ROOT: Fellow atheist, journalist lived by example

On Dec. 15, Christopher Hitchens, a brilliant writer and thinker, died of complications from esophagus cancer. He was 62 years old and arguably lived fast and hard enough to be three times as old. Hitchens smoked, drank, debated and wrote his ass off, too.

The world is a dimmer, less interesting place without him. While I never met him, I feel his absence sharply. As an atheist and a journalist, I feel as though one of the few lights I have to follow has been snuffed out and I can't find my footing.

Even in 2012, being an atheist in America is no cake walk, particularly if you're a journalist. Not only are the science-minded atheists immediately suspicious of you, your fellow journalists are suspicious, too. And the journalists may think you have a bias. Neither side is necessarily wrong in this suspicion - it's an entirely normal reaction to be uncertain of someone who's a member of a group you don't fully understand.

The good news is one can say, "Christopher Hitchens" to both groups and they'll nod as if to say, "Oh, right, cool."

I've experienced some of this misunderstanding first-hand. Last semester, a former religion reporter came in to speak at the Daily Nebraskan offices. He spoke of reporting on a schism in the atheist community several years ago and said it was interesting to watch because "atheists don't believe in anything."

Had I been channeling Hitchens that day, I would've spoken up and said, "No, that's nihilism, sir. Atheists believe in plenty of things, but they don't believe in any gods." However, I didn't. My only comfort was knowing I wasn't the only atheist in the room and I wasn't the only one shocked by the statement.

Last summer, when I visited a columnist at a newspaper, I was asked if I thought Bible fanfiction was blasphemous.

I'm certain these stories will be relatively tame by the time I'm out in the "real world" of journalism.

But in Journalism World, Hitchens was widely respected. He was open about his disbelief. He wrote about atheism and the merits of disbelief in "God Is Not Great." Hitchens is what I consider the varsity level of atheism. His arguments have a higher level of sophistication and more nuance than many other atheist thinkers. His arguments require the audience's full attention, though, so it can be a challenging read.

Side note: Hitchens is one of the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," the popular atheist thinkers and writers who tend to attract a lot of rage. The other three "Horsemen" are biologist Richard Dawkins, philosopher Daniel Dennett and neuroscientist Sam Harris.

Even better than Hitchens' excellent writing is watching him trounce his opponents in debates. Hitchens fiercely defended atheism in a number of these debates, including the film "Collision" where he debated Douglas Wilson, an evangelical theologian. Watching Hitchens crush his opponents with relative ease in a decisive and eloquent manner is amazing. The phenomena has even earned the name "Hitch Slap."

Indeed, his arguments are also fantastic to borrow when you're in a debate. Or, if you're a non-believer stuck in a very religious place with no signs of escape, they can be an odd sort of comfort and a way to center oneself. The mantra is an odd one, but it's effective.

This isn't to say that Hitchens was a perfect human being meant to be drooled upon by fangirls and fanboys. Far from it. To say otherwise would be an incredible disservice to his memory. Hitchens could be a fantastic douche at times.

Hitchens once famously said women aren't funny and used "science" to back up the ridiculous claim. Such a statement wasn't the worst one about women that Hitchens made during the course of his life. He attacked legal abortion and didn't think feminism was anything beyond "possessive individualism."

"I never got the impression from anything he wrote about women that he had bothered to do the most basic kinds of reading and thinking, let alone interviewing or reporting—the sort of workup he would do before writing about, say, G.K. Chesterton, or Scientology or Kurdistan. It all came off the top of his head, or the depths of his id," said Katha Pollitt in a Dec. 19 Nation article.

Indeed, when a writer uses such a broad brush to paint an entire population in one color, typically it says more about the writer than it does the population in question.

However, there were cases where Hitchens did praise individual women, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ali, for those unfamiliar with her, is a badass. She was a member of the Dutch parliament and pushed for women's rights in the country. She also received death threats for a screenplay she wrote for a movie called "Submission" which criticized Islam.

I highly recommend reading her memoir, "Infidel." The book is powerful and haunting. In the forward to "Infidel," which Hitchens wrote, he said of Ali, "She is much wiser than many thousands of apologetic academics and pundits, and she is also, I want to say, much more tolerant and much more humane."

And indeed, Hitchens was one of the few people ever to criticize Mother Teresa. While he did have the unbelievably bad taste to call his book "The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice," he wasn't wrong to question her. Of her, Hitchens said, "(Mother Teresa) was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction."

He may not have liked feminists in name, but that's certainly an argument that could come from a feminist by its rhetoric and style. If I were a naïve person, I'd say that Hitchens agreed with feminists, even if he didn't acknowledge it.

But Hitchens didn't believe that women could be as complex, interesting or thoughtful as men.

Despite his lack of understanding of women, Hitchens was one of the very few journalists I can think of who openly questioned a religious figure's credibility. That's an admirable feat and it's something many journalists aren't willing to do, for whatever reason.

Hitchens also perpetuated some very toxic stereotypes about both writers and atheists. For writers, he drank a ridiculous amount. For atheists, he was overly combative and had a tendency to think lesser of religious people for merely being religious.

That being said, Hitchens' legacy is that he wasn't afraid to question people and stand up for unpopular views. He could argue among the best of them. He challenged people's beliefs.

One of his quotes sums it up rather well, "Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way."

That's something worth remembering.

Rhiannon Root is a senior news-editorial and history major. Follow her on Twitter at @rhiannonroot and reach her at rhiannonroot@dailynebraskan.com.