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Summary: Should be on the school syllabus for RE studies...
Comment: This book deserves to be read! It is the most inspiring and informative book I've read in a while.
Hitchens has a very well informed point of view. The book should be required reading for all 16+ students of RE, if only to counter-balance the apologist drivel which is (at best) what's usually pushed on our children. (If you're reading this from the US then your kids are probably being pushed much worse, and this book should be even more important as a balancer.)
The book might also be of benefit to our politicians - at least the few whose minds are up to the intellectual and personal challenge that it would undoubtedly be for them. (So probably not that many then...)
Hitchens has witnessed at first hand more than most of us ever will (or would wish to). He may be primarily a scholar now, but his experiences definitely add weight to his arguments. He appears to be a man of certain bravery, and with the courage of his convictions - an inspiration! He conveys his conclusions with compassion, but a clarity of mind that is all too rare. Although not himself a scientist he has a good grasp of the scientific issues involved, and an ability to convey them to others (I say this as a geneticist myself, having taught evolutionary biology at University).
This is a hard hitting book and I expect it's causing an outcry from the devout. Good - why should they go unchallenged?
At times the book is hard to read, simply because it's hard to know how badly humans often behave: it's hard to accept the awful truth of it. At times the book might make you angry or bewildered by our immense stupidity, and seeming inability to learn from the past. At yet other times you may be relieved that someone is able and willing to tell it as it is! Maybe you will find a glimmer of hope for our future too.
Thankyou Christopher Hitchins!
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Summary: Simply Briliiant
Comment: Finally, a perfectly pitched book of truths about religion. A most nourishing elixir for those who have been coerced for far too long into respecting all manner of religious bunkum.
The time has come for the atheist voice to be heard and not least in the frame of fundamental Islam. For too long in Britain we have been cowed by the maniacal delusions of the muslim right wing and I for one am sick and tired of it. This book is the true medicinal antithesis to the snake oil of such puerile garbage.
While there are others doing similar work, such as Dawkins and Harris, it is Hitchens who has, for this reader, hit the perfect tone. His unrelenting intellectual persistence is a joy and I don't agree with others who criticize his approach as overly caustic or aggressive, to the contrary, the proponents of faith are not handled aggressively enough; indeed, my only criticism would be that he needs to be more thorough in his outright condemnation.
If you are an atheist I urge you to read this book, it will make your heart swell with kinship and gratitude. If you are in any way religious, run away; after reading this book the fight to maintain your belief will be so great I rather think it may actually hurt.
On a final note, I would like to add that those who lampoon this work and claim to be atheist or non-believers, don't believe a word of it. You would struggle to find an atheist anywhere who would condemn this book. So, suspect the negative reviewer who claims kinship as you suspect the racist who has, "friends who are black".
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Summary: All too human...
Comment: I make one simple point: does religion per se create evil,
or does humanity create evil in its name? The point has been
made over and over again that any great system of thought
creates zealots who are prepared to kill in its name. Humans
like and crave for certainty, and they cannot tolerate having
their certainty challenged. It is simply a non sequitur for
authors like Hitchens constantly to bang on about the evil done
in religions' names. When will people stop peddling this tired
old fallacy? It does not address the substance of the argument.
Does the atom bomb invalidate nuclear physics? Of course not. Let's
hear the *arguments* for the non-existence of God, not the
emotive (alas too tragic) nonsense that really amounts only to
a lamentation of humanity's disastrous history.
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Summary: God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens
Comment: Perhaps a danger with these 'Down with God' books is in assuming that God and Religion are related. It is possible to have a bad experience of religion, which is a man made thing. But if a person denies the very existence of God in the first place. How can a person who denies the existence of something write about something that they consider does not exist? Mmmm
In doing this are they not then giving body to something that they previously considered didn't exist - so that they are now writing about an entity that does exist?
It can only truly be presented that 'God is not Great' from personal experience, not from carrying out an academic study on whether another person considered whether 'God was not Great'. It is then necessary for the writer to relate from personal experience why they consider 'God is not Great'.
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Summary: Thinking book
Comment: This book does make you think in two sense of that phrase: it makes you consider the big questions in life and it also makes you concnetrate hard to understand it in places.
I liked the book when considering it in the round. It think that Hitchens is clearly a very clever individual, well-read and who has considered his subject-matter in some detail and is very familiar with it. But this is part of the downside to the book in that, for someone like me, who is not a philosopher and who does not have a good grounding in the subject matter, it is difficult to follow in places (quite a few places).
I have also read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins recently and on balance I prefer Dawkins book. That said, the two books are written in different styles (Dawkins adopting more of a step by step guide, whereas Hitchens' approach is more conversational).
These books are very different to the books I would usually read and I think I have benefitted greatly from reading them, but to others who have not read them I would say that you need to be sitting quietly and without distraction to get the most out of the book!
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