December 16th, 2011 Goodbye
Christpher Hitchens. The world has lost
a potent intellect and a fine human being - the "great man" as my brother Simon
called him. Long may his words be remembered.
The idea of this website is simple. I believe that at some point in the future
people will look back in amazement at the fact that in the early 21st century millions
- maybe even billions - of people believed in gods, angels, fairies etc. By
then I trust that religious belief will have been consigned to the intellectual
scrapheap alongside, for example, the belief that the Sun revolves around the Earth
(which, of course, everyone
knew to be true a couple of hundred years ago).
When these future people (my descendents, maybe) look back with bemusement and pity
at the vast multitudes of religious human beings that currently inhabit our little
planet, I want there to be a record of some sort to indicate that I was
not one
of them. As a fully paid-up atheist (not an agnostic)
my name was
the first to be added to this database. If you'd like to make a similar statement
for posterity, please feel free to do so.
Stephen Collins, June 2008, New York City