Nice display of typical Christian least-common-denominator rhetoric. Nice in the intro about how they accuse him of hating God. How can you hate something you don't believe exists?

And what was that bullshit about committing murder in his heart? I'm pretty sure "thou shalt not kill" was generally in regard to actually ending someone's life.

Damn. So every time I bang Tina Fey "in my heart", I'm committing adultery? Well, if that's wrong then bring on the flames of Hell baby!

Subjugation is part of our evolutionary process. When we feel we are on top, we feel power and control, falsely more often than not, that we are right, because being on top is our goal.

But, being on top is NOT a garentee. Many past civilizations who dominated the culture of the time fade into antiquity.

As far as god belief is concerned, there is no way, even if one were to assume for argument's sake only, that if such a claimed being said, "You owe me because I own you", has got to be the sickest proposition human history has ever postulated.

We all compete to be on top. But facades of self centered importance in that natural process are a side effect of allowing emotion and ego rule predominantly over intellect .

Our species would rather be on top based on a fallacy rather than demonstrable credibility, and that is the same as the moth mistaking the light bulb for moonlight.

I am not special, nor is our species, and to placate the emotions of fans of credulity is to capitulate our future to emotionalism rather than evidence.

If someone is drunk when they rightfuly tell me that I can't fart a Lamborgini out of my ass, how wrong would they be if they said the same thing when sobar?

Hitchens  is not our atheist god. He is simply a crictic, and as human as any critic of atheists. Jefferson most certianly would have valued Hitchens over Falwell. But I doubt Jefferson would have advocated drinking a case of beer as defiance being default in the face of lack of evicence.

Hitchens drinks for the same reson that a Christian or Japanese does. And only he can maintain or break that habit anymore than I can quite smoking. I eather do or I dont, but there is no magic in excaping an adiction by claiming Harry Potter stopped me, when the reality is that if we stop doing something, it is because we wanted to.

I just watched it, and I disagree with you, Rich. I don't agree that Mos Def was imbecilic, and I don't agree that Hitchens "undressed" him there either. 

I'm a fan of the pwnng he gave Todd Friel on his ridiculous radio segment, just for the record. Not only were Friel's "What if" premises moronic and weak, HE couldn't keep to the hyopthetical format and preached his way through most if it, Hitchens made short work of him and got bored quickly - it was great.

On the other hand, I though Mos Def conducted himself quite rationally on that Bill Maher panel, the subject was clearly one that both Hitchens and Mos Def have emotional investment in, and to go by your assessment one would have to expect Def's contribution to be nothing but a string of baseless emotional appeals but it wasn't. He raised complex issues about the dissemination of information and Hitchens skirted them with ad hominem retorts. I, personally, be interested in a planned rematch; I think it would have been more interesting a debate if Hitchens had better background knowledge of Mos Def's position, and if Mos Def was required by a debate format to stay quiet and listen occassionally.

 As regards the Hitchens/ Mos Def Beef (Holy Shit, Hitch has Beef!) Mos is following the Black Panther Party logic that states that any news made available to black Americans must be held as suspect because of a conspiracy to keep black Americans from attaining wealth and influence.  While I respect his need for empirical proof, Hitchens made clear that verification of the claims made by the news media are available to him and furthermore, that a person so concerned with verification has had a dozen years or so of internationally staged actions by Al-Qaeda in which to research the issue on his own.  Mr. Definitely so much as admitted that he had not done this and remained ignorant of the issue, though that being said, he still held a contrarian position.  

I like Mos Def.  I'm not a fan of hip hop in general, but I think his stuff is actually really good and I also enjoy his work as an actor.  I've seen interviews of Mos Def in which he very cogently and pragmatically discusses the problems of the black community in the US.  It seems that in this episode of Real Time he decided to make himself a victim.  I hope this was an isolated incident.

Friel is an idiot.