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Entry: Hitchens' Haj Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/hitchens_haj#7163 Post contents: Although I hate Hitchens for his trotskyism and his support for the Iraq war, I do have some respect for his position on religion. But my hero with regards to scoffing at religion is not Hitchens or Dawkins, but good old Henry L Mencken: 'No;there is nothing notably dignified about religious ideas. They run, rather, to a peculiarly puerile and tedious kind of nonsense. At their best, they are borrowed from metaphysicians, which is to say, from men who devote their lives to proving that twice two is not always or necessarily four. At their worst, they smell of spiritualism and fortune-telling. Nor is there any visible virtue in the men who merchant them professionally. Few theologians know anything that is worth knowing, even about theology, and not many of them are honest. One may forgive a Socialist or a Single Taxer on the ground that there is something the matter with his ductless glands, and that a Winter in the south of France would relieve him. But the average theologian is a hearty, red-faced, well-fed fellow with no discernible excuse in pathology. He disseminates his blather, not innocently, like a philosopher, but maliciously, like a politician. In a well-organized world he would be on the stone-pile, along with the lawyer. But in the world as it exists we are asked to listen to him , not only politely, but even reverently, and with our mouths open!' Sent at: 2008 07 04