christopher hitchens religion poisons everything

The new atheism was triggered by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It may seem unlikely that an intemperate book attacking all religion would be a bestseller in the United States, a nation of believers in God or a higher power, but Hitchens rides on the coat tails of “the new atheism,” a recent movement led by the likes of crusading unbelievers Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. 2 This is typical of his approach: expose religious vices, and ignore or redefine religious virtues. 1 Neither does Hitchens mention the heroism of the Protestant Le Chambon-sur-Lignon village community in France, which bravely sheltered six thousand Jews to protect them from the Nazis. Hitchens says nothing of The Barmen Declaration (1934), a document written principally by German theologian Karl Barth, which unequivocally opposed Nazism for theological reasons. Amid his chronicling of various religious people who supported or who failed to oppose Nazism, for example, Hitchens injects but one sentence about Protestant pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s opposition to Hitler (p.

He instead prosecutes a scorched earth (or heaven) policy on every page. Hitchens gives no concessions to religion in this book. The title of the book is a negation of the Muslim affirmation “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great.” He offers a litany of evils committed in the names of various religions, but his main targets are Christianity and Islam. Hitchens says, unlike belief in other nonexistent entities (such as unicorns), belief in god “poisons everything”-from politics to sexuality to art to education and beyond. He refuses to capitalize the word god, since that would be a grammatical compliment to an entity that does not exist.

In his polemical and sometimes bombastic tome, god Is Not Great: How Religion Ruins Everything, the acerbic author presents what aspires to be a tour-de-force refutation of religion in all its forms. For further information or to subscribe to the Christian Research Journal go to: Ĭhristopher Hitchens does not like “god” one bit. This review first appeared in the Christian Research Journal, volume31, number3 (2008).

Christopher hitchens religion poisons everything