God Is Not Great:
Religion is one of humanities’ most complex concepts to date, and numerous “complex” instances have occurred in human history prior to the rise of religion. From the tiny, nomadic tribes of Mesopotamia that sought for stability and dominance at the birth of civilization to the ever-divided dozens of nations that dominate and dictate in the modern day, one of the world’s largest dividers since ancient days is religion. Like the cycle of nations, religion has seen the rise and fall of numerous attempts to captivate and grow from the cracks and crevices of societies. Hinduism and Judaism saw their beginnings in the early days of written civilizations, Christianity at the turn of the Common Era (Anno Domini or “The Year of Our Lord”), and Buddhism, Jainism, and Islam forming around the sixth century. As the number of religions have increased over the centuries of written history, so has the division and hatred between religious folk, which has caused a major change in the religious and social landscape of the last two centuries.
Christopher Hitchens, one of England’s most notable writers, social critics, and staunch atheists, is also one of the frontrunners of the atheist movement that has swept across the western world in recent decades. His 2007 publication, God Is Not Great, is considered his greatest manifesto against religion. As the title claims, Hitchens spends 317 pages pinning tons of historical and archaeological instances that differ from the religious accounts of the Old Testament, New Testament, and the Quran, along with his own accounts of how “religion poisons everything,” which becomes a common tagline that Hitchens throws at the end of every major argument. While much of the book is cleverly written, with Hitchens providing short anecdotes about his experiences with conflicts in Europe and fair logical arguments of how the human morale and spirit should act, what he brings to the table regarding proving religion, and more specifically Christianity, seems extremely lackluster. In fact, what I find to be the most impressive about Hitchens’ book is that he does such an amazing job twisting his own words around that the more one analyzes and rips apart Hitchens’ arguments, the less his argument makes sense.
Before diving into Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great, I believe that some background of myself is important. For one, I am not sure of my own faith, and I would consider myself to be agnostic. Prior to this class, I had started my journey on researching religions about a year ago when my grandfather had suggested that I read the Bible since he started dedicating his life to Christianity during and after an aggressive stomach cancer almost killed him without notice. Ever since that incident, my grandfather has supported the Bible down to a tee because he believes that God gave him cancer as a warning for not being overtly faithful. As he has become a staunch Christian, he started to urge me to read the Bible to learn the Christian way and hopefully become a devoted Christian. While I have read the Book of Genesis, I have not continued much further, but I do find the Bible to be a fantastic literary work that, even if not taken to a spiritual level, should be read by others for its literary value.
In terms of family, my mother’s side is mostly (if not all) Protestant Christian, while my father’s side if half Catholic and half Atheist, so I have grown up with all kinds of perspective on religion. While it has been around me all my life, I have not prioritized it as something I care too much about currently, for I believe that a religion or spiritual path will appear when I am not constantly thinking about it. I have also grown up around a ton of religious arguments, which has also scared me away from diving in and exploring religions. From an early age, my mom and dad were conflicted on what religious aspects I should learn. My mom always sided with Christian principles while my dad always argued that Christianity was nothing more than a lie and should be hidden from me. All my grandparents constantly told me their stories and views on religion, but despite all of them being Christian, their denominations obligated them to dislike each other, and such was noticeable.
Now that I am an adult, I have made reading religious texts a major part of my literary consumption, but I tend to read such due to their controversial nature rather than their religious aspects. I have also done the same with books on psychology, politics, social issues, war, biographies, and classical works, and a majority of my library is currently filled with numerous controversial and banned books that I feel obligated to discover, analyze, and interpret to my own abilities. What makes Hitchens’ God Is Not Great such a great contender for my library is that its simultaneously religious, political, and controversial, so such a work is right up my alley. However, I was later disappointed to find a plethora of incongruencies with how Hitchens manages the religious argument, and I would argue that his claims only make the later atheist movement of the past two centuries appear weak and disheveled.
Firstly, Hitchens never decides whether the Bible should be taken literally or metaphorically, and purposely changes his own stance on how the Bible should be interpreted to avoid logically tripping over his own claims. For instance, Hitchens takes a jab at the Bible by mocking the simplicity of the burning bush event when Moses finishes his conversation with God, claiming that the pictures from the Hubble telescope and Hawkings’ black hole theory are “…far more awesome and mysterious and beautiful—and more chaotic and overwhelming and forbidding—than any creation or ‘end of days’ story” (8). Upon reading this, I understood, and somewhat agreed, with what Hitchens was arguing.
We should be more worried yet entranced by phenomena that we have captured on camera or through equations and explanations compared to what we can only guess to be true, but there is no tangible evidence to back such up. Why must a creation or end story be complex to be beautiful? I find much of the Bible to be complex and beautiful, for much of the Book of Genesis describes the complicated and drawn-out journey of Abraham and the numerous ethical dilemmas he is forced to face. Furthermore, I am entranced by the story of Buddha and his transformation from royal blood to a hardcore ascetic, which is completely different from the Bible or the wonders of the universe. But that is the issue. This is not much of an argument, but it is an opinion, which is a common tactic that Hitchens employs throughout the rest of the book.
Also, why must religion and science have the same kind of beauty, and why does literary work that is fictional not face the same form of scrutiny? To argue that religion and science must have the same kind of “beauty,” which is subjective, would also mean that every other form of work that revolves around the human spirit must be the same kind of “beautiful,” at least that is what Hitchens’ argument implies. If everything were the same kind of “beautiful,” both the tangible and intangible would be equally “beautiful” in theory, which is something that no one can prove.
I would have agreed with Hitchens’ if his entire argument focused on the ridiculousness of taking the Bible in a literal manner, for I also agree that those who follow the Bible down to a tee are limiting themselves on the realm of knowledge that goes beyond the book. However, Hitchens follows the literal meaning so close to the point that he purposely avoids trying to analyze any fallacy in the Old and New Testaments. For instance, Hitchens wraps up his argument on the Old Testament by stating, “one could go through the Old Testament book by book… but always encountering the same difficulties. People attain impossible ages yet conceive children. Mediocre individuals engage in single combat or one-on-one argument with god or his emissaries…” (107). While one could argue that taking the Bible literally and nothing but the literal interpretation secures Hitchens’ case, I would argue that such a case does the exact opposite. For one, all ages and times in the Bible can be altered due to numerous reasons. If those who wrote the Bible attempted to keep up with the times of the past, many of the dates and ages would most likely be wrong to modern standards because the Gregorian calendar nor the Aztec calendar were used in the Middle Eastern region. Additionally, earlier parts of the Bible rely on whatever time scale the authors gave God during the creation of the universe. While the Bible famously argues that the Heavens and Earth were created in seven days, one could argue that it was split into seven days because the week has been seven days since the rise of the Roman Empire, or such was split into seven days to argue that what took the world itself roughly four billion years for Earth to form only took a week in God’s perception of time.
Such an explanation or even a defense for the time and religion debate would have increased Hitchens’ credibility not only as an atheist that is seeking to prove religion to be a poison to humanity, but as a critic of logic and reasoning. His lack of attempting to defend the Christian argument seems as if it was done on purpose to avoid any form of justification to the Bible at all. Even in this paper, I am willing to give credit to some of Hitchens’ arguments because the inability to give any form of defense or appraisal to the opposing viewpoint might imply that the initial argument would crumble at the sight of an opposing explanation.
Moving away from the religious texts themselves, Hitchens’ arguments regarding the validity of religious figures becomes noticeably contradictory as well. For instance, there are a handful of cases in which Hitchens takes his jabs at Jesus and Muhammad in the chapter “The Koran is Borrowed” in which he attempts to debunk how the two were not recorded enough to be taken seriously (129-131). While I will support his argument that the division between factions of Islam makes it harder to verify the validity of the Koran, his ability to hold any sort of similar criticism to other ancient figures seems to be nonexistent (Hitchens 130-131). For instance, he mentions that the Koran’s teachings “…conveyed an idea of [conquests] being backed by a divine will until they petered out at the fringes of the Balkans and the Mediterranean” (129). However, in the same sentence, Hitchens mentions the conquests to Alexander the Great, implying that Alexander the Great’s conquests did not convey the support of divine spirits through religious literature (129).
But this implication that Hitchens makes is false. According to Tomi Vandergriff, religious scholar, and author of “The Crucial Role Religion Played in the Conquests of Alexander the Great,” he argues that Greek paganism is what led to Alexander the Great’s notorious conquering of the ancient world. The explanation that Vandergriff makes is that Alexander the Great was attempting to make himself out as a demi-god as a way to please and cooperate with the gods of Olympus, stating, “…it seems that a major force driving Alexander the Great’s conquests was that he seemed to be in a constant battle with himself in trying to decide whether or not he was a demi-god attempting to become a god” (Vandergriff 2). Furthermore, Vandergriff mentions that Alexander might have been seeking the approval of gods, claiming that, “…he thought that he was in the god’s favor and that they sanctioned his campaigns” (3). While I agree that Hitchens makes a fair point regarding the validity of the Koran, to argue that Islam was simply a distinct way to cause conquest and then mention Alexander the Great without noting the complexities (or the validity) of Ancient Greek Paganism and Alexander’s philosophies is a flawed argument.
To go even deeper, Hitchens holds double standards between Christianity and Islam throughout the book. For instance, Hitchens mentions that those who follow Islam are allowed to hold “self-confidence” because Islam is a “young” religion (127). However, this kind of leeway is never given to Christianity in its earliest roots. In fact, Hitchens uses this mindset regarding Christianity in numerous examples, purposely ignoring that Islam has similar flaws. The big one Hitchens relies on is Mormonism. In the chapter “Religion’s Corrupt Beginnings,” Hitchens’ focus is to debunk religion (more specifically Christianity) by claiming that corrupt individuals take religion to recruit cult-like followers. While there are numerous examples that I would agree with that involve themselves in Christianity, like televangelists, Hitchens’ approach is to blame Mormonism. While there is nothing wrong with Hitchens using Mormonism to talk about religious corruption, the way he attempts to chain Mormonism to monotheistic religion seems to be an attempt to appeal to the extremes while also being incorrect. On page 161, Hitchens claims,” “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints… was founded by a gifted opportunist who… openly plagiarized Christian terms.” A few pages later, Hitchens begins to compare certain aspects of Christianity to Mormonism, such as the case for racism (166-167). While there is nothing wrong with pointing out religious exploitation, Hitchens’ use of Joseph Smith’s racism to define religion as an extreme force of influence is more of a failure on colonial American attitudes rather than religion.
Additionally, many aspects of Mormonism separate itself from both Christianity and Islam, which is something that Hitchens seems to avoid talking about in this very section. According to Biola University professor Sean McDowell, Mormonism denies the principles of unattainable divinity and claims that there must be a physical manifestation of God the Father, both of which Christianity and Islam openly deny (“What are the Key…”). This would mean that Hitchens’ argument against Islam and Christianity is flawed due to utilizing a religious example with extremities to worsen the public image of the previously mentioned when the conditions and behaviors of all three groups of followers and their respective literature vary in their own manner. While Hitchens is willing to explicitly separate Islam from Mormonism, claiming “…Muhammad hopes to put an end to any future ‘revelations’ after the immaculate conception of the Koran…,” Hitchens is never willing to give this same argument to Christianity (161). Rather than clearing Christianity from any relation, he continues to write about the flaws of Mormons and then give them the benefit of the doubt for using genealogical preservation, claiming, “…the followers of Mr. Smith should be congratulated for hitting upon even the most simpleminded technological solution to a problem that has defied solution ever since man first invented religion” (168).
While I agree with Hitchens that genealogical preservation of Joseph Smith and his followers’ records could be considered crucial to keeping score of the history of Mormonism, the reliability of keeping records from over fifteen hundred years ago could be just as easily argued against compared to roughly two hundred years ago when Mormonism was founded. Furthermore, Hitchens argues that Mormon literature also has major flaws in it as well, arguing that the battle of Cumora never happened, which is noted in Smith’s Book of Abraham (167). If a book from the mid-1800s is full of incongruencies and flat-out lies, then Hitchens could simply make the argument that Smith’s abuse of historical record ruins the credibility of Christianity and Islam, which is already an argument he has made. In short, Hitchens makes an argument using the appeal to extremes logical fallacy to ensure that any issue or abuse of power that Mormonism or Joseph Smith employed during the formation of the Church of LDS could be used to ultimately tarnish any stance made by Christian or Islamic texts and accounts since Hitchens refuses to hold a single stance on Mormonism’s relation to the monotheistic religions.
While the double standard between Islam and Christianity featured the fallacy of appeal to extremes, another major aspect of Hitchens’ so-called “manifesto” is that the book is full of numerous other fallacies. On page 230, Hitchens argues that using Hitler and Stalin’s regimes as ways to counteract the claim that all authoritarian regimes are religious does not work because “…it is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists.” In this case, rather than taking on the argument at hand, Hitchens avoids the argument altogether to mislead any opposing argument towards the clear case that both religious and non-religious governments are vulnerable to the flawed logic of authoritarian leadership, which would be a red herring.
Adding insult to injury, Hitchens then writes roughly eight pages explaining how all religions are responsible for the rise of religions (after finally taking the argument seriously), but he leaves one statement in the middle of his actual response to the argument that destroys his defense. On page 244, Hitchens claims, “…the long association of religion with corrupt secular power has meant that most nations have to go through at least one anticlerical phase,” meaning that it was not religion that caused the rise of authoritarianism but aided a role in the formation of soon-to-come secular dictatorships. This does make sense, as religions tend to have a pre-determined hierarchy built within the foundations of religion, like the Hindu caste system and Catholic officials of the Vatican. However, arguing that all of those who follow religion are bound to fall into and believe the power of secular dictators is nothing more than a blanket statement.
Additionally, there is much history that is left out of the Protestant indifference in Nazi Germany. For one, Protestant Christianity, and Christianity at the time, looked for the role of a strong hierarchical government that was prideful of itself. In the article, “Resistance and Accommodation: Protestant Responses to Nazism,” UNF author Mike Radcliffe states, “German Protestantism thus favored hierarchy and authoritarian government and thus it shared Hitler’s pain in Germany’s 1918 defeat and the subsequent, weak Weimar Republic” (3). In other words, in the beginning of the 20th century, German Christians were not looking for a government that wished an all-out assault on the Jews, it was seeking a government that would be okay with making a strong stance of itself following the failures of the first World War, which is a whole can of worms in itself. After German Protestants realized that the Hitler regime was not looking for peace with the Christians of Germany, relations began to tense up. Radcliffe explains, “…but peace [between the Nazi party and Christians] was short-lived. Article 24 of the Nazi Party Program states, “We demand that freedom of all religious denominations in the State insofar as they do not endanger its existence or violate the ethical and moral feelings of the Germanic race” (4). This was the Nazi regime’s tame way of saying that the use of religion to oppose the government’s ideas and morals will be persecuted against.
To clarify, this is not a justification of the Nazi party and their existence, for the Holocaust is one of the worst tragedies to ever strike humanity. Also, it should not be mistaken that all Christians were on-board with the removal of the Jews or the Christian affiliation with the Nazi party, but Hitchens fails to mention such in his manifesto of debunking religion. This goes back to Hitchens’ game of pick-and-choose, which seems to be a common tactic to avoid defending religious folks who are caught in the crossfire between the abuse of the religiously corrupt and the religious disapproval of atheists.
Moving to a more microscopic level, Hitchens seems to do the same with person-by-person cases. For instance, Hitchens asks the question “Does religion make people behave,” and he uses the example of Ghandi being murdered by radical Hindus for not being entirely faithful to Hindu beliefs (184). At the end of the chapter, Hitchens explains, “At a minimum, this makes it impossible to argue that religion causes people to behave in a more kindly or civilized manner. The worse the offender, the more devout he turns out to be” (192). While I will agree that religion does not guarantee that an individual will act in a better manner, it can certainly be argued that religion is used as an excuse for violent people. Take, for example, the Ghandhi example that Hitchens employs in his argument. Did Hinduism tell those devout followers to go out and specifically kill Ghandi for his acts of freeing India from the British and splitting parts of India up? Probably not, for claiming that a religion made someone do something that the religion has never condoned is nothing more than attempting to throw religion under the bus to void personal accountability. And if Hinduism did somehow tell everyone that Ghandi had to be murdered for his actions, why did the entire Hindu population of India not turn his back on him? In fact, the people of India, both Hindus and Muslims, had a decent overall liking of Gandhi, mainly because he freed India from colonialism.
Another aspect that Hitchens avoids mentioning regarding religion is that conflict labeled as “religious” would have still occurred in most cases regardless of the religious affiliations of two or more groups. For instance, the Israel-Palestine conflict, stripped to its core, is the result of a long-term territorial conflict that the United States and the United Kingdom caused by dropping the Jewish populations that were still recovering from the end of World War II into the land of Jerusalem. While religion did choose the location of where the Jewish population was relocated to, a comparable situation would have happened if the Jews were not Jewish. For instance, many nations, including the United States, did not want a Jewish population after and during World War II. Daniel Gross, author for the Smithsonian Magazine, wrote up an article called “The U.S. Government Turned Away Thousands of Jewish Refugees, Fearing That They Were Nazi Spies,” in which he discusses how FDR’s government left many Jewish refugees displaced despite concerns of mass murder. Gross writes, “Until the very end of 1944—by which time photographs and newspaper reports had demonstrated that the Nazis were carrying out mass murder—Attorney General Francis Biddle warned Roosevelt not to grant immigrant status to refugees.” In the case that this was not a matter of religion, security reasons would never change, for the United States had spent the beginning of the 20th century fighting communist and nazi spies, regardless of their religious affiliation.
While the Israel-Palestine conflict is not heavily mentioned within Hitchens’ book, I mention the conflict because Hitchens uses the Bosnian Genocide of the 1990’s as a way to solely blame the conflict on religion, claiming, “Milosevic [the president of Serbia] was an ex-Communist bureaucrat who had mutated into a xenophobic nationalist, and his anti-Muslim crusade, which was a cover for the annexation of Bosnia to a ‘Greater Serbia,’ was to a large extent carried out by unofficial militias operating under his ‘deniable’ control” (21). It is important to mention that much of Bosnia was Muslim while a majority of Serbia is Orthodox Christian, but it is also just as important to realize that any characteristic of the enemy at-hand can be used to further stir the pot of war. While Serbia might have used religion to an extent to push their genocide, general Serbian disliking of the Bosnians could still be the primary reason as to why the genocide occurred.
By ignoring that both the Bosnian genocide and the Israel-Palestine territorial dispute could have been caused by a non-religious purpose, it weakens Hitchens’ argument against religion and tarnishes his credibility. Pushing the agenda that only the religious will cause conflict sets a dangerous precedent that implies that secular groups and individuals will never act in such a barbaric manner against their opponents, which the Nazi party has shown to be false. Hitchens’ ignorance and cynical attitude towards the faithful has shown to be just as dangerous as the religious nutjob that screams of his or her overwhelming fear of judgement day, and both are ultimately responsible for weakening the civil and righteous acts that many religious individuals conduct every day. The few bad apples of society, regardless of their denomination and faith, should not be responsible for highlighting the entirety of their represented religion.
After the endless back-and-forth of pulling apart and picking out pieces of one of Hitchens’ highlighted works, there are a handful of great qualities that come from his work. For one, I admire Hitchens’ dedication to writing what he has found to be true in his heart and his mind. While I have mentioned numerous flaws that Hitchens could have tinkered with prior to sending it out to publishers, I cannot say that Hitchens is wrong for his own opinion. In fact, me and Hitchens share similar perspectives. We both believe that the radically religious who abuse the authority of the church should be seen as evil, for someone who uses religion to fulfill their own selfishness are scummy individuals. I agree with Hitchens’ approach regarding the use of religion to ignore scientific discoveries that could aid mankind, claiming that religion has damaged public health and its effectiveness (48-49).
My biggest concern regarding this critique and review is that I do not want my work to be seen as me “defending” religion without considering Hitchens’ argument. In fact, I want this paper to be seen as me helping Hitchens with his logical work, for there are consistent flaws that cause contradiction and confusion among the reader. There were instances in which I would read his argument, agree with him on the theoretical level, but he would either not follow through when applying it to reality or he would fail to give religions an equal playing field. Hitchens has every right to critique religion, and while I may not be as cynical as he was during his lifetime, a stance backed by determination is much more admirable than an argument that lacks a spine. To an extent, I sympathized with Hitchens when it came to being split between religion in family. Having two Christian denomination and a couple of atheists sprinkled around has made it hard throughout my life to trust one or the other, or when my views fail to align with any of the three sides at all.
The only aspect that I despise of Hitchens’ is his inability to create a logical argument without letting his overwhelming disliking of religion get in the way. After reading God is Not Great, I found myself doing more research into different religions and what some went through during times of war or dictatorships. Sometimes I would find myself having sympathy for religions and their followers. Other times, I would feel disgusted by the ways religions would conform to such evils. But, thanks to Hitchens’ unfair defense of religions, I found myself looking deeper into the importance religion has had over the centuries. Ghandi was killed by Hindu extremists, but he freed over three hundred million people with the motivation of religion. A majority of Nazi Germany was Christian, but Hitchens’ hatred for the Christians made me look deeper into the Christian perspective of the Nazi Party, and how many German Christians were threatened with concentration camps if they dared to speak out against Hitler. Nothing is as concrete and simple as it seems, and I blame Hitchens for misleading possibly thousands of people into believing certain historical “facts” that are nothing more than misleading, one-sided arguments, all because he dislikes religion.
Overall, Hitchens’ God is Not Great is a mediocre piece of literature. Hitchens is a great writer, but there are major gashes in his argument against religion that harm much more than just religion itself. While I admire his attempt to topple down religions, the further one reads into his manifesto of atheism, the more jarring Hitchens’ argument becomes. From purposely leaving out opposing arguments to his opinions to using religion as a scapegoat for the failures of humanity, Hitchens struggles to keep a consistent viewpoint throughout his 317-page book of fallacies and half-truths. Hitchens is relatable, as I see many of the questions that I have asked myself and others throughout his book, but I fear that his immense hatred towards religion has led to the failure of properly informing an audience of the numerous aspects of humanities that play a role in the endless exchange of human events. I did not like this book, but I would suggest reading it, for the book acts as a great mindset towards understanding the atheist mindset of the 20th and 21st centuries. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Hitchens, understanding the viewpoint of another individual is crucial to argumentative development, and I am glad that Hitchens has helped me in examining religion’s role in politics, history, and philosophy.
Works Cited
Gross, Daniel A. “The U.S. Government Turned Away Thousands of Jewish Refugees, Fearing That They Were Nazi Spies.” Smithsonian.Com, Smithsonian Institution, 18 Nov. 2015, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-away-thousands-jewish-refugees-fearing-they-were-nazi-spies-180957324/.
Hitchens, Christopher. God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Twelve, 2007.
McDowell, Sean. “What Are the Key Differences between Mormonism and Christianity?” Biola Magazine - Biola University Blogs, Biola University, 18 June 2012, www.biola.edu/blogs/biola-magazine/2012/what-are-the-key-differences-between-mormonism-and.
Radcliffe, Mike. “Resistance and Accommodation: Protestant Responses to Nazism.” Resistance and Accommodation: Protestant Responses to NazismNazism, The Osprey Journal of Ideas and Inquiry, 2007, digitalcommons.unf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=ojii_volumes.
Vandergriff, Tomi. “The Crucial Role Religion Played in the Conquests Of …” The University of Vermont, The University of Vermont, 2013, dc.uwm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=rsso.
Photo by meesh on Wikimedia Commons