They obviously made a bad career choice when even op-shops no longer accept encyclopedias. We do live, after all, in an age when we have GOOGLE - or at least wives who know everything.
I've always liked Christopher Hitchens' writing and the world is poorer for his untimely death in 2011 at the age of only 62. I also share his conviction “... that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilization, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit”.
As for religion, I hold with Heinrich Heine who wrote in his 'Gedanken und Einfälle', "In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind old men as guides". (In dunklen Zeiten wurden die Völker am besten durch die Religion geleitet, wie in stockfinstrer Nacht ein Blinder unser bester Wegweiser ist; er kennt Wege und Stege besser als ein Sehender. Es ist aber töricht, sobald es Tag ist, noch immer die alten Blinden als Wegweiser zu gebrauchen.)
I was very pleased to find another one of Christopher Hitchens' books, God is NOT Great - How religion poisons everything, ironically at the Uniting Church's op-shop. To give you a taste of what awaits you, here's an excerpt.
And here's something to really cheer you up:
Feeling good now? ☺
