God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,   ISBN:9780446697965

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Christopher Hitchens : God is not great

The last thing you could say about Hitchens is that the way his brain works and the opinions he expresses can hardly leave one indifferent (reader, forget about the style here, it ain't what matters).
The book is a middle-sized (I wish it had been twice the size, Hitch would make a bad joke on that), rather encyclopedic enterprise of demolition of anything religious, either you're ready for it or you ain't but I doubt (although I'd be delighted to be proven wrong) that at any point any believer would be shaken by what is studied and slowly deconstructed here. Chances are, most of them will be offended provided they give it a try. The atheists or antitheists will probably turn its pages with a jubilatory grin, finding fuel for their engines who might not really need it.
The undecided...ah well, I don't even know if any such thing as an undecided person exists when it comes to faith...aren't you supposed to believe or not to believe, final ?
If - like me - you're a Hitchens aficionado and check his conferences on youtube and such, you'll already have heard most of the best parts of the book during one of his numerous long incendiary verbal fights.
Still, it made me question myself on (new) matters related to the eternal good and evil question; while trying to make the reader think in absolute terms (not always a bad thing, if it remains at the theoretical level) and open the door to some deeper philosophical questions, it unfortunately leaves some of them unanswered or too quickly dismissed and you'd wish the Hitch was there to help you find the answers to those (although I'm not sure all of his would be satisfactory, thinking in absolute terms as he sometimes tends to do probably would lead anyone to - best case scenario - self-contradiction pretty quickly)

And one last thing : I was a bit saddened that the book ends on a warmongering note, one of Hitchens traits that pleases me the least (but is reading about being pleased ?). Malraux (although he denied it) once might have said « the 21st century will be religious or will not be at all. »
If that is true does Hitchens help solve the upcoming problems at all (since it is our future that might be in question here) ? Is he pushing in the right direction ? And I ?

Definitely worth a read.

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Reading this makes you think that religion is a an abomination of God at times, but then at other times it suggests that even these manifestations are natural considering our mammalian existence.

It makes judgments on gurus having faith in faith rather than a divine-being, as if that is a bad thing. Of course it is bad, as the book states, if the system of faith is deceitfully used as a weapon of exploitation of smaller minds.

It talks of acquiring mortality from literature like Dostoyevsky - I like that, but then I think of Tolstoy's spiritual-awakening depicted through his fictional character Levin.

It shows how the ties between religion and genocide go hand-in-hand similarly to the writings of Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

There are many truly laughable lines in the book (or tragic depending on your perspective) like:
Are you a Catholic atheist?
Chapter 7 is also good for laughs. There are also real words of wisdom like:
Foolish to use blind-men as guides when the sun comes up.
And others on Christ in Chapter 8.
Chapter 6 on intelligent-design drives me crazy... Like reading a 24 page proof of the non-existence of Santa Claus...

The last chapter "The Need for a New Enlightenment" goes on to site more examples of religious insanity, which I suppose, qualifies as a proof of the "need", but I was looking for an actual proposal about a "new enlightenment", from an atheist.

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First, other authors shouldn't read this. Hitchens write so well that they'll all want to hang up their pencils. Secondly, he's so on point. Third, but is he? We'll never really know. Or will we? I'd give it one more star if it was at all motivational. God or not, we have to be the change - (check out Live Like A Fruit Fly - also on amazon)

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Christopher Hitchens is a clever and funny man who makes a great case against organized bigotry. His questions are something that should be pondered by all of us. That being said, his book is no more than a disgusting over-simplification of what people actually believe. At times he's not very clear about who he's attacking. The further into the book one reads, the more it becomes obvious that Mr. Hitchens is terrified of the idea of God. He sees Big Brother instead of what could possibly be the truth. I'm not a big fan of C.S. Lewis and I wished that Hitchens would've spent more time critiquing his arguments; but it really just sounded like he was making fun of Lewis more than his philosophy. The gross over-simplification deals also with the atheists he discussed. Frankly, his comment on Nietzsche was painful to read. If he knew anything of Nietzsche, he would not have so ignorantly back handed his famous phrase "God is dead".

Pg. 67 (Hardback) "The decay and collapse and discredit of god-worship does not begin at any dramatic moment, such as Nietzsche's histrionic and self-contradictory pronouncement that god was dead. Nietzsche could no more have known this, or made the assumption that god had ever been alive, than a priest or witch doctor could ever declare that he knew god's will."

Any philosophy 101 student could tell you that Nietzsche was not claiming literally that God was dead. He was expressing his belief that God was dead in the eyes of his contemporaries. That they didn't understand what the beliefs they were claiming actually meant. It's a metaphysical idea, not a literal one. Hitchens does the same thing he accuses believers of doing; literally believing in metaphysical books. Which is ironic because if Hitchens replaced every religious idea claimed by others in his book with the word creationists, I'd probably agree with his critiques infinitely more.

P.S. The last line of Stephen Prothero's review said more than all of the reviews on here combined.

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This was a nice little book to read. I think it's well worth the money I paid for it, full of interesting information about religion and so fourth.

While I differ in opinion than the author, it still kept my interest and actually managed to shape a few different views I hold. I find it lovely that Hitchens also has done vast amounts of research regarding religion- he definitely doesn't attack with a lack of knowledge.

However, he seems to miss a point in regards to the destruction that 'religion' causes, which I think is actually caused by those with sociopathic tendencies more so than theistic behavior (they may hold the beliefs, but holding power is what makes a difference). But whatever floats your boat.