God Is Not Great

Published in 2019, these notes discuss Hitchens's arguments in God Is Not Great from that period.

God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens takes reason to religion. It’s a deep dive into a terribly important topic. Not only because it has shaped (and for the foreseeable future will shape) our lives. Whilst some will argue that we’re already living in the next Enlightenment (or hope so, Steven Pinker), Christopher Hitchens is more militant and political, if we need an Enlightenment, he will be one of the horsemen of it.

Here are some observations I had on the chapters:

Putting it mildly

Hitchens sets out four objections to religious faith: “There still remains four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking.” He sees religion as attractive partly because we are only partly rational. He also writes “… those who offer false consolation are false friends”, “Religion is man-made” (with an emphasis on the man part), and “Religion poisons everything”.

Religion kills

Hitchens argues that religion seeks worldly power and interferes with nonbelievers and other faiths: “It must seek to interfere with the lives of nonbelievers, or heretics, or adherents of other faiths. It may speak about the bliss of the next world, but it wants power in this one”. He saw religion taking a larger role in public life after 2001, particularly in the United States (my note says ‘crazy Americans’). I took religious conflict between the West and the Middle East to be mutually reinforcing. As he puts it, “In this respect, religion is not unlike racism. One version of it inspires and provokes the other”.

Why heaven hates ham

Hitchens asks why Jewish and Muslim traditions reject pigs; my notes also mention a ban on Animal Farm by George Orwell. I found the ban irrational even in its historical context: pigs are intelligent, share much of our DNA and can be used almost entirely, while archaeology shows other people ate them without the feared problems, including trichinosis. To me, the prohibition is a superstition that should have ended when it began.

A note on health

In this chapter, Hitchens discusses false rumours spread by Muslims that harmed smallpox eradication. I linked that to the measles outbreak then in New York and reacted strongly. I saw the harm as incalculable. My notes question the idea that holy texts alone can prevent wrongdoing or protect people, especially when victims have done nothing morally wrong. Hitchens writes: “The attitude of religion to medicine, like the attitude of religion to science, is always necessarily problematic and very often necessarily hostile” and says that two major religions in Africa “believe that the cure is much worse than the disease”.

I also suspected that child rape and torture in religious schools might affect more children than not, though my notes did not establish that figure. I drew three conclusions at this point:

1. Religion and the churches are manufactured
2. Ethics and morality are quite independent of faith, and cannot be derived from it
3. religion is – because it claims a special divine exemption for its practices and beliefs – not just amoral but immoral

I further understood Hitchens to say that religion anticipates the end of the world with a kind of guilty joy, or schadenfreude, while its adherents hope to be spared themselves.

The metaphysical claims of religion are false

Hitchens writes: “Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody had the smallest idea what was going on”. My note connects this to Ockham’s razor: a religious explanation adds little to a scientific one.

Arguments from design

I saw a paradox in major religions: they ask people to be submissive while also encouraging a sense of superiority. Hitchens challenges arguments from design at both small and large scales, treating them as matters of faith rather than inquiry, including the claim that dinosaur bones were placed to test belief. The eye is one of his examples: my notes say eyes evolved over 40 times and that the human eye is inefficient, with its structure backwards and upside down. I also noted the remnants of evolutionary history in our DNA.

A scientific theory, as I understood the chapter, gains acceptance by accurately predicting discoveries or events. Hitchens quotes the estimate that “…98 per cent of all the species that have ever appeared on earth have lapsed into extinction”. He sees evolution as unguided and our survival as contingent on luck and bottlenecks. Another example that struck me was his observation: “… a cow is closer in family to a whale than to a horse”. Hitchens mentions The End of Faith by Sam Harris.

Revelation (Old Testament)

I read the Old Testament discussion as another example of religion’s focus on humans, especially men. The Ten Commandments do not address the protection of children, slavery, rape or genocide. My notes contrast that silence with God’s later directions to Moses about buying and selling enslaved people and daughters. Hitchens argues “… none of the gruesome, disordered events described in Exodus ever took place” and quotes Freud: “Freud made the obvious point that religion suffered from one incurable deficiency: it was too clearly derived from our own desire to escape from or survive death”. I also noted how local the biblical setting is, with no mention of the Incas or other peoples.

The New Testament

Hitchens points to differences among the four gospels, including their accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection. He disputes the translation of “the word translated as ‘virgin’, namely almah means only ‘a young woman'” and notes Jesus’s four brothers and sisters in Matthew 13:55–57. He also quotes C.S. Lewis, a “most popular Christian apologist”, on Jesus: “Now, unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic.”

“The case for the biblical consistency or authenticity or ‘inspiration’ has been in tatters for some time, and the rents and tears only become more obvious with better research, and thus no ‘revelation’ can be derived from that quarter. So, then, let the advocates and partisans of religion rely on faith alone, and let them be brave enough to admit that this is what they are doing.”

The Koran

Hitchens describes the Koran as a text that “… relates facts about extremely tedious local quarrels.” My notes say it is regarded as fully authoritative only in the original language, not in translation. He also claims “There has never been an attempt in any age to challenge or even investigate the claims of Islam that has not been met with extremely harsh and swift repression.” I noted that disputes over leadership after Muhammad’s death contributed to the Sunni–Shia divide.

Two quotes (as a rebuttal to Islam’s benign tolerance): “Nobody who dies and finds good from Allah (in the hereafter) would wish to come back to this world even if he were given the whole world and whatever is in it, except the martyr who, on seeing the superiority of martyrdom, would like to come back to the world and be killed again.” and “God will not forgive those who serve other gods beside Him; but he will forgive whom He will for other sins. He that serves other gods besides God is guilty of a heinous sin.”

The tawdriness of the miraculous

Hitchens writes “… the age of miracles seems to lie somewhere in our past.” I welcomed the possibility that miracles belong to the past, yet noted how believers still seek evidence for them. Houdini and others showed that many apparent miracles can be produced within the laws of nature. Hitchens concludes “Miracles, in any case, do not vindicate the truth of the religion that practices them.”

The stakes are practical as well as philosophical: people who believe in miracle cures may forgo ordinary treatment. Hitchens warns “… many people will die needlessly as a result of this phoney and contemptible ‘miracle’.” For him, miraculous evidence can weaken rather than strengthen the case for faith: “The evidence (miracles) for faith, then, seems to leave faith looking even weaker than it would if it stood, alone and unsupported, all by itself.” I would rather wonder at the atom, quarks, black holes or a spring morning sun.

Religion’s corrupt beginnings

Hitchens uses cargo cults and Mormonism as relatively recent examples to examine how religions begin. He asks “Is it not true that all religions down the ages have shown a keen interest in the amassment of material goods in the real world?” I described American evangelism as a heartless con run by no good men (also see Derren Brown – Miracles for Sale). Hitchens also claims “… twenty-five thousand words of the Book of Mormon are taken directly from the Old Testament.” My note adds a figure of 2,000 words from the New Testament. I was left wondering whether belief in belief itself might once have raised morale and helped groups survive.

How religion ends

Hitchens briefly considers religions that disappeared. I did not find a clear or actionable account of why they ended, beyond a lack of followers or a predicted end of the world that failed to arrive.

Does religion make people behave better

Religion is often linked to morality, but I did not think religious belief and moral behaviour necessarily go together. My notes contrast abuse by supposedly holy people with moral actions by atheists, including people who lived before the major religions. Hitchens argues that churches and Islam blessed the slave trade; he writes “the most devout Christians made the most savage slaveholders.” and “No supernatural force was required to make the case against racism.” He makes a further sweeping claim about slavery and the Koran: “… there is no country in the world today where slavery is still practised where the justification of it is not derived from the Koran.”

I also saw religious resistance to emancipation and criticised what I called Gandhi’s backward beliefs in that context. Hitchens writes “When priests go bad, they go very bad indeed, and commit crimes that would make the average sinner pale. One might prefer to attribute this to sexual repression than to the actual doctrines preached, but then one of the actual doctrines preached is sexual repression…” My notes fault churches for inadequate apologies for past abuses and for failing to denounce wrongdoing committed in the name of faith.

There is no “eastern” solution

I did not see Eastern traditions as exempt from these problems. My notes say some gurus pursue wealth, sex and power, and that Hindu and Buddhist histories also include violence. I pointed to ‘Buddhists who raped China in honour of Japan’ as my starkest example.

Religion as an original sin

Hitchens argues “There are indeed several ways in which religion is not just amoral, but positively immoral.” He lists his accusations and compares impossible duties with totalitarianism:

“These include: presenting a false picture of the world to the innocent and the credulous, the doctrine of blood sacrifice, atonement, eternal reward and/or punishment, the imposition of impossible tasks and rules

“The essential principle of totalitarianism is to make laws that are impossible to obey” (in regard to being responsible for sins from before your time).”

In his phrase, these duties amount to “… a spiritual police state.”

Is religion child abuse?

Hitchens argues that religion seeks to shape children’s undefended minds: “… religion has always hoped to practice upon the unformed and undefended minds of the young…” and “… to keep the ignorant in a state of permanent fear.” He rejects the claim that every sperm and egg is a potential life entitled to legal protection: “The only proposition that is completely useless, either morally or practically, is the wild statement that sperms and eggs are all potential lives which must not be prevented from fusing and that, when united however briefly, have souls and must be protected by law.” He adds “Mother Theresa denounced contraception as the moral equivalent of abortion…”

He also condemns infant genital cutting in multiple religions: “… it is hard to imagine anything more grotesque than the mutilation of infant genitalia (both sexes, multiple religions). Nor is it easy to imagine anything more incompatible with the argument from design.” The chapter ends with a grave accusation about abuse and institutional protection of offenders: “… we are talking about the systematic rape and torture of children, positively aided and abetted by a hierarchy which knowingly moved the grossest offenders to parishes where they would be safer.”

An objection anticipated

Hitchens recaps his case against religion: “… usefulness of religion is in the past, and that its foundational books are transparent fables, and that it is man-made imposition, and that it has been an enemy of science and inquiry, and that it has subsisted largely on lies and fears, and been the accomplice of ignorance and guilt as well as of slavery, genocide, racism, and tyranny…” He then takes up the objection that atheists such as Hitler and Stalin committed atrocities. My notes say religion also supported those regimes; Hitchens cites “The very first diplomatic accord undertaken by Hitler’s government… a treaty with the Vatican.” I understood his argument about communism to be that it sought to replace religion rather than simply oppose it.

A finer tradition

Unbelief, as I read Hitchens, has existed for as long as belief; he follows a line back to Socrates. He writes “Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.” I wondered how different the world might have been if organised religion had died out early in human history.

In conclusion (the need for a new enlightenment)

Hitchens argues “… it is better and healthier for the mind to “choose” the path of scepticism and inquiry in any case…” and calls for a renewed Enlightenment: “… we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment, which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man and woman.” I found the book enlightening. I do not expect religion and arguments about it to take up much of my thinking, but the book introduced me to what I called the sins of religion and helped me understand the subject better.