God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion

A bit too unphilosophical & journalistic (e.g. I can't get over the feeling that Hitchens was writing the book with the tv and the news on: this version of reality, however official it may be, is not relevant for me). I prefer Michel Onfray's version of Nietzschean atheism and I wonder why there are so few philosophers in the atheist controversion: it's almost like the theologians and scientists (more exactly authors writing either for God or for science) do all the talking. Still Hitchens is a wonderful rhetorician and a master of argumentative discourse and as an atheist, I had much to learn from him. And to paraphrase a recent article by Lesley Chamberlain on Nietzsche from the Guardian (07.02.2012 – http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/feb/07/political-message-nietzsche-god-is-dead?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038): we should distrust the God of Reason and with him, all the Enlightenment. We need a deeper, more complex (even more ambiguous) atheism!

I rate this book highly mostly because I agree with it. Religion has done far more harm than good, and it's all based on nothing. That about sums up the book, but Hitchens manages to be pretty bitchy about it along the way, and his condescension isn't going to win him any friends. As an athiest who appreciates the teachings of Buddha, I also thought his dismissive attitude toward Buddhism (which in its purest form shouldn't be regarded as a religion) was rash and probably done to strengthen his hypothesis. It wouldn't do to have exceptions to the rule. If you don't want to read the whole thing, I recommend highly the last chapter: The Need for a New Enlightenment.

Ah well, what should I say. One one hand it was an excellent read, as Christopher Hitchens is an amazing writer. Of course you first have to get into the fact the he will not spare you with difficult and obscure english words (thank you Kindle oxford dictionary) but once you get beyond this, it is a very fluid read.

Sometimes I think he rambles on a bit too much, and the other problem I had is, that I watched so many Hitches Atheist vs Religion discussions that most parts where a “I heard that before”.

Still, worth a read. Recommended.

This is the last of the Four Horsemen's books that I have read (and I heartily recommend all of them), and I was putting this one off because I assumed it might be something of a retread – choir-preaching, if you will. Indeed, if you have seen Hitchens debate or appear on television, you've come across a lot of what is in this book. What in one unified tome, God is Not Great is an excellent and quick read, at that (though perhaps more like a series of related essays than a single narrative, particularly in the second to last section which is something of a truncation of Jennifer Hecht's “Doubt: A History”). Happily, I can also say that even though it is Hitchens it, like the books of Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett, is not arrogant, it is not mean-spirited. Hitchens takes this subject very seriously, sees real consequences to superstition and theism, and makes a hard-nosed, unapologetic case. Confidence is not arrogance, telling hard truths is not mean. You may find more to disagree with in the more nuanced political positions he takes, but his case against religion is compelling.