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God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens
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From Publishers Weekly
Hitchens, one of our great political pugilists, delivers the best of the recent rash of atheist manifestos. The same contrarian spirit that makes him delightful reading as a political commentator, even (or especially) when he's completely wrong, makes him an entertaining huckster prosecutor once he has God placed in the dock. And can he turn a phrase!: "monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents." Hitchens's one-liners bear the marks of considerable sparring practice with believers. Yet few believers will recognize themselves as Hitchens associates all of them for all time with the worst of history's theocratic and inquisitional moments. All the same, this is salutary reading as a means of culling believers' weaker arguments: that faith offers comfort (false comfort is none at all), or has provided a historical hedge against fascism (it mostly hasn't), or that "Eastern" religions are better (nope). The book's real strength is Hitchens's on-the-ground glimpses of religion's worst face in various war zones and isolated despotic regimes. But its weakness is its almost fanatical insistence that religion poisons "everything," which tips over into barely disguised misanthropy. (May 30) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* God is getting bad press lately. Sam Harris' The End of Faith(2005) and Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (2006) have questioned the existence of any spiritual being and met with enormous success. Now, noted, often acerbic journalist Hitchens enters the fray. As his subtitle indicates, his premise is simple. Not only does religion poison everything, which he argues by explaining several ways in which religion is immoral, but the world would be better off without religion. Replace religious faith with inquiry, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas, he exhorts. Closely reading major religious texts, Hitchens points to numerous examples of atrocities and mayhem in them. Religious faith, he asserts, is both result and cause of dangerous sexual repression. What's more, it is grounded in nothing more than wish fulfillment. Hence, he believes that religion is man-made, and an ethical life can be lived without its stamp of approval. With such chapter titles as "Religion Kills" and "Is Religion Child Abuse?" Hitchens intends to provoke, but he is not mean-spirited and humorless. Indeed, he is effortlessly witty and entertaining as well as utterly rational. Believers will be disturbed and may even charge him with blasphemy (he questions not only the virgin birth but the very existence of Jesus), and he may not change many minds, but he offers the open-minded plenty to think about. June SawyersCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Product details
Hardcover: 307 pages
Publisher: Twelve Books; 1st edition (May 1, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0446579807
ISBN-13: 978-0446579803
Product Dimensions:
6.2 x 1.2 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
Average Customer Review:
4.6 out of 5 stars
2,291 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#45,757 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
I stole the title of my review from chapter 16 of Hitchens' book. In that chapter, he argues that: (1) priests' words are designed to frighten children; (2) the man-made vision of hell is also meant to scare and command obedience; (3) religious instruction begins at a young age so children can not apply adult reason to what is put before them; (4) religious circumcision's (for both male and female) primary purpose is to take as much pleasure as possible out of sexual intercourse; (5) children have been abused by the clergy in a variety of religions, and those religions have historically sided with the clergy.Hitchens wrote a book about the importance of George Orwell; it is obvious that he abides by his instructions for writing as well. His book is an easy read; it is both scholarly and articulate. He's done a great deal of research, and he is skilled in the art of debate.In one part of the book, he explains how the myriad religions of the world have not been able to stand up to the evidence from three things: (1) the telescope; (2) the microscope; and (3) textual-based literary criticism.I imagine most people will come to this book with their mind already made up -- those that are religious and believe in God will most likely disagree with Hitchens' assertions and vilify him, while those that do not like religion and are atheists will almost certainly like it. Hopefully, there are some people who can come to this book with an open mind and let it add to their inner debate.
In “God is not Great†Christopher Hitchens undertook an unrelenting attack on religion. From the opening page he showed his approach with the example of the otherwise apparently admirable Christian lady Mrs Jean Watts, who played a pleasant part in Hitchens childhood until she over-stepped the mark and suggested that God made vegetation green so it would be easier on the human eye.What is remarkable about this example is that it tells us more about Hitchens than Watts. She is abusively labelled an “old trout†out of nowhere, simply because of one relatively innocuous statement probably made quite lightly, yet treated as if it was a full papal edict and myopically scrutinized minutely.Suddenly all the admirable qualities of this lady are forgotten and she is defined purely on one comment that is interpreted by Hitchens as he wishes in order to justify his categorization of her. This sets the pattern for the rest of the book, with the notable exception that while Jean Watts at least gets an initial word or two in her favour, that veneer of balance and fairness is dropped and seldom if ever resurfaces in the entire book.His predictable treatment of the “blood and gore soaked†bible is another example of this biased approach. Regardless of what you think of the bible, there is a huge amount of good in it, including the call to forgive your enemies, love your neighbour, judge not others but look to your own faults first, all things are lawful, and hardships in life should be viewed as an opportunity for growth and learning. It takes a special kind of blinkered approach to see nothing but the bad stuff, but that’s an approach Hitchens had perfected.Hitchens seemed to be a man possessed with a need to create an enemy (in this case all religious people), label them as the source of all evil, and then cite selective cases in isolation while ignoring any evidence that contradicted the picture he wished to paint. ("Religion poisons EVERYTHING")Words like negative, sarcastic, self-righteous, deliberately dishonest, asinine, and bigoted spring to mind to describe his approach. He is like a school yard bully viciously inciting a mob to surround a child with a religious background and accuse them of everything from rape, slavery, sexual repression, misogyny, human sacrifice, and of course genocide. Hitchens himself says that if he was accused of such things, even if he knew he wasn’t guilty of them, he would be tempted to commit suicide, yet his entire approach encouraged people to apply such prejudiced accusations to others equally as innocent, which is appallingly hypocritical.The problem for Hitchens was of course that no church and virtually no religious person in any democratic Western county today fitted his picture, so he constantly dredged up ancient history and times when religion and government were one in order to justify his lurid fantasies.While he claims religion appeals to the darkest and most primal side of humanity, he himself wrote like a tribal elder telling scary stories around a camp fire to wide eyed children of religious monsters waiting in the darkness to consume them. None of his caricatures fit the many religious people I’ve met, indeed Hitchens himself lets the cat out of the bag by admitting that he has religious friends who he wishes would “just leave me aloneâ€.If "religion poisons everything" as he claims continuously, then why have religious friends at all? Is it because they were in reality decent people who didn’t fit the picture he tried to paint? And if he wished they would leave him alone, why didn’t he just tell them? Was he suffering the cognitive dissonance of realizing they made it difficult for him to maintain his hateful public image in the reality of his private life?I welcome specific criticism of religion where it is targeted at the people and organizations responsible. I reject the approach of generalized stereotypes, prejudice and bigotry against any group of people including the religious. This book is little more than a modern atheist version of “Mein Kampf†that encourages people to stop treating other human beings as they find them, and instead to relate to them according to a label, in this case “religiousâ€.You’d think in this day and age we’d have gotten past this kind of propaganda, but sadly it appears bigotry never dies, it just changes sides. Hitchens was certainly a great writer, and if you’re not careful you’ll fall under the spell he weaves. But ask yourself these questions; are his statements backed up by any metrics at all (rather than isolated examples) that support his generalized conclusions? And do the religious people you know act in accordance with the caricatures Hitchens paints?I’m not questioning that there is some truth in much of what Hitchens wrote. What I am questioning is that it automatically applies to the majority of religious people today, and that it’s ever right to apply generalized stereotypes universally, the very definition of prejudice.I also wonder whether in being so abrasive, sarcastic and abusive Hitchens projected an attitude that produced a negative reaction towards him from religious people that confirmed in his own mind the truth of his assertions. As a wise man once said; what you reap you will also sow.Hitchens seemed to match the worst in religion; judgment of others, self-righteousness, and a blinkered narrow approach, while failing to match the best of religion; empathy, compassion, understanding, forgiveness. It’s a shame that an otherwise intelligent man should leave as one of his main legacies a book containing so much gratuitously hateful and childish sarcasm against his fellow human beings. We can only hope it’s not an approach widely adopted by fair minded people on both sides of the philosophical divide, however human nature being what it is, don't hold your breath.
This book provides excellent insight into the fallacies upon which religions, primarily those monotheistic Abrahamic ones although others are covered as well. I knocked off a star, not for the content and quality of logical reasoning, but for the convoluted writing style that frequently caused me to have to read a complex paragraph to correctly parse the intent.The primary gist of the book is that people are indoctrinated from birth into belief systems before they are capable of reasoning for themselves and taught that they must be faithful to whatever the belief system is and reject anything seen or heard that contradicts their belief (or dogma) - to do otherwise is to admit that their belief is wrong and or unfounded.
A concise argument from a wonderful writer. imo religion is the most horrific idea ever foisted upon humanity - a real and dangerous horror show. Nothing really new in this book, nothing that hasn’t been discussed before, but the presentation and arguments are well worth a read. All good.
Wonderful perspective. So many arguments that I have explored over many years and yet was afraid to state. Christopher's perspective comes as a great relief that my own thinking is not unreasonable. The discussion is not so much about 'gods' but rather about 'religions' or 'churches' - and how through crass stupidity and self interest, they are destructively hypocritical - and get away with it. As Bill Burr suggested, one brushes off paedophilia like it was as unimportant as dandruff on shoulders. Yes, the enlightenment was the turning point, and humanitarianism is all we need for good behaviour.
Great subject and full of brilliant observations. I would have given the book five stars, but many of the sentences were just way too long. At the end, I would have to go back to the beginning to remind myself of what the sentence was about, and I am used to (and enjoy) dense writing. The author was a great thinker and probably a great presenter in person; but he was not necessarily a great writer. Don't get me wrong. The book contained many breathtaking, jaw dropping insights. There just came every other page, with a lot of unnecessary sarcasm and snobbery in between. I wish I had had the opportunity to meet the man. He had great courage and an amazingly insightful mind. He needed a better, braver editor. But then again, I doubt many would haver had the courage to stand up to his.
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