God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything | Christopher Hitchens

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything | Christopher Hitchens | Marx was right...once. Religion is the opiate of the masses.

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God Is Not Great: ...

	God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything Christopher Hitchens Twelve Books, Hachette Book Group, 2007 - 307 pages average customer review:based on 795 reviews view larger image
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This is going on my top shelf...

I save my highest shelf for only my most favorite, treasured books. Hitchens' latest, _God Is Not Great_, is certainly one of these. Not only are his well-argued views fascinating to read, they are also a *pleasure* to read due to his gifted, fluid, attention-holding writing style.

My only criticism of the book would be that he does, occasionally, come off as arrogant and omniscient when it comes to speaking of those who are believers. Among my family and friends, I am virtually alone as a non-believer, and am sensitive to and respectful of their beliefs. I don't like to see those beliefs unnecessarily belittled, but perhaps I will change my mind as I age. All of that said, this one criticism isn't enough for me not to give his book five stars.

It is unfortunate that more people on the other side of the religion debate aren't actually reading this. Like other reviewers who loved this book, I strongly suspect that many of the people who vitriolically trash it probably haven't even read it and are just displaying an emotional reaction. Personally, I believe this is just a microcosm of what we see in Western society today, and perhaps the world over: It seems like more and more people are less willing to read about or listen to viewpoints that oppose their own. We all have a tendency toward this, of course. It takes effort and intellectual fortitude to fight this tendency and expose oneself to thoughts that don't echo our own. I say that from personal experience.

I hope Hitchens continues to write and expound upon all sorts of topics until he draws his last breath. What a beautiful mind.

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Marx was right...once. Religion is the opiate of the masses.

I am not a communist. I'm not a Marxist either. But he hit this one right & so did Christopher Hitchens, a Jew from his mother, a Protestant by his father & everything else by choice & now an atheist, he claims. The more I think about it, the more I realize that his tongue is firmly in his cheek. What he has done along the way is write a book. A very good book. It is humorous & brings out a lot of good ideas. Belief in God is foolish nonsense, (Wait for it, ahh, no lightening bolt) perpetrated by small literate groups of rich elite to control the starving, ignorant, illiterate masses throughout history. It's getting harder all the time with people learning how to read & all that information out there. But religion is still & always will be with us. There are no atheist. Admitted atheist that is. So nobody is spared in Mr. Hitchens book. Everybody famous or infamous had a religion. Hitler was a Catholic. Stalin was a monk for chrissakes before he went into politics. I can't think of many admitted atheist. Thomas Jefferson, maybe. Only he never really said so either. He just never practiced a faith. That there is no God has never stopped people from creating one. In fact, God has been created so many times you'd think we could have got it right by now. Nope. Therein you have the best argument for religion. Population control. More people have died in the name of their god than anything this side of the great plagues of Europe. Heaven? Hell? We create those here on earth. Why do some religions promise carnal pleasures forbidden on earth when believers die? Everlasting life does exist in the minds of those who loved, hated or knew us in life & pass on that knowledge to generatioins we will never know. They may know us. We should live "good" lives whatever that means because we are civilized people & right & wrong still do exist. I can't belive we behave only because we fear eternal damnation if we don't. As a born-again Christain who backslid all the way past the starting point 30 years ago, it is important to note Mr. Hitchen's most important point. Religion offers great comfort, however false, to billions. It is better than no comfort at all.

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God is not just "not great", he is dangerous

Christopher Hitchens is a passionate, and slightly provocative, non-believer and the title (and subtitle) makes it abundantly clear what he thinks of all forms of religions.

Hitchens's brusque and unrelenting tone throughout the book could no doubt disturb a lot of religious people. And if that is the case, they fall perfectly into the script he (and various other writers) has written for them. Even the mildest form of attack on or questioning of religions solicit a disproportionately large amount of offense-taking from believers. However, to quote Daniel Dennett: "There is no polite way of telling people they're wrong." Since the charge of being "offensive" and "insensitive" was coming anyway, I doubt it'd have made much difference had the tone been milder.

If I had to choose one thing I most enjoyed, it is the various historical accounts recounted to support the argument that religions are man-made. It is very much like a glossary of historical events about which I will have to do further research. It goes without saying that such events were chosen selectively to prove his point, but then again you cannot expect to read one book and form a definite opinion on a subject as important as this. Personally, I thought Richard Dawkins's "The God Delusion" provides a better philosophical perspective of the topic. And for unbiased research, you may want to read some of the many faith books out there. One reminder, though: Try not to suspend your rational faculty while reading these.

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Good but not great.

While Hitchens' book is entertaining I recommend that anyone looking for a serious and intellectually solid discussion of atheism read David Eller's Natural Atheism and his follow-up book Atheism Advanced. Mr. Eller gets down to the real philosophical concepts behind religion and makes you proud to be a free-thinker instead of a moron. Pseudo-philosophy only goes so far in advancing understanding and while useful, is far from complete. If there's a better dissection of the morass called religion out there somewhere than Mr. Elder's books then please clue me in because I haven't seen it yet.

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Poor God, Hitchens's put you in the closet and I'm feeling so sad

This is the fifth of the recently published books that critically examine religion, faith, and/or God that I have read during the last year or so. The others are:

Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion (2006)
Dennett, Daniel C. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006)
Harris, Sam. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason (2004, 2005)
Stenger, Victor J. God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist (2007)

I would rate "God Is Not Great" as last on the list and the others in this order: Stenger, Dawkins, Harris, Dennett. See my reviews at Amazon for my reasons.

Hitchens's book is the most literary and the least rigorous. Christopher Hitchens is widely read in literature, so that is not surprising. What is surprising is his relative ignorance about Eastern religions. He does a great job of dissecting and actually chopping up and throwing into the grinder the so-called monotheistic religions of the Middle East; but when he attempts the same with Hinduism and Buddhism he doesn't fare as well. (He has little to say about Jainism, Taoism, or Vedanta.) He attacks Gandhi with vigor and makes some mention of some Buddhist leaders accommodating Imperial Japan, but doesn't address the ideas or the literature of Buddhism. This is a failing since Buddhism differs markedly from the religions of Abraham. Hitchens in his eagerness to denounce all religion seems blissfully unaware of this fact. While it is true that Hinduism has committed some of the same horrific crimes against humanity that the Middle Eastern religions have, and has some similar stupidities in some of its literature, Hinduism is so varied in its beliefs and practices to defy Hitchens's cookie-cutter approach. His main example from Hinduism comes from his knowledge about the Hindu con-artist Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh with his fleet of Rolls-Royces and his mindless followers. Rajneesh has been discredited many times over

To be candid, Hitchens doesn't really understand religion. He is right of course in his observations of the atrocities committed in God's name and under the influence of a myriad of imams, priests, gurus and such down through the ages. But there is a spiritual side to religion that Hitchens does not address except in passing. Again it is true that one of the last places you'd want to look for spirituality is in a church or an ashram or a mosque. And it is also true that the value of spirituality is personal and therefore mostly invisible to people like Christopher Hitchens.

Some points and counterpoints:

"How much vanity must be concealed--not too effectively at that--in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan?...How many needless assumptions must be made, and how much contortion is required, to receive every new insight of science and manipulate it so as to `fit' with the revealed words of ancient man-made deities?" (p. 7)

Here Hitchens hits the nail on the head and drives it home. The "contortions" are required however only if the believer believes in the literal message of his or her religion.

Religion "must seek to interfere with the lives of nonbelievers, or heretics, or adherents of other faiths. It may speak about the bliss of the next world, but it wants power in this one." (p. 17)

This is true and nontrivial. Acquiring and exercising power is what organized religion is primarily about, which is why it is always fighting against science. It is envious of science's power and wants it for its own.

On "miracles" and "signs" such as statues of virgins or saints weeping or bleeding, Hitchens makes this salient observation: "I would...ask...why a deity should be content to produce such a paltry effect." (p. 144) He adds: "And remember, miracles are supposed to occur at the behest of a being who is omnipotent as well as omniscient and omnipresent. One might hope for more magnificent performances than ever seem to occur." (p. 150)

One of the problems with the deities of popular religion is their amazing ineptness and the pitiful quality of not only their miracles, but their inability to communicate in any direct way. It seems that these anthropomorphic gods are only playing games with humans, testing our faith, but to what end? After all, an all-knowing God who created us would know exactly how we will react in every situation. And to say God gave us free will just to test us as a means of determining whether we belong in heaven or hell extends the childishness morbidly.

"Nothing proves the man-made character of religion as obviously as the sick mind that designed hell, unless it is the sorely limited mind that has failed to describe heaven--except as a place of either worldly comfort, eternal tedium, or...continual relish in the torture of others." (p. 219)

Although most of Hitchens's bile is directed at Christianity, he does make some nice points about the shortcomings and stupidities of Islam. Here is an observation on the education that young people typically get in Arab Islam lands: The "problem is not so much that they desire virgins as that they ARE virgins: their emotional and psychic growth irremediably stunted in the name of god..." (p. 227)

This allusion to the 9/11 murderers is apt. The repression of sexuality by religion is in fact one of Hitchens's main themes. He believes that circumcision is an effort to reduce sexual pleasure and calls it "child abuse," and he is not just talking about the barbaric practice of female circumcision! He believes that clipping the foreskin of males makes them less able to feel pleasure. (See pages 223-226.)

Hitchens writes vividly and makes a clear case against the God of Abraham and the Abrahamic religions, but is less convincing outside of that sphere. As I wrote above, the other four books that argue that religion is not healthy for humans are better.

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