"all due respect" cannot change the fact that this is the most disrespectful thing you can write at the death of an atheist.
No thanks.
If you argue from a base mechanics point of view (e.g. Your brain is basically a hard drive with n bits of storage an thus can only enter 2^n states) then you're assuming that in this hypothetical afterlife your physical limitations are maintained. Since your basic assumptions about the universe have been demonstrated to be wrong, assuming this particular assumption will be correct is drawing a very long bow. And the initial assumption is very much in doubt.
To my mind an atheist is someone who has yet to encounter a plausible religion, not (a) someone who defines their beliefs in opposition to one religion (e.g. I do not believ heaven is a green pasture populated by angels playing harps and dead Christians tending sheep) or (b) someone who is closed to the possibility that a plausible religion might exist.
That's ambitious of you.
>To my mind an atheist is someone who has yet to encounter a plausible religion
In principle, were a plausible religion to present itself, I would weigh it on the evidence. In the real world, the vast number of religions, none of which are plausible, combined with the demonstrated ability of science to explain the universe through natural causes, leaves no doubt in my mind that there is no supernatural creator.
As for an afterlife, the complete and utter lack of evidence or argument in favor of it consigns it to the realm of all other fairy tales. As such, I treat it as a thought experiment more than as a proposed state of the Universe. If there is an afterlife, either it's eternal or it isn't. If it is, it is boring beyond belief. If it isn't, then what have you "gained"? Sure, it'd be nice to have a few thousand years to think, but I'd far prefer telekinesis and control over the flow of time. Since the propositions of my having superpowers and my consciousness enduring after my neurons stop firing have equal chance of coming true, I'll stick with the fantasies that tickle my pickle.
Your a) scenario is easily dismissed: I think all religions are equally silly; some have just been around long enough and are familiar enough for their silliness to become engrained. As for b) I am not closed to the possibility in principle. As I said, I simply view it as vanishingly unlikely. I have a better chance of winning the lottery three times in a row than of any religion predicated upon the supernatural being "true".
You say "an atheist is someone who has yet to encounter a plausible religion". That implies that we're waiting for the right one, like a home buyer who's only been shown hovels. That's simply not the case. I am not, in practice, open to the possibility of a god; I think the whole notion is absurd. In the same vein, I am not open to the possibility of homeopathy being effective treatment for anything other than thirst. Certainly, were science to show that it was, in fact, effective, I would change my mind. That does not imply that I'm waiting to find the right kind of water to cure fibromyalgia.
PS: To quickly address your point:
>The idea that there are finite number of possible thoughts is highly improbable given the number of things there aren't finite numbers of.
I never meant to imply there were a finite number of things. Hell, you could count for all eternity and never run out of numbers. That does not imply there are an infinite number of things worth thinking about.
If so, then one would only need to demonstrate a sufficiently impressive failure of current scientific understanding to account for some events that would appear to be caused by his actions, in order to push what would be considered a plausible religion.
I might be mistaken about the use of the word "plausible", but I think it is not necessarily connected with evidence but with human perception. Of course rational people would only find plausible explanations that are backed with evidence, but even the most hardcore rationalists are subject to their own psychology and emotions.
My argument is that in a (completely unlike, hypothetical) scenario like the one I describe, most people would likely find plausible what that someone would claim (if it did not sound completely stupid) not because it would be the reasonable thing to do but because psychologically those acts would feel too imposing, if science could not explain them at the time.
I cannot and do not want to speak for Hitchens so I will only speak for myself. My view is that believing in an afterlife is crazy and absurd. (Don't get me wrong: I would love there to be some sort of way for my existence to continue after death. I'm terrified of death. Just wishing for there to be an afterlife doesn't make it happen, though.) I think it is very much distepectful to say things you know the person would have thought of as crazy and absurd when commenting their death.
While there are different interpretations, the common is that heaven is an eternal non-physical state of being together with God (the god of the Bible), perhaps even "absorbed" by this god.
The god of the Bible is racist, jaloux, blood-thirsty and opposed to critical thinking, and among other things calls for human sacrifice, genocide and killing babies. (Read the Bible if you dont believe me.)
Now, if you are christian you might think this is all justified and fair, but for an atheist, an eternity of being together with this being (without any possibility of rebellion or critical thinking) might seem more like a never ending nightmare.
Furthermore, it is generally agreed that there is no kind of physical pleasure in the heaven - no sex, no sunshine or rain, no books, no Johnny Walker Black Label. The only pleasure is being together with and eternally worshipping the aforementioned god. Who would in good conscience wish this for Hitchens?
I like to think there might be little racism and infanticide and much discourse on creating universes.
I'm an atheist myself and I do find the idea of an afterlife extremely compelling. The tragedy here is that I'm also enough of a scientist to know that the odds of there being any kind of afterlife are vastly against us. So there is probably a group of atheists who, like myself, wish for an afterlife but at the same time know that wishing doesn't make it true. The universe doesn't really care whether a couple of carbon-based molecules change their state and it, sadly, doesn't care about the information stored in our brains either.
You presume, of course, that these things apply to the dead. But when dead, materially, you can reason about nothing because the bases for reason, perception and memory, no longer exist. Seeing yourself as disanimated material after you die is a trick of the mind, and not one that comes naturally, but that is learned in training as a part of survival in your time and place. But in many ways, to yourself, you are unlike anyone else, and in these ways you can conclude nothing about your dead self from your perception and memory of all others that have died.
In short, you can conclude nothing about yourself when dead. Even the laws of physics and nature are not a help to determining the nature of your dead self; these are artifacts of perception and memory.
I do not claim that we have hope for life after death, whatever that means; I only claim that for the living it is, and will likely always be, the "horror of the shade", the mystery of mysteries, and why music and poetry are as important to human beings as science and reason.
Furthermore, if the Christian heaven does exist (which in turn implies that Christian doctrine is true), Christopher is most certainly in hell.
If the Christian heaven does exist, it does not imply that all Christian doctrine is true, only that some is true.
And there is a lot of contradictory Christian doctrine. By that, I am not saying that Christian doctrine is self-contradictory, I am only pointing out that several different Christian denominations have doctrines that contradict each other. According to some denominations, Hitchens would indeed be in hell, and according to others, he would be in heaven.
I am almost certain that there are some Christian denominations under which Christopher is now believed to be in heaven, although they are in the minority, and not in the mainstream of Christianity that Hitchens usually debated against. Can you name me two Christian denominations according to whom Christopher is now in heaven?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_sin#Roman_Catholicism
If you look at the three conditions that a sin must meet to be considered a mortal sin, I think there is a very high probability that writing a book titled God Is Not Great is a mortal sin. There are hundreds of things that Christopher did which very likely meet those conditions, and there is also a high probability that he has not repented about them before death.
According to Catholicism people do not get into heaven by living according to what they sincerely believe, and many, many, Catholic scholars would say that Christopher is bound for hell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_sin
1. Its subject must be a grave (or serious) matter.
2. It must be committed with full knowledge, both of the sin and of the gravity of the offense (no one is considered ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are inborn as part of human knowledge, but these principles can be misunderstood in a particular context).
3. It must be committed with deliberate and complete consent, enough for it to have been a personal decision to commit the sin.
The question is about point 2. While Hitchens knew that it would be morally unacceptable according to Catholic doctrine, he considered writing the book as the right thing to do according to his own moral standard, so he would not be doing something he considered as a gravely wrong thing to do. Similarly for other people who live according to what they sincerely believe: they are not committing actions with full knowledge that the actions are the wrong thing to do.
It does leave room for interpretation, and can be argued both ways, but I do not wish to be drawn further into a religious discussion.
It's much more complex than that as there is no single "Christian doctrine" (each christian sect has its own doctrine, including concepts of hell, and these doctrines evolve over time). Some christian sects promise hell to all non-convers (and sinners), while others consider only acts and make devotion irrelevant to entry in heavens.
I'm not going to make judgement calls on the hitch or these doctrines, but "Christian doctrine" being true absolutely does not translate into "Christopher is most certainly in hell". Let alone "the Christian heaven" existing (the "Christian" heaven being real) translates into this ("Christian heaven" could be true while everything else is false)
2) Raising a child doesn't give the child your experiences either. I have no memory of what my father experienced in his life based on him raising me. AFAIK it doesn't happen to other people either.