God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Christopher Hitchens

May 2007 · Sold by Twelve

About this ebook

Whether you're a lifelong believer, a devout atheist, or someone who remains uncertain about the role of religion in our lives, this insightful manifesto will engage you with its provocative ideas.

With a close and studied reading of the major religious texts, Christopher Hitchens 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.

In the tradition of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris's The End of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion.

Ratings and reviews

Yes, I did read it. It's not unbiased, as the title indicates. I found the research to be pretty shallow; this is really more of an amusing opinion piece, and that's okay. Hitchens always seemed like more of a (very) dry humorist than journalist as he made the rounds of the interview shows to promote his books. I regret his early death from (always) fatal esophageal cancer because he had a certain something, and because I'm a fundamentally humane person who wishes painful, terminal illness on no one. Anyway, the author's religious repugnance aside, enjoy the biting wit and don't accept the opinions as (ahem) gospel. We all make our own choices in this life. I trust "Hitch" has had an epiphany now that he's graduated.

Most of his arguments were familiar to atheists even when this book was published. I don't always agree with anyone: to do so is to substitute another's thoughts for your own. He was dead wrong about invading Iraq, and wrong about torture among other things. Because he encouraged other atheists to focus too much on Islam, both Christianity and Hinduism had an easier time becoming more radical under the radar with less scrutiny. Having said that, he and the other horsemen convinced me to stop making excuses for religion and to accept that it does much more harm than good. One need only look at the comments by Christofascist extremists among these reviews to understand why you should read this book.

This book didn't give enough of a challenge against Christianity or religion in general. In fact it gave the polar opposite effect for myself. Hitchens used the same arguments present in many other anti religious books and just rambled and asked questions that have already been given answers to for centuries. Recommended for the easily fooled amd the false blinded.

About the author

Christopher Hitchens was a contributing editor to Vanity Fair,Slate, and the Atlantic, and the author of numerous books, including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and George Orwell. He also wrote the international bestsellers god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Hitch-22: A Memoir, and Arguably. He died in December 2011.