God Is Not Great: Christopher Hitchens Paperback – 6 May 2021

I have read a great many of the current crop of atheist books, including The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and The End Of Faith/Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. I have enjoyed them all. But Hitchens does something extraordinary here. He is utterly fearless and expresses himself so eloquently that you cannot help but admire the conviction he holds, even if you do not agree with his every point. But it is not just his style that elevates this book above the ordinary polemic, it is also the obvious relish with which Hitchens uses his rather impressive intellect to shoot down the idea that religion is a benign or necessary force. He shows why he believes religion to be a product of our evolutionary childhood, why it should not be considered a source of morality and all the ways in which it has demonstrated (and is still demonstrating) its propensity for totalitarian malevolence. He is obviously a huge fan of the American Founding Fathers and the US Constitution which guarantees spearation of Church and State, a position that is slowly being eroded. He obviously feels strongly about this, which is to his credit and it is this passion which does distinguish him a little from the cool-headed scientist Dawkins and the psychologist Harris. He talks from the point of view of someone who has gathered ammunition his whole life and is now getting to fire his gun. He also has an interesting - some would say controversial - take on the problems in Iraq and the Middle East and supports the Iraq war. I find this argument interesting and persuasive and would like him to expand more. It may not be politically correct to say it but regardless of Western political/economic motives, he is someone who has actually BEEN to these places so I find it hard to argue with him that maybe we do have to use force and behave in ways we normally find abhorrent - if we want secular democracy to survive. Is Western liberalism and freedom of speech a principle worth dying - or killing - for? Islamists certainly think so.. Just ask Salman Rushdie.. This is a question that Hitchens is making me ask myself and it may be that sooner or later the world is going to have to make a stark choice if it is to survive - fence sitting will not be an option.

This book has received extravagant praise from many quarters and comment of the opposite kind from others. It stands to reason, I suppose, that a pugnacious atheistic tract will divide opinion in just such a way. What does not stand to reason is the veracity or probability of even the most revered scriptures, and that much seems to be true of all religions. One obvious instance springs to mind, the Agony in the Garden, as recounted in St Matthew. The first and most obvious absurdity is that the supposed witnesses to these events were all asleep. However there is more to it than that, and in his splendid The Evolution of the Gospel’ Enoch Powell (yes, that Enoch Powell) finds the whole tale to be ‘transparent fiction’ without even relying on that particular detail.Back to what stands to reason, then. What surely stands to reason is that religious faith does not take its stand on reason. Nor is that any matter of fine shades of interpretation. ‘Beliefs’ that men (and women) will kill or die for are self-commending. Indeed, so strong is their persuasive power in some quarters that they can be required as a matter of religious law. Hitchens’ text does not delve deeply into the question ‘What is this thing called faith anyhow?’ To me for one the truth seems to be that only our actions can be subject to someone’s commands, or even to our own decisions; and holding a belief is not an action, it is a state of affairs, like having a headache.Continuing our lesson in truisms, people who think thoughts like these had better be careful how, when, where and in whose presence they give expression to them. Hitchens presents this matter vividly, calling on such mighty figures as David Hume in his support. Hume ca’ed canny and did not provoke dangerous reactions. So why did he need to? What is it about religious doctrines that they exert such control? Ordinary reason subverts them, and I wonder what exercises there are in the application of thought via Housman-style textual criticism of the texts that underlie them. Not, I suppose, that such instances as the miracles that abound require any Housman to refute them. Any one of us can do that, provided we want to.One very deep and thoughtful book that may be found of help in this connection is one that I was surprised not to find cited by Hitchens. The book is In the Shadow of Mount Sinai, and it is by Peter Sloterdijk. As the title suggests, Sloterdijk restricts himself to the Abrahamic religions. So does Hitchens for the most part, although he determinedly expands into Asiatic religions for a shortish stretch of the book. What Sloterdijk studies is the need for authority, either personal leadership or abstract authority (often focused on some idol or other) that cultures and ‘nations’ experienced in their cultural development. Naturally this was no matter of the likes of Hume, Dawkins or any of those, it was a matter of an underlying need. I have no learning or expertise in such matters, but at a superficial ‘helicopter’ level this makes sense to me in attempting to account for the religious focus on the irrational and the power it exerts.So what does one suppose Hitchens is trying to achieve with this book? He is a brilliant journalist and a brilliant writer, and his book is a pleasure to read, at least when the reader is receptive to the author’s cast of mind and personal values. I had the impression that he saw himself as a soldier of rationality fighting the good fight for reason against what he perceives as superstition, indeed often as plain old nonsense. He recognises that the fight has been going on for a while, and he cites Lucretius in the first century BC. I had never before thought of Lucretius as witty, but our author here is no doubt more perceptive than I am. One phrase often used by Lucretius is ‘patrii sermonis egestas’ – ‘the poverty of my native language’ – to complain about how difficult the doctrines of Epicurus were to represent in Latin. For the student that usually flagged a warning that we were in for a hard bit too. More accessible, and closer to our own era, is Arthur C Clarke’s short but awesome novel Childhood’s End. In this mighty story one aspect of the Overlords’ utopia is that they gave humanity extensive glimpses of humanity’s own history that humanity’s own resources had denied them. And as this unfolded, Clarke remarks laconically that religions which had bolstered mankind for centuries now dissolved in the face of proper knowledge. Hitchens was no Karellen, but he makes a worthy and strenuous effort of his own to help us understand.

One day, when Hitchens was a young boy in boarding school, he listened attentively as his teacher spoke about a miracle, the healing of a blind man by Jesus. He then questioned his teacher why, if Jesus could heal one blind man, why not them all? The intelligent lad was invited to sit down and be quiet. After all, the class wasn't about learning. It was about indoctrination.Hitchens details four irreducible objections to religious faith:1. The misrepresentation of the origin of man and the cosmos.2. The control and enslavement of vulnerable people through false doctrine.3. Permission for dangerous habits and harmful practices.4. Religion is grounded and maintained in wishful thinking.A few of Hitchen's memorable comments (among hundreds) about atheists or secular humanists:1. Decent folk do not require priests, ministers, or hierarchy to police their morality.2. No spot on the earth is 'holier' than any other place.3. Extraordinary claims require respectful evidence.4. The study of literature, art and poetry is superior to the violence and racism in religious tomes.5. The natural world is 'wondrous' enough for anyone!Replete with 18 chapters of the predatory and fraudulent history of 'god-fearing' religions, I highly recommend this book to those unafraid of uncertainty.Eleanor Cowan, Author of A History of a Pedophile's Wife: Memoir of a Canadian Teacher and Writer

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If God is great, then why did he put hatred and misery among his people? why does he feel jealous if someone doesn't bow to him? truly even if god exists, he is not great at all !

Awesome

Not an easy read. Almost every chapter needs re reading to understand fully the depth of the authors knowledge and understanding of the subject. Loving every page, a truly amazing book.