Customer Reviews

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

It doesn't matter if you are religious or not to thuroughly enjoy this book. Hitchins is artful writer and essayist who knows how to leverage substantiation techniques to craft very clear and accessible arguments. However, it is important to remember that this is exclusively a critique of religion and how it can (as the subtitle explicitly states) poison everything. It is not, and nor should it be, a cross-comparison with all the arguable good, religion has contributed to society; for which I'm sure there are plenty of other texts already available. As a critique, you will perhaps not find a better stated case against religious institutions and the dangerously unreasonable and fanatical belief they inspire.

Extrordinary book, very comprehensive review of the damage relegion has done to our world, very challenging to read, this author has an exceptional command of the english language

The subtitle, How Religion Poisons Everything, pretty well sums up the entire book. Hitchens sets out to destroy every aspect of the worlds religions.
And I think he accomplishes his goal. Hitchens is an atheist, but has done so much research into the topic of religion. His arguments against religion are very well made.
I heard Hitchens commenting about his book. He mentioned this was a personal issue for him. In the seventh grade he started to question religious beliefs. It was the first thing that he really thought about. I also had the same feelings in the seventh grade about religious beliefs.
In summary, I would say that this book basically says everything about religion, that most people are afraid to say.

I'd been disinterested in Hitchens' book for some while. God has seemed mainly irrelevant to me of late, so the recent spate of God-bashing books didn't really register. Then a friend gave me a copy, and I realized that it's more important than I had been giving it credit. It reminded me that it's not adequate to ignore members of organized religions and hope they'll return the favour - because that is not and will never be good enough for them. We need to remind ourselves of the aspects of institutional religion that continue to be morally harmful, and plan how we can counter their debilitating effects. So, I'm grateful to Hitchens for nudging me back to a more active stance with respect to the positive evils associated with organized religion.

Religion as Hitchens defines it, is belief in an infallible, superhuman authority, which humanity should obey. This belief, he says, is the core of all religions, and therefore all religion is inherently anti-democratic. With a globe-spanning stream of examples he shows us that "All religions take care to silence or to execute those who question them ..." Or, they would if they could: "Is it not obvious to all, the pious ask, that religious authority is paramount, and that those who decline to recognize it have forfeited their right to exist?" So in the great war of freedom with absolutism, Hitchens feels it is time to name the real root of the problem. Religion, he believes, must be exposed as the human desire for infallibility.

In the way Hitchens defines religion, he accepts that absolutists are the real representatives of it. This leads him to say that Martin Luther King Jr. was not really a Christian. Why? Because King's devotion to equal respect for people of all cultures contradicted traditional claims that only Christianity comes from God. This reminds me of conservative Christian writer Rod Dreher, who recently rejected Barack Obama's claim to be a Christian. Dreher said that Obama merely claimed to be inspired by Jesus' life, without also asserting that Jesus was "begotten not made." In relation to Islam, Hitchens seems to accept that fanatics for superhuman authority are the real Muslims. And rather than arguing for a more compassionate version of religion, like Fatima Mernissi or Barack Obama have tried to do, Hitchens tries to convince moderate Muslims that their whole tradition is stupid.

In rejecting the superhuman authority of religion, Hitchens comes to a perfectly reasonable conclusion: "Human beings and institutions are imperfect, to be sure. But there could be no clearer proof that holy institutions are man-made." To this, Joseph Campbell, Margaret Mead, Sigmund Freud, or Carl Jung would all agree. The history of religion is the story of humanity's quest for meaning, direction, and fulfillment. What's so non-divine about that? Religion has evolved through endless debate over different human visions of justice, beauty, and happiness. Hitchens is right to say this debate would be more civil if the debaters stopped claiming to be God's mouthpiece. But then would the debate be less, or more holy?

--author of Correcting Jesus

Bravo! A rallying cry for secular humanism. For those who suffer the sneaking suspicion that "the religious" have been particularly ill-behaved, lately, here is a well-researched historical perspective on religion's assault on reason, freedom and human rights.

The book presents a good description, through examples, of the psycho-social evolution of deity cultism, and its twisted course throughout human development, up until the present.

Hitchens presents a balanced and well-argued case that belief in an omiscient, omnipresent creator belongs in the infancy of the human species, and not in its future. Smattered with jabs of wit and sarcasm, this book should appeal to any thinking person.

As someone who has grown up in an environment where religion has played a major and often devastating role in family affairs, this book is catharsis in print form. It is everything that I ever wanted to say about religion and then some embodied in this eye-catching yellow book. Hitchens' masterful polemical abilities are the real stars of the show. If anybody has watched with glee a Hitchens vs [insert religious person] debate on television or YouTube, you will love this book. Whilst Hitchens can only express so much in a 1 hour debate format, this book is the real meat of his whole argument against god(s). He spares no punches going after Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Christ, Mohammed,... You name a holier-than-thou person and Hitchens has destroyed (or at least implicated) them in this book. Thoroughly entertaining read. I particularly enjoyed the sections on the history of the Bible (Old and New T) and the Qur'an. 5 more stars. 10 stars for Hitchens!