I just finished listening to the audiobook version of God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. While the subject material is quite controversial, Hitchens’ approach is not. He focuses much less on vague concepts like faith and belief, and much more on the real-world concerns surrounding religion. Hitchens concedes that he pays respect to all customs and religions, and has entered many churches, synagogues, and temples without reservation. However, he is very clear about his stance on religion. He calls it a “babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge, as well as for comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs.” He starts off with three main points:
- Religion and churches are all man-made entities
- Ethics and morals are independent from faith and cannot arise from it
- Religion is both amoral and immoral
Hitchens then runs through many true examples of the pitfalls of religion before branching into discussions of metaphysics and philosophy. I’ll share with you some of my favorite sections. Hitchens tears the Mormon religion limb from limb, asserting that 25,000 (twenty-five thousand) words in the Book of Mormon were copied directly from the Old Testament of the Holy Bible. An additional 2,000 words were taken from the New Testament. And yet Joseph Smith supposedly transcribed the text from golden plates delivered from God by an angel. Given that Mormonism is one of the largest religions to be created in America, it’s a shame that Hitchens doesn’t discuss the joke that is Scientology (I think I’ll save my own comments on that subject for another blog post).
My other favorite section explains the Catholic Church’s friendly treatment of Hitler’s Nazi regime. At one time, the Papacy even celebrated Hitler’s birthday. Then after WWII, the Vatican used its power to provide passports and funding for Nazi leaders to flee to South America. But these two examples are merely the most humorous, and not nearly representative of all the evil that religion has caused on earth.
Naturally, a book like this would be lacking without any mention of psychology and literature. Hitchens does reference Freud on a few occasions. Freud said that religion cannot free human beings of their fear of death. Likewise, Freud apparently said that religion is inevitable until mankind stops fearing death and breaks its tendency for wishful thinking, neither of which is extremely probable. Hitchens claims that “philosophy steps in where religion fails, just as science and medicine for alchemy, and astronomy for astrology.” But his main suggestion for deriving moral behavior without religion is essentially to obey karma. Hitchens suggests that the saying “treat others as you would wish to be treated” can be taught to children and requires no violence, massacres, or sadistic behavior.
Hitchens is one of the most knowledgeable people I’ve ever come across. The extent of his intellect makes itself clear throughout the book. The book succeeds most at explaining all the disgusting behavior that religion has promoted and allowed. But obviously any one book isn’t going to convince the world that all current religions are outdated and irrelevant (as Bill Hicks would often say). Still, Hitchens says that a new enlightenment is necessary. He condones “the study of literature and poetry for its own sake and for the greater good of mankind.” He also commends the unrestricted pursuit of scientific discovery and the utilization of widespread information on the Internet.
And that, of course, is why I write on this blog.
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