Christopher Hitchens, the bilious Brit, has bagged a bestseller. Give Chris a big hand and a mug o' Guinness. Good show, old sport! His latest vowel movement is called God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. It has everyone's knickers in a twist. Jesus, you have to hand it to Hitchens, who has a knack for showing his ass in a way to maximize the outrage. Years ago, he picked on Mother Teresa, a shriveled old nun who lived with untouchables. He's graduated to God. That is, he's finally picking on someone his own size.
Hitchens has also struck a profitable nerve. In its eight weeks of existence, God Is Not Great has gone through 11 printings and inflated the author's ego beyond anything heretofore seen in the anals (sic) of psychology. In the meantime, he's compiling a companion volume called (swear to God!) The Portable Atheist. That is, if he finishes it before being smitten by a bolt of lightning.
In God is Not Great, with the intolerant zeal of a fundamentalist, Hitchens contends that religion is "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children." And, of course, because of this, it poisons "everything."
I've never been one to argue with atheists or even fuss over the finer points of theology with religious people. And I don't argue from the standpoint of religious faith, which I've always seen as a private matter. Thus I can't say, "Hey, Chris, what about my God? What's He, chopped liver?" But as a product of a liberal arts education with a general interest in many subjects, including those embracing matters of the spirit, I am not one to slam any door of inquiry. To bang a drum for religion's demise because it "poisons everything" seems so pathologically Chris-centric. To paraphrase a person whom Hitchens has all but equated with Satan, it depends on what the meaning of "everything" is. I know many people with religious faith—Quakers, Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus—and it seems to enrich rather than poison their lives. I often find myself envying the inner strength and serenity that their religious faith offers them.
Thus it would be hard for me to embrace such a sweeping thesis. The desire to destroy religion, as Hitchens appears to advocate doing, is itself a form of fundamentalism. I, of course, agree—and I hope few rational people would disagree—that religion, as it's used by world leaders like George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden and Iran's misleader, Ahmadinejad, is poisoning the planet. While Islam's apologists downplay the violent excesses of their martial faith, so-called "Christians" are lobbing bombs on civilians in Iraq and so-called Hindus are prepared to lob bombs at so-called Muslims, and so on.
But there's also an areligious dude in North Korea who's prepared to launch nuclear strikes against anybody, regardless of religion, an areligious totalitarian leader in Russia, and Libya's Gadhaffi, who doesn't use religion to justify his insanity. Let's not forget Saddam Hussein, Uganda's Idi Amin, Nigeria's Sani Abachi, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Liberia's Charles Taylor, and Myanmar's junta. None of these were "religious" leaders, but they're still "poison." On the other hand, there are Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandala, both religious, both good to have around, and the Dalai Lama, and…
I discussed this topic with a friend, a brilliant man who's written books on "higher consciousness," and he sees Hitchens as playing the role of Satan in John Milton's Paradise Lost: "I'd rather rule in Hell than play second fiddle in heaven! His God seems to be himself, a pathological disaster of the ego."
Though that makes sense, Hitchens may just crave attention now since his secular god, George W. Bush, turned out to have feet of clay. He got it. Good show, old chap!
