A few great lines from Hitch and where the author rambles on about why Catholic matriculation sucks it

He's a controversial figure even in some Atheist circles but so help me, I love me some Hitch.

So before I talk about why this line is so great, a brief diversion. I was reading something online yesterday which linked to something else and so on and soon I was watching a video of that twit who became Miss California (I refuse to use her name and add to her Google hit count) who made those remarks on how she thought gay marriage was wrong. But "opposite marriage" was ok, she believed, in her country, in her family. The same stupid twat later lost the Miss California crown for being an uncooperative asshole. So she sued for discrimination (it's like TOtally wrong for people to discriminate against her, in her country, in her family you guys! OMGee!) But then a sex video surfaced and she walked away with nothing. Interestingly, it was a solo sex video. Tsk,tsk. Evidently she never saw this poster.

So the point, which I haven't forgotten, was the video I watched was a clip of her addressing some family group (when did family start to equal fascist, by the by?) where she called herself "brave" and said that God put her there for that moment. Naturally, the chuckleheads in the audience creamed themselves over this. Where to start? Over to you, Hitch:

How much vanity must be concealed-not too effectively at that-in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan?

 But wait, here are some more bon mots just from Chapter 1:

While some religious apology is magnificent in its limited way-one might cite Pascal-and some of it is dreary and absurd-here one cannot avoid naming C.S. Lewis-both styles have something in common, namely the appalling load of strain that they have to bear.

Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or offends reason.

We...find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books.

I went to Catholic school as a child with all of the forced Mass and Confession attendance that entails. Bleah. I read Hitchens and a small (largish?) childish part of me still wants to go "I'm reading an Atheist book and YOU can't confiscate it. Suck on that." Really having trouble with that be the bigger man philosophy.