July 10, 2007
BOOK REVIEW: ‘God is Not Great’ by Christopher Hitchens Ranks High on NY Times Bestseller List; Book Will Reinforce Views of Atheists, Agnostics, Unlikely to Change True Believers
By David M. Kinchen
Huntington News Network Book Critic
Borrowing a title from a 1976 Broadway musical based on the New Testament Book of Matthew – “Your Arms Too Short to Box with God” – a reviewer of “God is Not Great” by Christopher Hitchens (Twelve Books, 307 pages, $24.99) – this reviewer, to be specific – can confidently state that Hitch feels both his arms are long enough to engage in fisticuffs with the Almighty.
For the prolific English-born intellectual, foreign correspondent, columnist and author, it amounts to shadow-boxing anyway, since he’s convinced that: “Yet again it is demonstrated that monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents.” (Page 280). Nobody is better at turning a phrase than Hitchens and the book is full of similar constructs.
He’ll even use his feet like an Asian kickboxer to take on the religions of the East – Buddhism, for instance – for those who find solace in the “wisdom of the East” as opposed to the three monotheistic religions referenced in the above quotation: Judaism, Christianity, Islam.
He cites Sri Lanka, the “lovely” former island nation of Ceylon as an example – one of many where religious strife has destroyed a nation. He writes (Page 199) : “…Sri Lanka is a country now almost utterly ruined and disfigured by violence and repression and the contending forces are mainly Buddhist and Hindu.”
This linking of religious belief and ethnic violence, even ethnic cleansing as in the case of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, to name just two examples discussed by Hitchens, is part and parcel of religious belief, he implies. He quotes painter Francisco Goya’s famous saying: “The sleep of reason brings forth monsters” (Page 198). By neglecting the “the mind and the reasoning faculty—the only thing that divides us from our animal relatives” believers in effect fall asleep intellectually and create religions that produce deadly divisions in a world that already has too many.
Rwanda in the early 1990s, Hitchens writes (Page 190) , was the most Christian nation in Africa. It was predominantly Roman Catholic and Hitchens says many priests took part or aided in the genocide that resulted in at least 1 million people being slaughtered. He notes that, while the late Pope John Paul II apologized for Catholic crimes against the Jews, for the Crusades and for persecution of Eastern Orthodox believers, he never apologized for the role Roman Catholics played in the Rwanda genocide.
Hitchens argues (Page 192) -- in the context of the Rwanda genocide, but applicable to many other situations -- that “The worse the offender, the more devout he turns out to be. It can be added that some of the most dedicated relief workers are also believers (though as it happens the best ones I have met are secularists who were not trying to proselytize for any faith). But the chance that a person committing the crimes was ‘faith-based’ was almost 100 percent, while the chances that a person of faith was on the side of humanity and decency were about as good as the odds of a coin flip.”
Hitchens scorns all religions, but he reserves special vitriol for Mormonism and Islam – although he’s thoroughly disgusted with Catholic priests guilty of sexual abuse of young children, mostly boys, and the religious aspects of circumcision by Jews—for boys – and girls by Muslims. When it comes to religions, Hitchens plays no favorites: He hates them all.
He devotes considerable space to the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – Mormons – Joseph Smith. Hitchens writes that the 21-year-old Smith admitted to and was convicted in 1826 of fraud in a court in Bainbridge, NY -- located in the so-called “Burned over district” in upstate New York that had spawned many cults. He compares and contrasts Smith and Muhammad and how they “borrowed” huge chunks of their respective holy books from the Bible to create the Book of Mormon and the Koran, respectively.
Ranking high on the New York Times’ bestseller list – it was No. 4 on July 8, 2007 and was No. 1 shortly after its publication in May – the thrust of the book is in its subtitle: “How Religion Poisons Everything.” (For an article on the phenomenal sales of the book – more than 300,000 in print and more printings on the way from an initial press run of 40,000 – see: www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2007/06/god_is_not_great_flying_off_shelves)
Around the time of the book’s publishing by a unit of France’s Hachette Group, “The God Delusion” by scientist Richard Dawkins was also high on the NY Times bestseller list. People out there are buying books about atheism and religion, despite polls showing that the vast majority of Americans are believers. Personally, I think people lie shamelessly to pollsters, giving them answers they think the poll-takers want.
Hitchens in his 58 years – he was born in England in 1949 and became a U.S. citizen on his 58th birthday, April 13, 2007 – lives in Washington, DC and has experimented with a variety of religions, including the anti-religious religion of Trotskyism. In fact, on Page 195, he says: “One of these days, having in the course of my life been an Anglican, educated at a Methodist school, converted by marriage to Greek Orthodoxy, recognized as an incarnation by the followers of Sai Baba, and remarried by a rabbi, I shall be able to try and update William James’s ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience.’”
Hitchens not only takes on God (not capitalized by Hitchens), he also questions the famous quotation of Voltaire about the necessity of inventing God (Page 96): “…Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with….What believers will do, now that their faith is optional and private and irrelevant, is a matter for them. We should not care as long as they make no further attempt to inculcate religion by any form of coercion.”
“God Is Not Great” is worth reading by secularists and believers alike. Any book or essay by Christopher Hitchens is thought provoking – whether you agree with his arguments or not.
Publisher’s web site: www.hachettebookgroupusa.com
Author’s web site: www.hitchensweb.com
BOOK REVIEW: ‘God is Not Great’ by Christopher Hitchens Ranks High on NY Times Bestseller List; Book Will Reinforce Views of Atheists, Agnostics, Unlikely to Change True Believers
By David M. Kinchen
Huntington News Network Book Critic
Borrowing a title from a 1976 Broadway musical based on the New Testament Book of Matthew – “Your Arms Too Short to Box with God” – a reviewer of “God is Not Great” by Christopher Hitchens (Twelve Books, 307 pages, $24.99) – this reviewer, to be specific – can confidently state that Hitch feels both his arms are long enough to engage in fisticuffs with the Almighty.
For the prolific English-born intellectual, foreign correspondent, columnist and author, it amounts to shadow-boxing anyway, since he’s convinced that: “Yet again it is demonstrated that monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents.” (Page 280). Nobody is better at turning a phrase than Hitchens and the book is full of similar constructs.
He’ll even use his feet like an Asian kickboxer to take on the religions of the East – Buddhism, for instance – for those who find solace in the “wisdom of the East” as opposed to the three monotheistic religions referenced in the above quotation: Judaism, Christianity, Islam.
He cites Sri Lanka, the “lovely” former island nation of Ceylon as an example – one of many where religious strife has destroyed a nation. He writes (Page 199) : “…Sri Lanka is a country now almost utterly ruined and disfigured by violence and repression and the contending forces are mainly Buddhist and Hindu.”
This linking of religious belief and ethnic violence, even ethnic cleansing as in the case of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, to name just two examples discussed by Hitchens, is part and parcel of religious belief, he implies. He quotes painter Francisco Goya’s famous saying: “The sleep of reason brings forth monsters” (Page 198). By neglecting the “the mind and the reasoning faculty—the only thing that divides us from our animal relatives” believers in effect fall asleep intellectually and create religions that produce deadly divisions in a world that already has too many.
Rwanda in the early 1990s, Hitchens writes (Page 190) , was the most Christian nation in Africa. It was predominantly Roman Catholic and Hitchens says many priests took part or aided in the genocide that resulted in at least 1 million people being slaughtered. He notes that, while the late Pope John Paul II apologized for Catholic crimes against the Jews, for the Crusades and for persecution of Eastern Orthodox believers, he never apologized for the role Roman Catholics played in the Rwanda genocide.
Hitchens argues (Page 192) -- in the context of the Rwanda genocide, but applicable to many other situations -- that “The worse the offender, the more devout he turns out to be. It can be added that some of the most dedicated relief workers are also believers (though as it happens the best ones I have met are secularists who were not trying to proselytize for any faith). But the chance that a person committing the crimes was ‘faith-based’ was almost 100 percent, while the chances that a person of faith was on the side of humanity and decency were about as good as the odds of a coin flip.”
Hitchens scorns all religions, but he reserves special vitriol for Mormonism and Islam – although he’s thoroughly disgusted with Catholic priests guilty of sexual abuse of young children, mostly boys, and the religious aspects of circumcision by Jews—for boys – and girls by Muslims. When it comes to religions, Hitchens plays no favorites: He hates them all.
He devotes considerable space to the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – Mormons – Joseph Smith. Hitchens writes that the 21-year-old Smith admitted to and was convicted in 1826 of fraud in a court in Bainbridge, NY -- located in the so-called “Burned over district” in upstate New York that had spawned many cults. He compares and contrasts Smith and Muhammad and how they “borrowed” huge chunks of their respective holy books from the Bible to create the Book of Mormon and the Koran, respectively.
Ranking high on the New York Times’ bestseller list – it was No. 4 on July 8, 2007 and was No. 1 shortly after its publication in May – the thrust of the book is in its subtitle: “How Religion Poisons Everything.” (For an article on the phenomenal sales of the book – more than 300,000 in print and more printings on the way from an initial press run of 40,000 – see: www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2007/06/god_is_not_great_flying_off_shelves)
Around the time of the book’s publishing by a unit of France’s Hachette Group, “The God Delusion” by scientist Richard Dawkins was also high on the NY Times bestseller list. People out there are buying books about atheism and religion, despite polls showing that the vast majority of Americans are believers. Personally, I think people lie shamelessly to pollsters, giving them answers they think the poll-takers want.
Hitchens in his 58 years – he was born in England in 1949 and became a U.S. citizen on his 58th birthday, April 13, 2007 – lives in Washington, DC and has experimented with a variety of religions, including the anti-religious religion of Trotskyism. In fact, on Page 195, he says: “One of these days, having in the course of my life been an Anglican, educated at a Methodist school, converted by marriage to Greek Orthodoxy, recognized as an incarnation by the followers of Sai Baba, and remarried by a rabbi, I shall be able to try and update William James’s ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience.’”
Hitchens not only takes on God (not capitalized by Hitchens), he also questions the famous quotation of Voltaire about the necessity of inventing God (Page 96): “…Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with….What believers will do, now that their faith is optional and private and irrelevant, is a matter for them. We should not care as long as they make no further attempt to inculcate religion by any form of coercion.”
“God Is Not Great” is worth reading by secularists and believers alike. Any book or essay by Christopher Hitchens is thought provoking – whether you agree with his arguments or not.
Publisher’s web site: www.hachettebookgroupusa.com
Author’s web site: www.hitchensweb.com
