Two men: one great, the other contemptible

As pretty much every atheist reader will know by now, Christopher Hitchens died recently.

It certainly didn't take long for the vultures to start circling his corpse, metaphorically speaking. Here's a tweet that made my blood boil, from well-known Christian megachurch pastor Rick Warren:

My friend Christopher Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him constantly & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now.
— Rick Warren (@RickWarren) December 16, 2011

I had to respond.

@RickWarren Hitchens knew the truth when he was alive. Now he's dead and knows nothing.
— Barry (@Gwennwys) December 16, 2011

I must say, though, that my favourite responses came from PZ Myers and Living After Faith.

Fuck you too. RT @RickWarren: Christopher Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him constantly & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now.
— PZ Myers (@pzmyers) December 16, 2011 

@RickWarren My friend Christopher Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him constantly & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now. // FYYFF
— Living After Faith (@LAFwithme) December 16, 2011

It took me a while to figure out what "FYYFF" meant, but I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. By exploiting the death of his supposed friend Christopher Hitchens to promote his own religious beliefs, in a way that Hitchens would never have let him get away with if he was still alive, Rick Warren has shown himself to be a tasteless, shameless scumbag. What that sanctimonious moron doesn't realise is that Hitchens knew the truth very well; which is why he was an atheist. Now he knows nothing, as the unique network of neurons that  constituted his mind is no more.

As an interesting postscript, I noticed that after I had tweeted my response to Warren two staff members from his church, David Chrzan (@dchrzan) and Travis Ryan (@travisryan) followed me on Twitter. Some sort of Christian mafia perhaps? Ooh, I'm quaking in my boots ... NOT. They haven't commented yet, so perhaps they just slavishly follow people who follow their boss. It wouldn't be the first time he's been the subject of misdirected hero worship from his sheeple, after all.