I bought God is Not Great a couple of weeks ago unsure of whether or not I would enjoy it. Although I generally agree with what Hitchens had to say, I'm not always a fan of his style, so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the book. In particular, I liked how the book was divided into a series of short essays on different topics all pointing towards the central thesis that religion poisons everything.
I found it quite interesting that towards the beginning of the book Hitchens states that even if he had the power to do so he would not want to ban all religions from the world. All he wanted was to be left alone by religion, and for others to have the same right. A major problem with religion, according to him, is that it has an overwhelming desire to force its version of what is "right" on others and is not content to leave others to believe what they want. While this is certainly not true of all religions, it is for a vast number of them, especially those that enjoy power today (the Islamic governments in the Middle East, for instance, or the Evangelical churches in America).
One of my favourite essays in God is Not Great was on the relationship between religion and health, as I found that it made one of Hitchens' strongest points in favour of the idea that religion poisons everything. In it, he looks at a number of ways in which modern religions interfere with healthcare and thereby increase suffering. For one, he looks at the Catholic opposition to birth control as a contributing factor towards the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa, along with the opposition of some Muslim authorities to vaccines (such as the one for polio). He goes further by examining practices such as female genital mutilation and faith healing in lieu of actual medical care as religious practices that cause serious health problems for those unlucky enough to be victims of them. Finally, he points out that many of the things that modern religions take as sacred stories from their religions' history would, if they occurred today, be taken as signs of serious mental illness. I have heard that exact same statement from the other side of the argument decrying the state of modern society and bemoaning that if Jesus were to return today society would so cynical that it would not believe him but would have him committed as mentally ill. I tend to agree that if someone came around declaring themselves to be the son of god and encouraging people to abandon their families to wander with him they would be placed under psychiatric care, and rightly so.
Hitchens also responds to the argument that many religious people make that their religions should not be judged on the actions in their past. Firstly, if we are to believe that what is stated in the bible is the literal truth then absolutely god and those who follow the teachings of the bible should be judged on the past. Even if god existed, I do not think that I would willingly wish to obey someone who ordered on multiple occasions that all of the inhabitants of a city, regardless of age be put to death (or, for a bit of variation, that all the males and non-virgin women be put to death, with the virgin girls distributed amongst the slaughterers for their own entertainment). In addition, Hitchens points out that just because modern Christianity for the most part now tries to sell itself as a religion of personal salvation and relief, one should never forget how it acted when it actually held power (hint: it was a lot like how Islam acts when it is in power now).
A good portion of God is Not Great is dedicated to confronting the argument that atheists have done just as much harm in the last century as religious people, if not more. Interestingly, he does not make the same argument as Dawkins, which is that while much of the violence done by the religious is done in the name of religion and with religious justifications, very little violence by atheists is done on behalf of atheism; it is generally for reasons like greed or power. Instead, Hitchens makes two points. First, Hitler, who is often named as one of the major "atheist" killers of the twentieth century was not in fact atheist and he (along with most of his fascist colleagues) had quite a bit of religious support. Second, he points out that the two major atheist slaughterers of the last century (Stalin and Mao) weren't really interested in destroying religion, just in replacing it with new dogmas. They created their own religions centered on themselves via cults of personality which in many cases (and especially with Mao) still exist today and have been emulated in Cuba, North Korea, and elsewhere. Therefore what they were killing in the name of was not atheism, it was their own egos and personality cults.
Hitchens also briefly makes a number of very good points that I want to mention. First, he does a good job of examining a variety of Eastern traditions to show that contrary to much modern thought (as casually following various Hindu or Buddhist practices is increasingly trendy) they are not really much better morally or historically than Western religions. They too have histories of violence and oppression. Second, he also makes a good point about religious indoctrination as child abuse. Specifically, he states that by terrifying children with the idea of outlandish punishments (vivid descriptions of hell, for example, or the idea that a wide variety of natural impulses are in fact grievous sins) children suffer psychological harm that is not justifiable.
There was only one point in God is Not Great where I disagreed with Hitchens. In one section he discusses the case of Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army as well as a religious charity that worked with those who had been harmed by the LRA. Hitchens states that while a secular charity could do the same work as the religious charity and do it just as well, to do what Kony is doing requires faith. I do not really agree with this. I believe that it is more accurate to human nature to say that to do something as abhorrent as the actions of the LRA one needs a cause, but that cause does not necessarily have to be religious faith. It simply needs to be blind, unquestioning obedience to an authority figure.
I very much enjoyed God is Not Great. Hitchens lays out an excellent series of arguments and does a great job of proving his argument that religion poisons everything. I would highly recommend it.
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