God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

God Is Not Great How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens (based on 811 customer reviews)

(Hardcover)
Author: Christopher Hitchens
Publisher: Twelve Books, Hachette Book Group

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Most useful review as voted by customers:
2232 out of 2749 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 4/24/07

English majors will especially like this book

In the genre of athiest criticism of religion, Hitchens' book fills a niche. Where, for example, Bertrand Russel approaches religion with a philosophical mind, and Richard Dawkins approaches religion with a scientific mind, Hitchens approaches religion with a literary mind. This makes for some fresh and caustic athiest insights that you might not expect to find in either Russell or Dawkins. Hitchens, for example, begins his book by offering three quotes from classic pieces of literature, and within the first few pages he also alludes to George Eliot's "Middlemarch" without even mentioning Eliot's name (presuming his readers will know who wrote "Middlemarch"). In other words, Hitchens is a man of letters writing to educated, thoughtful people with more than a smattering of English literature classes in their background. In this sense, Hitchens, unlike Russell or Dawkins, leads his readers not just to think their way through the book's issues, but to feel them emotionally, in the way that one might feel one's way through a novel by Dostoevsky. Hitchens is always on the side of suffering individuals, and resists at every turn religion's dogmatism and "one size fits all" obtuseness. And in this sense Hitchens has hit upon an angle to come at religion that is not usually trodden: popular religion, unlike great literature, resists the tragic, the ambiguous, and the particular. Thus if you love literature, and identify with frail humanity via literature, you will resist the easy platitudes of religion. It is not just science and religion that are in tension for Hitchens, but literature and religion, or more accurately, the literary sensibility and religion.

1653 out of 2159 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 4/30/07

Hitchens hits another one out of the park

I think Christopher Hitchens is a national - no, make that Global - treasure, and his newest book here only underscores this. To carry on with my baseball metaphor, when Hitchens stepped up to the plate with this book on religion the bases were already loaded: Vonnegut on third, Sam Harris on second, and Richard Dawkins on first. Hitchens knocks 'em all in with one swing of the bat. He cuts through the BS of religion and "faith" better than anybody. His excellent writing style enlivens and enriches the soul at the same time. What more could a reader want?
I would add that perhaps what motivated Hitchens to write this book and so to "come out" more publicly with his critiques of religion and faith is what has also motivated me: the increasingly publicly-accepted insanity of religion in this, the 21st century. This insanity threatens to bring down all of civilization and, in the case of American fundamentalists in our government with their quivering fingers poised atop the launch buttons of our nuclear weapons, the end of Everything, which religious nut-jobs anticipate with unrestrained glee, so certain they are that they, at least, will be OK in the aftermath. This is just absolutely nuts, and Christopher Hitchens does us all a great service in pointing this out.

1355 out of 1468 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 5/15/07

From someone who's actually read the book!

After looking through some of the other customer reviews found here, I was dismayed by the amount of "blog-style" entries: that is, people who may have only glanced at the title or saw Hitchens promoting the book on CNN or YouTube and decided to just speak up, either in support or condemnation. However, if you're curious about the book and just want to know what to expect, may I humbly offer some actual information?

Hitchens, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, author of books too numerous to mention and contributor to smaller magazines such as Free Inquiry, adds to the recent renaissance of pro-atheist books with his own provocatively-titled contribution. Whereas Sam Harris (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason) sees dire warnings and Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion offers a defense of science, Hitchens uses his long experience in journalism to illustrate the madness that results when faith is unchallenged by reason. Dawkins has been criticized for adopting a harsh tone (an assessment I disagree with), but Hitchens is the one who really pours on the anger and witty derision. Some sample chapter titles make it clear he's playing for keeps:

Chapter two: "Religion Kills"

Chapter Four: "The Metaphysical Claims of Religion Are False"

Chapter Seven: "Revelation: The Nightmare of the Old Testament"

Chapter Eight: "The 'New' Testament Exceeds the Evil of the 'Old' One"

Chapter Nine: "The Koran is Borrowed From Both Jewish and Christian Myths"

That should give you a pretty good idea of the tone, but the chapter titles prove to be no mere cheap provocations. Drawing on decades (if not centuries) of scholarship that exposes the cobbled-together recipes for the holy books of the three "great" monotheisms, he shows them to be products of a violent time when scientific information about the world was unavailable and most people were entirely illiterate. He then gives modern day examples of how these myths have been put to horrendous use (yes, 9/11 is mentioned). In one section, he revisits the sins of "Agnes Bojaxhiu, an ambitious Albanian nun who had become well-known under the nom de guerre of 'Mother Teresa'," which he covered at greater length in his previous controversial expose The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, and reiterates how the "miracles" ascribed to her are so slap-dash and false they're almost comical.

While he devotes much of his outrage at "the big three" (my phrase), he also offers a chapter titled "There Is No 'Eastern' Solution," which would have to find disagreement with Sam Harris, who argues that many of the spiritual practices of Buddhism, shorn of their supernatural trappings, could be beneficial. Hitchens, ever the realist, wants us to know that history doesn't bear these claims out.

Hitchens often delivers his ideas like he's trying to splash his martini across your face at a party--at one point he muses "Why do people keeep saying, 'God is in the details'? He isn't in ours, unless his yokel creationist fans wish to take credit for his clumsiness, failure and incompetence"--and the result is often thrilling reading. His vitriol can be unnerving sometimes, like when he asks "Is Religion Child Abuse?", not to mention the full title of his tome. Never trust a book that splashes the word "everything" on its cover; it's usually a sign that the author is either desperate or foolishly grandiose. After reading the book, I don't think Hitchens is either, but in his worst moments he shows symptoms. In any event, I'm sure he doesn't intend this to be a work of (pardon the phrase) "evangelism"--he doensn't hope to influence even the mildly religious--but like that martini in the face (followed, perhaps, by an olive to the noggin), he wants to deliver a wake-up call. Some may see only a plea for attention, but he would quickly redirect you the the world outside.

117 out of 150 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 5/1/07

The Wizard of God

Back in the 1990s, religion in America seemed to be on its last legs. I genuinely believed that the turning of the millennial clock would drive the final stake through its heart. How could anyone continue to believe after yet another postponement of the Second Coming?

Well here we are almost ten years later, and religion is going stronger than it has in decades despite the advances of science which keep forcing god to hide in ever smaller gaps in our knowledge. Its revival reminds me of the Wizard of Oz story. After Dorothy & friends discover that the Wizard of Oz is really just an old man behind a curtain, they still expect him to work his magic. And so he does. The illusion persists. Which leads me to conclude that most people just want the illusion of an old man in the sky who will make everything right at some indeterminable point in the future.

I am half way through Hitchens book and enjoying it immensely. One only need consider the past 7 years in the USA to see that Hitchens is right about religion poisoning everything.

It's unfortunate that the people who need to read this book the most will flee from it.

At least the Net has opened up a lively debate over the value of religion.

For people wanting to understand why religion has such a strong hold over some, please google "Scott Bidstrup, The Mind Virus".

92 out of 116 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 5/3/07

Not For The Stupid

The best book of its kind since Bertrand Russell's essential 1927 milestone: WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN. Noted Vanity Fair correspondent and professional contrarian Christopher Hitchens - the true literary descendent of Russell and H. L. Mencken - comes out with both fists swinging. The faithful, fanatical and intellectually feeble are advised to duck.

From Bruce DeSilva's perceptive online review:
"...Hitchens is an equal opportunity atheist. His reviles all religions and scorns anyone foolish enough to accept any idea on faith...

He makes his case in the elegant yet biting prose we have come to expect from him. His style is erudite (he cites Richard Dawkins, Shakespeare, George Eliot, Blaise Pascal, C.S. Lewis and Thomas Aquinas in a span of three pages) yet manages to be accessible to the casual reader. He is at once funny and mean spirited, sniffing at the absurdity of the Bible's "minor miracles" and dismissing as buffoons all who would disagree...

But Hitchens is not satisfied to merely refute religion. He must also demonize it as "an enemy of science and inquiry," as "subsisting largely on lies and fears," and as "the accomplice of ignorance and guilt as well as of slavery, genocide, racism and tyranny." Hence the book's subtitle, "How Religion Poison's Everything."
And he does mean everything. As he would have it, religion foments hate and war. It justifies the torture and murder of "heretics" and "infidels." It represses healthy human sexuality. By discouraging contraception and encouraging reliance on prayer instead of medicine, it is even bad for your health..."

What can I possibly add to that? Just one word:
Amen.

(P.S: The afore-mentioned feeble-minded religious hysterics have been crawling out of the woodwork to slam this book - without having read it, of course!
The lunatic drivel that accompanies every 1-star "review" may make an entertaining read for a while, but the joke's really on them. They're too ignorant to realize they make the author's point FOR him - with every hysterical, sub-literate comment.)

Too bad you can't burn Hitchens at the stake, like in the "good old days" - eh, crackpots?

91 out of 126 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 5/5/07

Thank you Christopher and congratulations on your new citizenship.

I've been a big fan of Christopher since I was fortunate to encounter his works during a KPFK (public radio in Los Angeles) fund raiser years ago. I must confess that on more than one occasion I would find myself unconvinced by his writing, but never unmoved.

This is a much needed and timely book that I hope will find its way into the mainstream. The masses must be awakened from their blind acceptance of whatever random religion they were brainwashed to embrace as children. The rest of us must realize that not only is it OK not to believe but that it is more than OK to yell it from the mountain tops.

Look around now and in history and rationally examine where we all would be today without the "help" of the religions of the ONE TRUE GOD.

Great read. If I had the $$$ I'd put a copy in the drawer of every nightstand of every hotel room worldaround.

Thanks Christoper. WE LOVE YOU and owe you for this one!!!

24 out of 28 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 4/28/07

Religion Wars in Fill Swing

I enjoy reading books about God and religion, be they spiritual books by Cardinal Bernadine or attacks on the whole concept of God and faith such as this one. After all, all of us are caught in the middle of the greatest mystery - our very existence and the existence of the universe.

The religion war is actually a good thing because it focuses one's thinking on what is most important - answering the greatest question of all time: What's it all about?

This is an excellent addition to the war.

Frank Scoblete: author of Golden Touch Blackjack Revolution! and Golden Touch Dice Control Revolution!

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