There’s a brief note in Christopher Hitchens’ new book god is not Great in which he admits how absurdly easy it is to write a polemic such as this:
However, a moment in history has now arrived when even a pygmy such as myself can claim to know more — through no merit of his own — and to see that the final ripping of the whole disguise is overdue.
Hitchens is correct. None of his criticism is anything I haven’t heard before, and very little of it is information of which I was unaware. Hitchens brings a lot to the table though. He’s obviously much better informed on a range of history than I am. He references so many different historical occurrences that I marvel that he can hold that all in him. Truth be told though, I’m sure he makes use of a good research staff and some good computer technology to recall things. It’s a grand survey of anti-theistic arguments, rather than a complete study. It’s the first time I’ve seen in print an extension of the criticisms against monotheism extended toward a few eastern religions as well. He even throws in a veiled barb at Jainism.
The first few chapters are arguments showing how religion generally conflicts with science. He has a chapter on how religions, both in dogma and in hierarchy, subvert the health and well-being of people for their own ends. He has one on religion and cosmology. And he has one on religion and evolution. He devotes a chapter to each of the world’s major monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. His chapter on Islam is definitely nowhere near as powerful as his chapters of Judaism and Christianity, perhaps showing his relative lack of knowledge of the religion. Nevertheless, it’s still pretty damning.
He had two interesting chapters on the beginnings and endings of religions, of which I wish he had written more. The largest part of the chapter on the origins of religions covers the birth and rise of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, commonly known as the Mormons. While I was familiar with the basics of the Joseph Smith tale, particularly his tale of having the ability to translate some supposed golden plates which no one else ever got to see, I never knew some of the details. Such as how he set up a curtain and would read from behind the curtain to someone else transcribing he words, since he couldn’t write as well as he could read. In addition, I didn’t know that shortly before he started proclaiming his new gospel, he was convicted of defrauding people for organizing gold-digging expeditions. Hitchens also touches on the cargo cults of the South Pacific, of which he could have written more as well. This was interesting.
His chapter on the end of religions similarly ended too quickly. He uses as his sole example Sabbatai Sevi, a messianic Jew who attracted a large following but was detained by the Ottoman Turks. They gave him the choice of trial by ordeal (if you are favored by god, he will turn away the arrows
), death by impalement, or conversion to Islam. He chose conversion to Islam, and his followers dissipated. Hitchens doesn’t really cover much in how or why religions end. Just one example with no extrapolation or derivation of principles. Since there were a large number of religions that no longer exist, I would have thought that he could have covered this topic much better.
Another chapter in which Hitchens fell short was his chapter on whether or not religions help make people better. Unfortunately, he takes the wrong logical tack in this argument. He starts with the poorly behaving people and finds that many of them were religious. To answer the question though, he’d need to take a random
sample of people, both religious and non-religious, and show that people in similar situations do not behave better when they have religion. It’s like determining that truckers are more accident prone than non-truckers by looking for all the accident prone truckers and ignoring the ones with spotless driving records.
Despite my criticism though, I recommend the book. There’s a lot to chew on in the book, and even better there’s a lot of references to other things to go look up.
Author: Christopher Hitchens
Title: God is not great: how religion poisons everything
Imprint / publisher: Twelve / Hachette
Format: Hardcover
Publication date: May 2007
Length: 307 p. (includes index)
ISBN-10: 0-446-57980-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-446-57980-3
Subject: Religion — Controversial literature
LC classification: BL2775.3H58 2007
