California being a fascist state was sarcasm. I was drawing attention to how the incident in the article pales in comparison with the far more serious human rights issues caused by another religion, which UncleSkinny, and many like him, choose to 'IGNORE' (deeming the mere mention of it to be 'racist', or 'Islamophobic' - the newly created word which Hitchens warned about in the first video - so new that there's a red line under it when I type it on Solo).
Christianity has been responsible for many of the world's ills as well of course, most recently the paedophile cover-up in the Catholic Church, and the AIDS epidemic in Africa (so widespread due to Christian missionaries message that contraception is, like abortion, akin to murder). However, Christianity is a relatively benign influence in the 21st Century, it's never going to regain the power that it once had, it can be taught as literature to give historically Christian countries a better understanding of their past (as Dawkins spoke about in the second video).
Unlike you RealityBites, I don't believe that religion should be completely wiped out and all churches should be demolished apart from the aesthetically pleasing ones (as I once, in disbelief, saw you say on here). It shouldn't be taught that it's literally true (in my opinion), but should be taught nevertheless, in an English class rather than a religion class. So much of literature has been directly influenced by the Bible, from Chaucer in the 1300s (and long before that), to Paul Auster in the 1980s (New York Trilogy).
You say that you could never respect someone who has what you call a 'faith based epistemology', so I suppose that rules out Graham Greene, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Burgess, to name just four God-fearing authors. To completely disregard religion is to do yourself a great disservice, but that doesn't mean we should abide the poisonous elements. It just so happens that religion's most poisonous elements are currently evident in Islamic countries, and it would be good therefore if people acknowledged that and fought against it instead of bestowing upon it a fearful deference (and shutting down those who dare to speak up).
If there came a day when religious texts could be taught as fiction with the historical context noted (how it duped everybody for so long, and the damage it caused), then I think that would be a much more desirable outcome than demolishing churches and rewriting history, don't you? That day will never come as long as *certain* people continue to get 'offended' when Islam is 'insulted'. They're on the wrong side of history, absolutely, they're those who continue to be 'duped'.
As for Hitchens, yes he was an admirable man, not so admirable that I would photoshop pictures of myself hugging him and upload it to the internet, I don't admire him THAT much *grins*.
@TBT: Nobody cares you bitter, insecure little man with your inferior intellect, go to the Pigsty and get your kicks by ganging up on somebody with !Viva Hate!.
View attachment 31459 - who does this include? Paul Robeson? Fela Kuti? James Baldwin? Maya Angelou? Jack Johnson? Josephine Baker? Dorothy Dandridge? Toni Morrison? Billie Holliday? Disgusting! I refuse to humour you any more, go and bother somebody else.