Read on a Kindle during February 2012
#39 of 2011-12 – #160 of All Time
- 4 nods out of 5 -
As the title of this book clearly sets out, Hitchens is on a rampage to declare that God is not the great being that human beings have worshipped for the past few thousand years. Bringing a trust in science and reason, Hitchens believes that the passing of time has seen religion retreating further and further back; the more we know, the less we need “God”. As Hitchens notes: ‘Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion.’ Much of the writing takes a polemical tone, much of which encapsulates the reader:
‘If you read Hawking on the “event horizon,” that theoretical lip of the “black hole” over which one could in theory plunge and see the past and the future… I shall be surprised if you can still go on gaping at Moses and his unimpressive “burning bush.” If you examine the beauty and symmetry of the double helix, and then go on to have your own genome sequence fully analysed, you will be at once impressed that such a near-perfect phenomenon is at the core of your being, and reassured that you have so much in common with other tribes of the human species – “race” having gone along with “creation” into the ashcan – and further fascinated to learn how much you are a part of the animal kingdom as well. Now at last you can be properly humble in the face of your maker, which turns out not to be a “who,” but a process of mutation with rather more random elements than our vanity might wish.’
The author is keen to emphasise his respect for the reasoning of past generations – they were doing they best they could under the circumstances – but now reason would demand an end to religion’s hold over the population of the world. Yet this is Hitchens in the role of the persecutor, giving the Bible both barrels: ‘The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude uncultured human mammals’.
Hitchens remains humorous throughout, and especially warming when digressing and detailing his own personal journey away from religion and into the idea of progress of science and humanity. His mind was one of wonderful enquiry, testing and questioning all around him. As he notes: ‘And here is the point, about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free enquiry, open-mindedness,, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.’ On many of the pages he sails close to the wind of controversy (one chapter is titled: ‘Is Religion Child Abuse?’); but perhaps the whole book’s purpose was to take no prisoners and to stake Hitchens’ colours directly to the mast, for all to see.
Who is the intended reader? Not those of religious faith, that is for sure; but perhaps those who are yet undecided and in need of direction. Hitchens would most certainly have dismissed the claim that atheism itself is a “faith”; his belief was in the progress of humanity. Yes, a contested and perhaps a vacuous term. But for Hitchens, perhaps there was no other belief for a human to reasonably to hold. We shall leave the last comment for Hitchens himself: ‘You will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking’. God Is Not Great? You decide.
Buy it here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/God-Not-Great-Against-Religion/dp/1843545861
