God is Not Great – by Christopher Hitchens

If you had asked me a week ago what I thought of this book, I’d have answered — “It’s much more readable than Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.
That’s not what I think now.
Writing books debunking religion is a good thing, and there are many of them. But I was hoping for a more powerful and effective book by Hitchens, who certainly knows how to write well.


God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is not a long book and there are certainly parts of it that are powerful.
But Hitchens has a tendency to ramble, particularly towards the end.
And in his noble effort to be equally brutal with all religions — the job he does on Hinduism and Buddhism is particularly effective — the effect lessens somewhat when you actually know a thing or two about the religion in question.
Like Hitchens, I am an atheist and have been so my entire life. Indeed, I wouldn’t use the term “atheist” to describe myself — that’s like calling oneself an “infidel” or “non-believer”. It’s defining oneself in religious terms, by what one does not believe. I prefer to describe myself philosophically as all Marxists do — as a materialist.
Unlike Hitchens, I am not totally unsympathetic to certain elements of the religious faith embraced by most of my people. And because of that, I was struck by how limited Hitchens’ own knowledge of that faith could be at times.
One example will suffice: In writing about the Jewish holiday of Hannukah, Hitchens says:
“For once instead of Christianity plagiarizing from Judaism, the Jews borrow shamelessly from Christians in the pathetic hope of a celebration that coincides with ‘Christmas’ …”
This may well be the experience that Hitchens knows, having presumably spent some time with American Jews. But it is not the experience of Hannukah for Israeli Jews, where the holiday borrows nothing from Christianity and has a unique character all its own. (It is not, for example, the holiday where Israelis give gifts to their children.)
As a celebration of the uprising of an oppressed people against a vicious empire, it has long appealed to left-wing Jews. And to many of us, the bit about the Hannukah “miracle” — the burning of the oil for 8 days — is the least interesting part of the holiday. Hannukah is about the survival of a a feisty nation facing overwhelming odds.
In Hitchens’ account of the holiday, the Romans are clearly cast in the roles of good guys, the carriers of Athenian philosophy and enlightenment, and the rebellious Jews as the worst sort of ignorant, oppressive religious fanatics. Maybe a better approach would have been to support neither Rome nor Jerusalem, but to call for a Third Camp?
That having been said, it’s a minor quibble. Most of the book makes the case well.
The problem is, are any religious people going to read it?

1 Comment on "God is Not Great – by Christopher Hitchens"

  1. jerusalemexporthouse | 13/08/2007 at 05:55 |

    I think that in general, people should be learned and aware of all the arguments against or for their faith.

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