God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything » (~)

Chistopher Hitchens is a widely published polemicist and frequent radio and TV commentator. He is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School in New York.

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.

The New York Times - Michael Kinsley

… Hitchens has outfoxed the Hitchens watchers by writing a serious and deeply felt book, totally consistent with his beliefs of a lifetime. And God should be flattered: unlike most of those clamoring for his attention, Hitchens treats him like an adult.

One Putting It Mildly 1

Two Religion Kills 15

Three A Short Digression on the Pig; or, Why Heaven Hates Ham 37

Four A Note on Health, to Which Religion Can Be Hazardous 43

Five The Metaphysical Claims of Religion Are False 63

Six Arguments from Design 73

Seven Revelation: The Nightmare of the "Old Testament 97

Eight The "New" Testament Exceeds the Evil of the "Old" One 109

Nine The Koran Is Borrowed from Both Jewish and Christian Myths 123

Ten The Tawdriness of the Miraculous and the Decline of Hell 139

Eleven "The Lowly Stamp of Their Origin": Religion's Corrupt Beginnings 155

Twelve A Coda: How Religions End 169

Thirteen Does Religion Make People Behave Better? 173

Fourteen There Is No "Eastern" Solution 195

Fifteen Religion as an Original Sin 205

Sixteen Is Religion Child Abuse? 217

Seventeen An Objection Anticipated: The Last-Ditch "Case" Against Secularism 229

Eighteen A Finer Tradition: The Resistance of the Rational 253

Nineteen In Conclusion: The Need for a New Enlightenment 277

Afterword 285

Acknowledgments 295

References 297

Index 305

Reading Group Guide 319