This week’s Newsweek [1] reports on the latest book by Christopher Hitchens: God Is Not Great.
“Religion poisons everything,” [Christopher Hitchens] expostulates—from such minor pleasures as a slice of ham (Hitchens’s mother and wife were born Jewish), up through sex, and on to the future of life on Earth, whose end is both predicted and welcomed by fundamentalists of all stripes. “Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.”
These arguments are familiar from two recent best sellers, “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins’s “The God Delusion.” Compared with these, “God Is Not Great” is both more political and more personal in its attacks on believers. Politically, Hitchens has a keen eye for the ways in which the godly ease the paths of the powerful, or even just celebrities: how Mother Teresa campaigned to defeat a law to allow divorce for the ordinary citizens of Ireland but approved it for her friend Princess Diana.
“God Is Not Great” leaves no major religious figure of the last hundred years unscathed. . . .[He] considers heaven a ridiculous and potentially dangerous fantasy in any case.
This article about Hitchens is yet another recognition that the mainstream media is “getting it,” that many people out there don’t run their lives on the basis of supernatural thinking.
I haven’t read Hitchens’ book. I might someday. I do think that anything that puts the spotlight on any aspect of our society held sacrosanct is good. I believe that most of the things that are characterized as a “religious beliefs” can’t stand the light of day. Nonetheless, I would temper that thought with this one: Religion is mainly a means of organizing people. Good people use religion to accomplish extraordinarily good things. Hostile people (even hostile people who smile a lot) use religion to do extraordinarily hostile things.
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