Christopher Hitchens (photo courtesy of Creative Commons).

The world lost one of its foremost intellects, brilliant writers and one of my absolute favorite people Thursday night, as Christopher Hitchens passed away from esophageal cancer. Hitchens is most famous for his proud and uncompromising atheism,

which was most completely articulated in his thought-provoking bestseller "God is not great."

Soon after word of his death got out in the late evening, and representative of the respect Hitchens had earned, #GodIsNotGreat emerged as a worldwide trending topic on Twitter. The backlash from those who were not familiar with Hitchens, nor in all likelihood, any books other than the Bible, was comical, hateful, violent, incoherent, underpunctuated, overcapitalized and above all else, defiantly ignorant.

I obviously did not know Hitchens, but I get the sense he would be quite amused by the delicious irony of the responses. "God is not great" argues that religion begets violence et al, and the mere mention of the book title to the lowest common denominator elicited its signature reactionary rage. Hitchens successfully pulled off posthumous trolling, which is actually a somewhat appropriate term for what Jesus has done since his alleged martyrdom. Jesus has had people arguing (and worse) for more than 2,000 years over things attributed to him; Hitchens' hashtag only got a few hours of Twitter glory.

Thursday evening there was a Republican presidential debate in Iowa, in which the current front-runner, Newt Gingrich, proposed making judges testify before Congress if they were to make decisions such as removing “in God we trust” from schools, which he deemed anti-American. To borrow one of Newt’s favorite words; this is fundamentally Taliban logic.

A few hours later, on the misinformation superhighway, misguided religious zealots were actually threatening violence against a group of people whose sole offense was to endorse a view that God is not great. Mullah Omar would be proud.

Obviously I do not take internet thugs seriously, but that’s beside the point.  The visceral anger behind the threats is both hilarious and almost incomprehensible to me.  The trending topic was #GodIsNotGreat, not #F***YourMother. A person of ironclad faith who sees the greatness of God as a self-evident truth should not be so sensitive as to fly off the handle over a hashtag.

Disclaimer time: I have many friends who are, to varying degrees, people of faith and I have the utmost respect for those who truly do live their lives in accordance with the teachings of Jesus, who I’ve always regarded as a wonderful role model. Jesus did say, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24). Newt Gingrich must have either a tiny camel or a huge needle (that’s what she said).

It is not faith itself, or as it’s often called in Californian english, spirituality, that is particularly odious to atheists.  It is the closed-minded certainty that often accompanies the most openly and conspicuously pious Americans that makes me want to throw fossils at Michele Bachmann.

There is a point in all of our lives when we do feel like we know everything. That point is called 16 years old. As most of us get older, we find out just how true it is that the more we learn, the more we realize we just don’t know. This humility is healthy and makes us more careful thinkers.  Those that don’t develop the humility and ability to find nuance that comes with self-examination and self-doubt just let their unchallenged, not thoughtful positions marinate in an isolated world of ignorance and selected facts. That’s what we see in much of the GOP base, and it’s what we see in the tweeters that had a conniption over a stupid hashtag.

It is easy to pick on the low-hanging fruit that is the GOP primary electorate, and truth be told, this group of people would be wise to pick low-hanging fruit for their diets, but this type of ignorance can’t be exclusively pinned on them. Many of the angriest responders to the #GodIsNotGreat trending topic were urban teenagers. They may not have a lot of similarities with the middle-aged working-class white men of the Republican base, but they do have one key thing in common:  their closed social circles provide a place where their ill-informed views are rarely challenged.

A 15-year-old kid from West Baltimore is about as likely to encounter an informed non-Christian viewpoint as I would be trying to find a devoted Dale Earnhardt fan in Brentwood.  Not everyone has the luxury of a community with relatively heterogeneous ideology and access to books and teachers with alternate views. Just like our theoretical Marylander hears nothing but “Jesus saves” gospel from his grandmother, mother, friends, teachers, clergy (obviously), store owners, etc., a working-class white man drawing all his news from the Fox News bubble doesn’t get his perspective challenged either.

Unchallenged beliefs tend to harden and drift toward the more extreme ends of the spectrum. It is always moderating to see both sides, but sometimes one side is just not made available. I’d wager (not $10,000) that many of the most venomous critics of Hitchens' honorary hashtag do not knowingly associate with anyone who does not believe in God.

Andrew Sullivan, who is one of my favorite people of faith, has a common phrase he uses when encouraged by a certain, often socially progressive, development. That phrase is “know hope.”  In this case, my advice to those who were so deeply offended by the implication that God may not be all that great is to “know doubt.”  To know doubt is to know humility, and to know humility is to challenge one’s assumptions and ultimately form much more thoughtful and well-reasoned opinions.

I have always found teenagers and young adults going on missionary work designed to convert “natives” to be extremely presumptuous. Take an 18-year-old kid straight out of Provo, send him to France and have him politely inform an older adult who has been ingrained in an ancient culture for generations that essentially, he’s doing it wrong, and this young kid has the answers. Mitt Romney’s propensity to talk at and not listen to people, which is to have half a conversation, reflects the mentality of the guy who has it all figured out and can’t learn from anyone else.

Know doubt.

If some hotshot marketing guru decided to rebrand the Bible, one possible title would be “God is great.” All Hitchens did was present the opposite case. I endorse Hitchens' view of this topic, but the “God is great” book doesn’t have me making threats in all caps on the internet. I even own a King James Version. If I were to only read atheist literature, I would be just as ignorant as those who refuse to read anything challenging the Bible.

Hitchens was the ultimate contrarian; he told us things we needed to hear, even (and sometimes especially) when he took tremendous flak for saying them. He challenged us to know doubt and made us all better in the process.

I am eternally grateful the world got to know him.