@failures art,
Quote:This spawned one of spendi's most offensive (and yet depressingly predictable) responses that suggested (despite him denying such a thing, teeth showing) that Hitchen's cancer might be a product of his atheism.
I suggested no such thing. And I explained why I didn't which ought to have been un-necessary if my original statement had been read properly rather than interpreted by people on the defensive too much and with an insecurity complex.
I suggested that there is a possibility that the inner conflict between promoting atheism and having had a Christian socialisation is a potential cause of stress and repressed stress at that. Freud and Wilhelm Reich, and others, have drawn attention, Reich in a full length book, to links between psychological conflict and disease. I went out of my way to point out that someone who had known nothing else but atheism would not have such an inner conflict in promoting atheism in order that it was clear that the atheism itself is not the potential cause of cell malfunction and nor is there any reason why it should be or any reason why anybody would suggest it is.
The assertion that I bared my teeth in a snarl is as valid as any other similarly stupid and gratuitous assertion.
And by returning to the matter, as you have done, you have given the matter another un-necessary airing and by failing to counter the suggestion, as is the case, you have allowed it to come to the attention of more people and more emphatically.
When it comes to "sadistic bullying" none of us have the skill to come close to matching the quote from Mr Hitchens given earlier in italics.
If people are going to be charged with sadistic bullying simply for pointing out things that are well known, well documented and the subject of much research, we are in a situation where dumbing down is being foisted upon us by a grossly gratuitous assertion, by a wilful misreading of what we say, and by slimy literary tricks such as the use of "might" in the statement quoted.
The assertion, which is implied in your post, that inner psychological conflict and the resulting repressed stress is not one of the potential causes of cell malfunction flies in the face of the research being done on the problem. To dismiss this aspect of psychosomatic manifestations with a casual flick of the wrist is to write off this important area of the inner life as the possible source of finding reductions in the frequency of illness.
But I understand why atheists need to dismiss psychosomatic manifestations. Their whole case falls apart if they don't. Having dismissed them we are then left at the mercy of mechanical and chemical cures and prevention methods much to the delight of those professionally engaged in providing them. Your life in their hands.
One other product Mr Hitchens' promotion of atheism has been a nice easy lifestyle, with fame and fortune, without getting his hands dirty supplying food, security and warmth to the population. There is no might about that.
