Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens died of hospital-acquired pneumonia on 15 December 2011 in the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, aged 62. In accordance with his wishes, his body was donated to medical research. "Mortality", a collection of seven of Hitchen's "Vanity Fair" essays about his illness, was published posthumously in September 2012.
New Atheism
After the death of Hitchens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (who attended the 2012 Global Atheist Convention, which Hitchens was scheduled to attend) was referred to as the "plus one horse-woman", since she was originally invited to the 2007 meeting of the "Horsemen" atheists but had to cancel at the last minute. Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, fleeing in 1992 to the Netherlands in order to escape an arranged marriage. She became involved in Dutch politics, rejected faith, and became vocal in opposing Islamic ideology, especially concerning women, as exemplified by her books "Infidel" and "The Caged Virgin". Hirsi Ali was later involved in the production of the film "Submission", for which her friend Theo Van Gogh was murdered with a death threat to Hirsi Ali pinned to his chest. This event resulted in Hirsi Ali's hiding and later immigration to the United States, where she now resides and remains a prolific critic of Islam. She regularly speaks out against the treatment of women in Islamic doctrine and society and is a proponent of free speech and the freedom to offend.Many contemporary atheists write from a scientific perspective. Unlike previous writers, many of whom thought that science was indifferent or even incapable of dealing with the "God" concept, Dawkins argues to the contrary, claiming the "God Hypothesis" is a valid scientific hypothesis, having effects in the physical universe, and like any other hypothesis can be tested and falsified. The late Victor Stenger proposed that the personal Abrahamic God is a scientific hypothesis that can be tested by standard methods of science. Both Dawkins and Stenger conclude that the hypothesis fails any such tests, and argue that naturalism is sufficient to explain everything we observe in the universe, from the most distant galaxies to the origin of life, the existence of different species, and the inner workings of the brain and consciousness. Nowhere, they argue, is it necessary to introduce God or the supernatural to understand reality. New Atheists reject Jesus' divinity.