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God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything [Hardcover]

Christopher Hitchens
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
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Book Description

May 1 2007
Christopher Hitchens, described in the London Observer as “one of the most prolific, as well as brilliant, journalists of our time” takes on his biggest subject yet–the increasingly dangerous role of religion in the world.

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 case against 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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From Publishers Weekly

Hitchens, one of our great political pugilists, delivers the best of the recent rash of atheist manifestos. The same contrarian spirit that makes him delightful reading as a political commentator, even (or especially) when he's completely wrong, makes him an entertaining huckster prosecutor once he has God placed in the dock. And can he turn a phrase!: "monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents." Hitchens's one-liners bear the marks of considerable sparring practice with believers. Yet few believers will recognize themselves as Hitchens associates all of them for all time with the worst of history's theocratic and inquisitional moments. All the same, this is salutary reading as a means of culling believers' weaker arguments: that faith offers comfort (false comfort is none at all), or has provided a historical hedge against fascism (it mostly hasn't), or that "Eastern" religions are better (nope). The book's real strength is Hitchens's on-the-ground glimpses of religion's worst face in various war zones and isolated despotic regimes. But its weakness is its almost fanatical insistence that religion poisons "everything," which tips over into barely disguised misanthropy. (May 30)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* God is getting bad press lately. Sam Harris' The End of Faith(2005) and Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (2006) have questioned the existence of any spiritual being and met with enormous success. Now, noted, often acerbic journalist Hitchens enters the fray. As his subtitle indicates, his premise is simple. Not only does religion poison everything, which he argues by explaining several ways in which religion is immoral, but the world would be better off without religion. Replace religious faith with inquiry, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas, he exhorts. Closely reading major religious texts, Hitchens points to numerous examples of atrocities and mayhem in them. Religious faith, he asserts, is both result and cause of dangerous sexual repression. What's more, it is grounded in nothing more than wish fulfillment. Hence, he believes that religion is man-made, and an ethical life can be lived without its stamp of approval. With such chapter titles as "Religion Kills" and "Is Religion Child Abuse?" Hitchens intends to provoke, but he is not mean-spirited and humorless. Indeed, he is effortlessly witty and entertaining as well as utterly rational. Believers will be disturbed and may even charge him with blasphemy (he questions not only the virgin birth but the very existence of Jesus), and he may not change many minds, but he offers the open-minded plenty to think about. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Changed my life ... ... May 14 2010
Format:Paperback
This book literally changed my life.
I was so relieved to find within it all the intelligently constructed arguments that rang so true with me that I no longer felt any pangs of guilt for not believing in "the Faith of my Fathers". I loved this book. Now I feel I must read all the rest of Hitchen's books. It's all there. The total proof of evolution lies just down the road in the Burgess Shale. Now I have no doubts. There is no god. Man invented him in his own image. I don't need it.
Thank you Christopher Hitchens.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Nov 21 2008
By Star Stuff TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
What appears to be a polemic attack by Hitchens, is really nothing more than the robust confrontation that religion's baseless assertions need and deserve. This book, and others like it, are way overdue.

Buy this book.
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131 of 147 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars A review by someone who actually read the book May 22 2007
Format:Hardcover
This is by no means a hateful book. In fact, those who have become used to Hitchens' sometimes cut-throat prose will be surprised at how restrained he is, and how quick he is to acknowledge, say, the equally-ghastly crimes of the secular dictatorships of Hitler and Stalin. Then he points out how both regimes were abetted by the church.

The contention by "J" that Hitchens argues that "religions are closed-minded and have only brought about the oppression of women and children without any knowledge of the social and intellectual advances that many religions have afforded us" is proof positive "J" has indeed not read this book. Hitchens simply balances the claims of religion versus the results and argues that overall, religious dogma is merely a holdover from the time when humans had little to no information about how the world is actually constituted. While he does skirt around the shortcomings of scientific reason, Hitchens rightly reminds us that science has actually enhanced the mystery of "creation" rather than spoiling the fun.

Hitchens may be a lot of things: a misanthrope, a contrarian, and sometimes a bit of an arrogant jerk, but to say he is a "closed-minded journalist" without having read this work (which is shot through with references to the Classics, religious scholarship, science, history and literature) is an insult to Hitchens and the book-buying public. Hitchens can look after himself; the book-buying public is so advised.
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Most recent customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars The great Hitchens
Fantastic book. Really opens your eyes to the flaws and horrific things that are found in the doctrine and the people that follow modern (and historical) religions!
Published 16 days ago by Tyler Elias
5.0 out of 5 stars A Theologian's Nightmare: "Thanks to the telescope and microscope,...
XXXXX

"If I cannot definitely prove that the usefulness of religion is in the past,

[1] and that its foundational books are transparent fables,
[2] and... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Stephen Pletko
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read.
This book really was a thoughtful and interesting read and I suggest any "believer" read it promptly.

You may want a dictionary with you first time you read it. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Erik M
5.0 out of 5 stars free at last
Thank you thank you thank you Christopher Hitchins for freeing me from wondering whether there's something wrong with me because I don't "get" religion, or whether there is... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Kwitshadie
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Merciless Rhetoric Against all Religions
Although Hitchens harshly critiques not just Christianity and its logical fallacies but all religions; which is exactly what this book is, an intelligent conglomerate of arguments... Read more
Published 9 months ago by KirillTheIntelligent
4.0 out of 5 stars Loved It!
Now, I'm a believer...that everything I had been taught about my religion was nothing but a fantastic story. But somewhere, deep inside me, I knew that already.
Published 9 months ago by cmarganis
1.0 out of 5 stars Simply Inaccurate
In 20 pages I found 15 errors which were factual errors and at least 20 instances of deliberate misrepresentation of scholarly views of the material. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Anthony
1.0 out of 5 stars Claude
A great novel by an author who never, ever lets facts confuse him. Likely the most intellectually dishonest piece of work I have ever had the misfortune of reading.
Published 16 months ago by Claude
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful and intellectually stimulating read.
I loved every second of this book and didn't want to put it down. It was insightful, thoughtful and engaging. An excellent read!
Published 16 months ago by Riki Boekestyn
5.0 out of 5 stars God is NOT great.
Why the religious faithful don't question their beliefs is beyond me! There is no more proof in any god than there is proof of werewolves and zombies! Read more
Published 16 months ago by Cap'n Wayne
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