As one might guess from the title, this book offers a critique of religion and a particularly scathing one at that. Unfortunately, I don’t feel at liberty to delve into the specific topics covered in the different chapters, and an anecdote used early on in the book illustrates the author’s opinion on the matter. During a panel debate, Hitchens was asked to imagine himself in a strange city with the evening coming on and a large group of men steadily approaching. He was then asked whether he would feel more or less safe if he were to learn that the approaching men were returning from a prayer meeting. Hitchens answered that he had found himself in precisely that situation when visiting Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem, Baghdad, and many other cities. In most cases, it was proper to fear for ones life.
What irks me is that even well-meaning criticism on a topic relating to religion risks being viewed as being disrespectful. This is because people divide their values and beliefs into two categories: one based on their faculty of reason, and one based on faith which is not subject to questioning. While secular ideas can always grow and improve, religious ones are written in stone. If religion were a private phenomenon, like having an “invisible friend”, it would be one thing, but it permeates our relationships, schools, medicine, governments, militaries and much more.
As little as one hundred years ago, the majority of the world’s religious leaders quoted holy scriptures in support of slavery. Today they are actively preventing vaccination of the horrible child maiming disease polio. Their condemnation of contraceptive use is certainly not helping the eradication of AIDS either, and if the HIV virus is god’s punishment for homosexuality then it seems heavily biased toward the male variety. One of the most fantastic and promising forms of medical research, that of embryonic stem-cells, has unfortunately also been hampered by religious activists. Throughout history, from Aristotle, to Galileo, to Darwin, the castigation of science by religious leaders has been relentless.
Hitchen’s book not only discusses how religion ruins entire countries, but also how it can poison the individual. Holy books dictate what we may eat, whom we may love, how to treat our bodies, and even how to cut the body parts of babies. Walking on eggshells an entire lifetime might be possible if these sacred laws were limited to sinful physical actions, but that’s never where it ends. We are imposed with a particularly horrible form of dictatorship, namely one where thought crimes are forbidden. To say you’re not allowed to steal your neighbor’s wife is one thing, but if you even think that you would like to have one of your neighbor’s possessions, you’re on a path to eternal damnation. This type of restriction on reasoning exists by force in all religions, otherwise their dogma would not be able to persist. What is most unfortunate is that children are inoculated with these beliefs before they reach the age of reason, though perhaps that is the entire point.
Many evil things have been done in the name of god, and many good people are believers. Still, their good actions do not require the existence of an omnipotent being to be justified. When forced into a corner, people of religious conviction default to saying that if god does not exist, all evil is permissible. Perhaps though, what they’re really saying, is that to them all evil would be permissible.
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