I don’t think hospital administrators should let the proselytizers roam the wards, whether they sincerely want to save the dying from a terrible fate, or just want to be able to tell their fellow believers or God that they’ve been harassing dying people all day again. I agree with Ayxxaan that it’s not the dying who should comfort others in their delusions about where they are going.

Yes I agree. I don’t really feel like contradicting someone when they tell a dying person that you will go to heaven and meet your loved ones but Id think arguing that there is no heaven with a person who is dying is in bad taste. I suppose it is the desire to see people die happy or in peace that makes us tolerate the lying. I don’t know if I really want to change this when say a family member says these thing (though a stranger proselytizing will hear a few things from me)

This is totally misguided. If you visit someone dying, the focus should be on that person, not on you. So unless the dying person himself starts talking about heaven and meeting loved ones there, you bringing that subject up means you are making your thoughts the subject of the conversation instead of what may be troubling the dying person. That means you are trying to cope with the idea of death instead of trying to help the dying cope.

If you go and visit a dying person and don’t know how to comfort hem/her. Stop trying, trying to comfort the other are more often than not attempt to find comfort yourself than that they are comforting the dying person. The best you can probably do is lend a listening ear and acknowledges the dying person’s feelings and his/her right to have them! The more you say yourself, the more you make the visit about you instead of it being about the person you visit.

But you’re writing now as yourself, an unbeliever. If you were a believer you might have a calm confidence that because god is in charge, every reward or punishment is deserved and that might offset the tendency to go mad with worry about people’s suffering. The worry, in a sense, could only come from a lack of confidence that god has everything under control, if you see what I mean.

No, helping people in need has nothing to do with it. Suffering in this life is nothing compared to being tortured with fire for an eternity. If I was smart, I’d write convincing books that would save millions but because I’m not I’d just go around hysterically from person to person begging them to believe me. I’d suck at evangelizing and probably end up in a mental hospital because I wouldn’t be able t handle the thought of all the people suffering in immense agony that would never stop.

But if you truly truly believed in Jesus to buy the everyone who doesn’t believe in him goes to hell – wouldnt you be going about helping everyone in need instead of preaching at street corners?

Oh well it’s not “you’re going to heaven” I’m arguing with, it’s attempts at conversion.

Sure. I was responding to why non believers go along with some parts of the charade while thinking a frank atheistic view would be considered in poor taste.

I’m also grateful to the BBC for 1994′s Hell’s Angel, which I’m not entirely sure they would have the courage to air today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WQ0i3nCx60

Most of all I appreciate Hitch for being a deliciously vulgar, unrepentant gnu, despite/because of his intellect, nuance, and empathy. This one’s for you, Hitch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBa6YMs-AbY

So on the whole people give a free pass to anything that sounds as if it is meant to be encouraging.

Yes I agree. I don’t really feel like contradicting someone when they tell a dying person that you will go to heaven and meet your loved ones but Id think arguing that there is no heaven with a person who is dying is in bad taste. I suppose it is the desire to see people die happy or in peace that makes us tolerate the lying. I don’t know if I really want to change this when say a family member says these thing (though a stranger proselytizing will hear a few things from me)

Even among the non christians in India. When we grew up the only articles we read was about the selfless work she did, the poor she helped, how she lived among us Indians, and had sacrificed her life for the poor and needy. I don’t remember a single critical article. Nor do I ever remember reading her doing any evangelical stuff.

If nothing else she had great PR.

I found this odd:

(Anyone looking in Hitchens’s subconscious for a key to his hostility to the Church might start here.)

It seems a bit gratuitous at any case, as if Hitch is angry at God because an ex-anglican cum eastern mystic is the reason Hitch thinks religion is bollocks. It’s not like religion makes sense or has evidence unequivocally butressing its claims, but no, it’s an emotional reaction on Hitch’s part.

Admittedly, only a small amount of critical thinking is required to realise that lying to dying people is not in fact nice behaviour.

I disagree with the notion that goodness means selflessness. I think this is part of the error of his Marxist yearning. I think goodness is very much irrelevant, as most of us will help someone injured on the street, or act in some way when others are distressed. That doesn’t make someone good, because goodness is not part of a person’s character, it’s our default position. It’s a matter of how bad we are, or if we are actively evil. That’s what is important, and that is all that is deserving of criticism.

God, really?! That’s appalling!

It’s not even comfort, false or otherwise – it’s “you’re all wrong and bad and you need to be fixed quick now before you die.” I don’t consider it well-meaning.