"[New atheists] are curiously unable to comprehend those who found through their religious convictions the strength to stand up against injustice. Hitchens writes of Martin Luther King Jr. that “in no real as opposed to nominal sense, then, was he a Christian.” He disparages the faith of Abraham Lincoln and assures us that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whom the Nazis put to death for resistence, was the product of a religious belief that had “mutated into an admirable but nebulous humanism.” … All those religious figures who found the courage to live the moral life must be maligned and dismissed as not authentically religious."
—
Chris Hedges, When Atheism Becomes Religion
Yeah, this is one of the reasons I really do not like Hitchens. He not only disparages people for being religious, he also feels he has to make religion seem like something only deluded people would be interested in, so he tries to rewrite history like this.
(Source: kittentroops)
