God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
by Christopher Hitchens
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Book Summary Information
Author: Christopher HitchensEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2007-05-01
ISBN: 0446579807
Number of pages: 307
Publisher: Twelve Books, Hachette Book Group
Book Reviews of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Book Review: Too much bitterness, not enough argument
Summary: 2 Stars
Hitchens' critique of theism has penetrating moment, but is seriously flawed by other moments of really asinine or patently false observations. If Bertrand Russell's "Why I am not a Christian" were a 7 on the scale of 10 for "good atheist arguments", Hitchens comes out at best a " 4 or 5." Many atheists do not keep their temper out of the way of their arguments, and Hitchens is no exception. As a result, this invariably ends up dampening the quality of their arguments. Hitchens is at his best when he asks theoretical questions about the integrity or logicality of religious belief. He is at his absolute worst when he tries to argue that Martin Luther King Jr. was not really a Christian (but was inspired by atheists or communists, a silly argument) or that Mohandas Gandhi was to blame for the intolerant conflagration and partition of India with Pakistan. If anything, Gandhi passionately spoke and worked against both. Hitchens arguments about King and Gandhi really descend to the deceptive and the false, and here (as elsewhere) he neglects to provide any scholarly references for his "evidence." Similar outrageous claims are made about the Dalai Lama (without reference - other pages do have some reference notes). Hitchens would have done better to give more attention to fewer arguments, rather than to spread himself so thin casting aspersions and half-arguments so far and wide. His assessments of Thomas Paine, Darwin, and Einstein are more on track, and his critical questions about atonement and final damnation engaging. Would that he had picked his better arguments and screened out the obvious and unfortunately dross, this might have been a more lasting contribution to the literature on atheism.
Summary of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
In the tradition of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris's recent bestseller, The End of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate caseagainst religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and
reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope's awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry
of the double helix.
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