safe harbour of rhetorical discourse like a veritable colossus, wielding his enormous intellect like a club." - Louis Cypher on Hitchens

Quotes from Louis Cypher

"My ethics and morality derive from the culture in which I was raised and reinforced by the pressure of my peers. As I grew, I incorporated much of what in had been taught into my world view, rationalizing and reasoning out the purpose and place of the various ideas, making them part of my essential character. On top of my personal ethic, we have laws, society's way of codifying a common ethic. Even if one lacks an ethical stance on certain issues, the fear of societal retribution tends to keep most in line.

Morality is mutable, changing with time and custom. I knew several people in my youth who were only a generation removed from slavery. Once slavery wasn't immoral, it was in fact validated by the holy scriptures as right and moral. Once, a wife could not refuse her husbands sexual advances, the concept of marital rape was unimagined. We've changed, we've grown as a people.

Christian morality doesn't exist. Yes, they have rules and a huge litany of sins, but most are for the purpose of pointing out the failings of others, many are outdated, barbaric and non nonsensical." - Louis Cypher, The Myth of Christian Morality

"Unless of course, we are talking about the human sacrifice that is the root of our most prominent western religion, Christianity. Then it becomes a beautiful and moving act. One that essays, books, even entire careers have been built around, extolling the virtue of a death on a Roman torture device. A favorite of the artist, thousands of paintings have lovingly detailed the blood and gore, the sense of suffering. Millions of little children wear the image of this near naked man hanging in torment, dieing on a torture device, around their necks." - Louis Cypher, It has to be blood

"Faith is a mental defect made into a virtue by those with an agenda to fleece the gullible. Faith isn't sloppy reasoning, it's no reasoning at all by simple definition. There is a lot of equivocation about the word, other than 'spirit' I can think of no other word more horribly abused from a semantic standpoint. Faith is belief without evidence. If you have evidence, you don't have faith you have a reasoned belief. How hard is that to grasp?" - Louis Cypher, Faith is a mental defect

Notable Louis Cypher threads

Belief is Irrational

Evidence, please.

Faith is a mental defect...