A Review in Progress-"God is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchens

The following is a review of the Christopher Hitchens book “God is not Great.” The setting for the writing of the review is beautiful Door County. The weather turned out to be in the 70’s and 80’s all week. Each morning I would rise and write a little bit while listening to my Mp3 player and drinking caramel flavored coffee. The first morning I rose at about 7am, stepped out onto the porch and spotted a doe. She was feeding on a plant near the path at the foot of the large deck. A pristine morning was made better by glancing at this miracle of nature and symbol of peace. I stared at her and she at me for at least three or four minutes. After a while she capriciously sauntered on into the woods. I felt that the deer was a symbol for my careful but natural movement through life, being cautious not to hurt any living thing. As I write this review, I hope I am going to be as careful and sensitive as possible to different points of view. As my sister said at age 6, "Everybody is different. I know it and you should know it too." Well said Sarah. I will never forget your pearls of wisdom. :)

Well, on to the subject at hand. The book I have chosen to read while on vacation at Door County is “God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.” Author Christopher Hitchens seems to revel on controversy and argument. Like a good lawyer he is constantly he is building a better argument for his case.
At the book’s beginning, he talks about a teacher he had when he was nine years old who made a poignant impression on him. At that impressionable age, he was imbued with a sense of the sacredness of nature thanks to someone named Mrs. Jean Watts. Hitchens eloquently talks about his disturbing “ah-hah” experience when he realizes Mrs. Watts is teaching about the details of nature but is simultaneously delivering a message of magical thinking---that God created the mountains, the streams the lakes and all of the wonderful creatures. She asks Hitchens about such things as the infinite color variation of the wild flowers and asks how there could not be a God making all of this just for us. Hitchens says he was tempted by ignorance and didn’t take the bait. “If Satan chose her to tempt me into error he was much more inventive than the subtle serpent in the Garden of Eden. She never raised her voice or offered violence---which couldn’t be said for all of my teachers. “ Wow.

In somewhat a related fashion, Hitchens takes some pride in unveiling the late Mother Theresa’s humanness. He has written a book about Theresa, who had a private side that was much more flawed and less confident than her public persona. As he saw this poignant cognitive dissonance in his earlier teacher he noticed imperfections after studying the late religious figure. He exposes how Mother Theresa struggled with her faith until her last days. Hitchens with his rapid-fire, William F. Buckley type intellectualism is able to put things in perspective, accepting the vast imperfections even of one who is thought to be God like by some many millions of followers worldwide. This experience of psychologically ingesting Mrs. Watts’ ideas on faith led to an epiphany of sorts---confirming to his young strong intellect that he would see many more apparent contradictions that he (and only he) would be able to sort out. Having a strong intellect also carries with it the strong responsibility. With his great propensity towards and aptitude towards logic and learning I believe he knew had the power to sway opinion at an early age.
At this tender age of nine he would continue to critique the Bible. “Why did I have to continue to say in public that I was a miserable sinner?” At 13, he would read Sigmund Freud’s “Future of an Illusion,” which would give him another totally new intellectual paradigm for assimilating postulates of human good and evil. The Id made more logical sense than some outdated black magic being imposed by non-logical thinkers.

Here are Hitchens’ objections to faith in a nutshell:

1. It wholly misrepresents the origins of man and of the cosmos.
2. It combines the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism.
3. It is the result and cause of dangerous sexual repression.
4. It is grounded on wish-thinking.

These are hard to argue with.


Hitchens says atheism is less a doctrine and more of a distrust of anything that contradicts science or enrages reason. Wow. The atheist intellectual continues with his insights:

“We are not immune to the love of wonder and mystery and awe; we have music and art and literature, and find serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and Elliot than in mythical morality tales of the holy books.”

As I was reading the book I started thinking about Carl Rogers’ term called congruence. It seems to me that the religious crowd may have more problems overcoming contradictions in expression and being honest and direct. Inherent in the scientific method(as Sam Harris aptly puts it) is honest reflection of hypotheses and must have the ability to humbly admit right and wrong. Such humility is scarcely seen in religious circles where minds are already made up. All the answers are known. I saw some of this in Promisekeepers and it made me feel uncomfortable. There is a certain non-intellectual drama inherent in religious ritual it seems that is empty of any objectively meaningful content.

Mighty religious scholars like Aquinas and Augustine "may have written about many evil things and many foolish things, and may have been laughably ignorant of the germ theory of disease or the place of the globe in the solar system, let alone the universe."

So what Hitchens seems to be saying(in his William F. Buckley manner) is that we have been fast asleep like a little children at Christmastime, imbued with magical thinking. As Daniel Dennett aptly puts it, we must courageously break the spell.(Have you seen Dennett's brilliant interview with Bill Moyers. Please google it on Youtube!)

Mr. Hitchens says that people who proclaim answers from belief and tradition alone and not on reason and personal experience should not have the audacity to pretend to know all, arrogantly standing over all non-believers. He says I quote, "Such stupidity, combined with such pride, should be enough on its own to exclude belief from the debate. The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species. (As Daniel Dennett says, "Playing the faith card is a disqualifying move.")

Hitchens adds that such a farwell should not be protracted. Let's say our goodbyes with a courteous smile and get on with more interesting people. Life is too short to debate with unreasoning individuals.

I cannot help but to think that I may be misrepresenting myself as a "seeker" to my Christian friends, (who by the way are patient with my apparent potential for growth as they see it.)

When Christopher's father died, he read perhaps the most awe inspiring passage from the Bible at this funeral:

"Finally brethen, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things."

Richard Dawkins has proclaimed that religion holds many things we hold near and dear hostage. By this he means it's all knowing presence at weddings, funerals, baptisms, Easter, Christmas, etc. Religion is infused with all of these events with a pious intensity, like they own them and the human feelings and compassion that go with those happenings. The events have a religious context and no other, which leads to a sort of cognitive narrowing. It is simply the one-dimensional paradigm that we are all the most familiar with. To abandon religious tyranny of this kind too quickly, I fear, would be too traumatic of a change on people who are firmly rooted in tradition. How about a marriage without God in it? How about instead of "Amazing Grace" we sing "Amazing Energy of a Higher Power That Has Yet to be Scientifically Proven?" It wouldn't fly. We cling to tradition like a security blanket like to Mommy and Daddy when we were four years of age.

Perhaps my greatest fear is that even though Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Dennett are well meaning and make very convincing points, their paradigms require a deep intellectual committment not just taking in information on faith.

My Christian friend Craig seems says he is afraid of the bottom dropping out if we learned that God isn't real. It could be mass kaos in the streets. The foundation would drop out and there would be no reason to be good. This life would be a meaningless contest devoid of any reason to do good---hence the only answer is to follow as many selfish desires as is possible during our finitely but sometimes infinitely troubled lives. Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer believed the same after he converted to Christianity. (I'm in no way comparing my friend Craig with Dahmer, but trying to point out a faulty piece of thinking.) In an interview with Stone Phillips, he said that evil would flourish without this structure and goodness provided by Jesus Christ, the savior of mankind.

This may be most subtly evil idea in the world, that people would be incapable of morality if the paradigm shifts(or as Daniel Dennett calls it 'the Cosmic Shift') The reality is that we live in a world which is changing quickly and if we fail to adapt---we will not survive. This is perhaps Sam Harris's greatest trepidation as well, that he has professed on many occasions. What responsiblity do athiests have once they reasoned believers half way out so they cannot find themselves back in? They are left in the void to search for a messiah they will never be able to reach??



As I read on, I noticing a confrontational mode that Hitchen's ego seems to thrive on---a politically confident tone that could border on unnecessary arrogance. My brother Will saw CH speak in Madison and said he lost respect for him when he got entangled in an argument with anti-war protesters. Will said he felt sorry for the audience because they got shortchanged out of what they came to see, a debate on religion. One of my reasons for reading the book is the investigate this apparent arrogance and to see how it may get in the way of the truth Hitchens wants us to know. How much of his ego is just plain getting in the way??

Hitchens is empathetic to author Salmon Rushdie when he asks why such a "lonely and peaceful individual" would be hunted down by extremist groups. He blames the fanatical mindset for this. True genius is attacked by those who do not understand. That is too bad. There is a quote by Martin Sheen that my mother loved and I believe applies directly to me an my life and Rushie's life,


I do it because I can't seem to live with myself if I do not. I don't know any other way to be. It isn't something you can explain; it is just something that you do; it is something that you are.



I believe that we need to gain the courage to live our own lives as bravely as possible, not afraid of giving our true loving selves to others.

It is up to those with free thinking propensities to shed light on black and white thinking, for example the different between the all or nothing mindsets of pro lifers versus the pro choice thinkers who are able to see the subtle grays. BIG DIFFERENCE!! The black and white thinking of religion says "You believe or else you will experience hell fires for eternity." That is a fairly arrogant claim, don't you think??

Hitchens also offers his thoughts on 9-11. He talks about the rediculous claims of Robertson and Falwell that infer that the terrorist attacks were the result of our moral weaknesses of permitting too much homosexuality and abortion---ant that as then AG John Ashcroft said that America had "no king but Jesus." That is scary. George Bush consults religious leaders before making decisions that could alter the future of the free world. Faith thinking is not the same as thinking based on reason.

CH's book is full of shocking facts about how supposedly learned men are still hanging on to superstition because it gives them more spiritual comfort than science. Timothy Dwight president of Yale University(one of the most respected adults in the country) was opposed forto the smallpox vaccination because he regarded it as an interference with God's design. What about a former first lady who believes in astrology??

Hitchens hits hard again....

"In the city of Jerusalem, there is a special word in the mental hospital for those who represent a special danger to themselves and others. These deluded patients are often sufferers from the "Jerusalem Syndrome." Police and security officers are trained to recognize them through their mania. Their mania is sometimes concealed behind a mask of deceptively beautific calm. They have came to the holy city in order to convince themselves as Messiah and to proclaim the end of days."

Religion is not rational.

"The holy book is the largest continuous use, the Talmud, commands the observant one to thank his maker every day that he is not woman." Hitchens goes on to say, "Throughout all religious texts there is a primitive fear that half the human race is simultaneously defiled and unclean, and yet is a a temptation to sin that is impossible to resist."

Why does religion carry with it the fatalistic belief in armagedeon? In this age of nuclear weapons why resign oneself to destruction just because the Bible says it's so? There will fire on the planet, then Jesus will come? Don't bet on it. I think we are responsible for our own survival. Hitchens talks about the death wish which "may be secretly present in all of us." He continues...."When the earthquake hits, or the tsunami inundates or the twin towers ignite, you can see and hear the secret satisfaction of the faithful. Gleefully they strike up, " You see---this is what happens when you don't listen to us. With an unctious smile they offer redemption that is not theirs to bestow and when questioned, put on the menacing scowl that says, 'Oh, so you reject our offer of paradise? Well, in that case, we have quite another fate in store for you.' Such love, such care."