“Touched by a ghost!” the Hump metes out a sound “Hitchslapping.”

“I have been touched by a ghost, in the small of my back at an install [in a house where a boy died in the late 1890's and has never left]. I never believed any of the ghost crap before that moment. Since then I have had to rethink a lot of things. That’s what "What if's" are in us for. If you are not open to believing every thing you know is wrong than you are not a free thinker.”

The above comment was posted by someone to a facebook friend’s article dedicated to Christopher Hitchens. Off topic, and completely out of context with the discussion, besides his obvious foolishness this person exposed himself to be another one of those self appointed editors of Webster’s Dictionary - compelled, it seems, to redefine words to better suit his perspective and agenda.

I decided there can be no greater tribute to Christopher Hitchens than to administer to this buffoon the educational “Hitchslapping” he so clearly deserved. Here it is, slightly revised and extended:

Freethinker does not imply entertaining the paranormal because a natural explanation for an event, real or perceived, cannot immediately be ascertained. A freethinker doesn't hear hoof beats in the night and think "Ah ha! Unicorn!" We begin by examining the most reasonable and likely explanation for cause, not with the premise that something for which there has never been any objective evidence is the likely cause. That's quite the opposite from how credulous, unscientific superstitionalists like you think.

To paraphrase Hitchens - as atheists / freethinkers we respect free inquiry, open mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. No where does being a freethinker imply throwing reason out the window and “being open to believing everything” predicated on anecdote and stories. That’s not being open minded, that’s surrendering your intellect to myth, which is a reasonably good definition for “faith.”

Occam's Razor states that the simplest explanation is better than a more complex one, thus more likely to be the correct one. The complexity associated with ghosts, spirits, god/gods, et al, is vast. It is so absurdly intricate / complex that on the list of one-thousand possible explanations it would fall at the bottom, just below invisible aliens. Selecting ghostly encounter as your preferred explanation for this so called event is patently irrational.

You want to believe you were prodded by a ghost? Fine. But this thread is dedicated to someone who was the antithesis of mindless superstionalism. You add nothing to the conversation here except to exemplify the kind of stunted, backward, and archaic non-think that Hitchens fought against his whole life.

Finally (and I mean that literally since I have zero interest in prolonging discourse with those of limited intellect), if you are insulted by your dismissal and the ridicule heaped upon you by the thinking folks here, no one will shed a tear. You're entitled to the same respect as any other insipid religionist who places myth, faith and unsubstantiated belief before reason, reality, and the scientific method - which is to say no respect at all.