A few days ago I finished reading God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens. I’ve been a fan of his for years, ever since reading his work in The Atlantic during college. Point is, I’m a big fan, and this book did not disappoint.
I’m not going to hop on my soapbox and say, “After reading this book it becomes very clear there’s no god,” but I will say he makes some very convincing arguments against established religion. That being said, I was a little confused at the title. In my opinion, the subtitle, How Religion Poisons Everything, is a more apt title. While Hitchens does make the argument that god is a purely human manifestation, he doesn’t deconstruct spirituality, just a person’s tendency to fall victim to the dogma and b.s. of the rules and regulations associated with any given church, temple, synagogue, mosque or other altar. He can’t prove god doesn’t exist but he is extremely convincing that religions – every one of them – are a product of man’s imagination. An aside: I’m not a very learned student of history, so I found the (perhaps well-known) historical references to political action through the ages that led to a certain religion coming into favor or disfavor to be quite astonishing.
The book is filled with no-nonsense reasoning that religion does more harm than good. What I gathered from the book, and have truly believed for some time, is that while a faith-based belief system may (or may not) help increase the occurrences of small “good” acts, it without a doubt fuels a measurable increase in the number and severity of “evil” acts.
To stop myself from rambling and regurgitating the book in this piece, I decided to cite just two passages. The first is from Chapter Ten: The Tawdriness of the Miraculous (p. 153) – “Those of us who had sought a rational alternative to religion had reached a terminus that was comparably dogmatic. What else was to be expected of something that was produced by the close cousins of chimpanzee? Infallibility? Thus, dear reader, if you have come this far and found your faith undermined – as I hope – I am willing to say that to some extent I know what you are going through. There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking.”
The “chainless mind” is a powerful idea. Essentially, there is no danger is abandoning the fiction that was planted in your head, as a child, without your permission. Even Hitchens admits at times he misses his “old convictions as if they were an amputated limb.” In regards to my ability for free thought, I suppose I benefited from being raised with relatively loose religious pressure, and with a religion of relatively low significance in the Western world. My burden was light and easy to abandon – who knows what would have happened if I were raised in India, or in America but as a Christian? And the reasoning I used to not follow the spiritual path of my ancestors is the very same logic that prevents me from ever accepting a different religious path. Religion defies logic, and I’m a logical being.
The second passage is from Chapter Seventeen: The “Case” Against Secularism (p. 250) – “Humanism has many crimes for which to apologize. But it can apologize for them, and also correct them, in its own terms and without having to shake or challenge the basis of any unalterable system of belief. Totalitarian systems, whatever outward form they may take, are fundamentalist and, as we would now say, “faith-based.”
These three sentences blew me away. Only when the ability to right a system exists in that very system can it be functional. Take democracy for example. When the system is failing its people new leaders and new laws help make things better. Not perfect, but better. Convincing the uneducated and poor that bliss is around the corner if they lend their labor to the plight of more powerful people, people whose motives are much different than those of the believers, is an impressive undertaking, and has been done with almost irreproachable perfection.
I trust that a day will come when truth will reach a critical mass, and that the scale of belief will tip from religion to science. And when that day comes, no one will have the need to fight over an atom, or even with an atom, as was done once, in the name of religion.
Nice addition to the Carnival of the Godless. I believe that the day in which truth reaches an undeniable critical mass may be as far as 500 years in the future. We are only halfway through The Enlightenment, I think. Even the modern John Wilkins becomes discouraged that with all of the intellectual satisfaction of atheism afforded by science, creationistic aspects of religion continue to hold sway.
Your writing on this blog is an important punch in the push towards freethought that will eventaully free our race from magical thinking.
I am adding you to my newsfeed.
Mike
500 years! Faith truly is a powerful hallucinogen. The way to speed up the transition is education. Instead of shoving atheism down people’s throats, secular society should understand that raising awareness will lead to the abandonment of established religion with less resistance. I would love to be alive at the tipping point but that probably won’t be the case. Religions have succeeded by appealing to the masses, most of which were ignorant and uneducated. Taking away their playground is the only path to success.
Nice of you to admit that you have no independent ability to determine if Hitchens’ claims as to political reasons for the rise or fall of religions is accurate. After all, a great many historians disagree with Hitchens’ views of history in this book (of course, Hitchens isn’t an historian, either).
“Totalitarian systems, whatever outward form they may take, are fundamentalist and, as we would now say, “faith-based” is the most self-damning statement Hitchens has ever written! As a former Trotskyite he should be well aware that the Khmer Rouge were as anti-religion as is he. Toss in the People’s Republic of Vietnam and the actions of the Bolshevik revolution and Hitchens is, essentially, casting forced atheism as a ‘faith-based’ system.
A few points on an excellent post. I too am somewhat suspicious of Hitchens and his use of history, because of other of his writings — even though I’ve now been an atheist for 45 of my 61 years. I’ll read the book if I get a chance but there are better books on the subject.
As for the ‘tipping point’ being 500 years in the future, that only shows the narrowness of an American-based viewpoint. The tipping point has already occurred in most of Europe, which is authentically a post-Christian civilization. Even here, the events of the last few years have hastened the change. Creationism seems to be hanging on, but the specifically sexual scandals of evangelicals, the ‘faith-based idiocy’ of our President, and, surprisingly the reaction to the ‘war against gays’ — a war that is being lost down the line — convinces me the tipping point more likely will be in the next 25 years. (Remember also that fundamentalism thrives in isolation, in an environment which has no outside light to oppose the darkness. But the internet is banishing this type of isolation.)
And yes, forced atheism is as wrong as — and probably more futile than — forced theism. And Communism, at least as applied, IS a ‘faith-based system’ with Marx’s writings being viewed as being just as infallible as the Bible — and as wildly interpreted.
(And Stalinism in particular built on the ‘caesaro-papism’ of Russian Orthodoxy, with many Russians seeing Stalin as the new Tsar who could not be wrong. “If the Tsar/Stalin only knew what his evil ministers were doing he would protect us.”)
Prup,
You should look into the works of the demographer Kaufman out of the UK – he projects that the Europe of 2100 will have a higher percentage of Christians than the Europe of 2000. Indeed, throughout the world trends in demographics and socialization point strongly to the current time being the high water mark of secularism.
I really hope Deep Thought isn’t right but I do have a fear that the stat may be true. As long as entire regions of the world remain marginalized, the less fortunate will have nowhere to turn to but religion, and that won’t get them any closer to a better life. We can thank the world’s super powers for that. Oh, they should also heard all the poor into flood zones and then pollute the world so badly that flooding kills most of them. What? It’s happening already?
Vihar,
Actually, religion is making a rebound world-wide with such a surge that demographers are scrambling to understand what is going on. Everyone knows that women with more education and more wealth have fewer kids, right? Not anymore! In the last 20 years or so there has been an accelerating exception to this rule – religious women (defined as women who attend religious services at least once a week) have *more* kids as their education and wealth increase, now. In the meantime, non-religious women still follow the ‘old rule’.
Toss into the mix the stats that show that religious people are healthier and more successful in business and religion world wide and other little bits (i.e., religious people marry earlier and stay married more often [another change] and married people are healthier and wealthier) and you see something that is counter to what we are told to expect – the largest predicted percentage gains in religious belief within populations over the next 100 years are in the most educated and wealthiest Westerners!
Deep Thought,
Thanks for the info. I believe it’s not religion that helps people be healthier and more successful (potentially) but the state of mind that it brings. Uncertainty causes stress, which is inherently unhealthy. For some, religion removes that uncertainty, not because it has any validity, but because it fills a hole, allowing people to no longer question their purpose or where they came from, and thus allowing them to focus on family and business. Of course, other people have the ability to fill that hole with reason and science. I’m not saying I’m better or worse than others, just that I appreciate that I can abate my uncertainties about life with something more concrete, and explainable. I’m really interested to see what additional research shows about the “god gene”. As with almost everything, genetics predisposes to certain mental, physical and emotional states.
Vihar,
Of course, you are making some errors and assumptions. First of all, religious people can be just as rational and scientific as atheists. Second, it appears, statistically, that people cannot fill that ‘hole’ you speak of with reason and science – thus, the non-religious are unhealthier and unhappier. Third, what is more concrete than ‘religious people are healthier and happier than the non-religious’? Maybe the studies that show that religious people make more money, give more to charity, and volunteer more of their time to charity? What is more concrete than the fact that religious people – regardless of education and socio-economic status, religious people are healthier and happier than the non-religious. That’s pretty concrete!
Not having read the book myself,except articles on the web regarding Mr. Hutchinson’s book one might agree on his premise but not with absolutism. Raised as a Catholic and having attended a releigious school,at least until junior high I must say it was an experience. The discipleneran actions of the nuns often defied logic and reasoning; at time it was as though the sisters were taking out their fustration on the pupils in the name of discipline. In present day possible they would be sent to jail.It has always been confounding to me where love and forgiveness is preached but very seldom sees adhered to, not to mention killing and sacrificing of animals to god as offerings of salvation.Pagan rituals for sure but refuted by those relious sect as being somehow different because He is an unseen god,but often heard by the chosen few!
It is bewildering as to whether some of these people actually belive what they say,or just expect others to belive because they wore the chosen? To me religion with very few exceptions, tends to put a human-especially the mind in quandry as to what action or lack of caused the result or situation. It is almost like walking in land mines.Is something done because they will go to heaven, or because it is my duty as another human being? How can you have dirction when tied with chains of obligations to direct you to that outcome. how can that be free choice? For many years I too have wrestled with rlegion and my own conscience,having seen so much hypocracy and double talk for so long, I’m glad of have coming to my senses to follow my own conscience and direction,although not perfect but it is easier to come to grip with things in this manner.It does not make sense to be able to reason and have a conscience only to be steered and herded in to a corral whether it be heaven or hell; free choice means having the ability to choose the direction, even if its bad other wise, one cannot be considered to have a free will. There is no sense in going into the usual arguments,because to me they just don’t jive; love cannot be conditional,otherwise it is not free, if it comes with a price of consequence.This is the problem with most relegions its not so much the choices but the consequences of not adhering to a specific doctrine, often not being certain if it is God,or that man uses God as a tool to dictate the other men.Hopefully perhaps in the not to distant future men and women will come to the realization and take charge of their own conscience and mind rather than be indoctrinated into the fallacy of the chosen few.