I found this book to be utterly fascinating and compelling. Christopher Hitchens makes a strong case for supporting his subtitle: How Religion Poisons Everything. A very strong case. Although, I find it hard to imagine people with unwavering faith in God reading more than three pages of this book. But I must admit, my thinking closely paralleled that of Hitchens even before I read this book. And his thinking is much more eloquent. He's a talented writer. I can't remember a more gripping work of non-fiction. Not only is Christopher Hitchens well-read (he's read the bible more than once as well as translations of the Koran), but he's also well-traveled as well. He backs up his beliefs with many anecdotes from his own life (he's also the recipient of many death threats from the more fanatical believers.) He writes clearly and forcefully. I found his dissection of the "Intelligent Design" position extremely well done and even smile-producing (and after all, it's an easy target). His sense of humor shows through as well as his modesty. Out of curiosity, I briefly perused some of the many customer comments about this book on Amazon. Not surprisingly, he manages to split his reviewers into two distinct camps. Put me in the five-star camp. ( )

Life happens, and you have a book finished and a LibraryThing review to write, but you also leave it at home because it's Thanksgiving weekend and you don't want to carry more than you have to when you make the trek back to Victoria and thus all the passages you folded over and want to refer back to in making your case are safe on the bookshelf, and inaccessible.

So you make a few points quickly and get out. The first is that Terry Eagleton is right--if you're going to read either this or the Dawkins book, read this, because at least it is well written, and there is nary a dangling participle in site.

The second is that it's hard to disagree with Hitch--because, like, what's to disagree with? Religious people have done bad things? Churches have shown hypocritical behaviour? Get out! I mean, obviously all things considered I am on his side here--the side (briefly) of reason and health and not (briefly) superstition and fear. And obviously the religious are disproportionately on one side, unfortunately, and the secular disproportionately on the other.

And okay, in some ways that's worth just saying again and again and again, as Hitchens does here. And it's worth injecting some polemic spite if that will give you power--although for Hitchens it just seems to fall in with a natural pettiness and weaken his stance. And he does a service by insisting on the religious nature of totalitarianism, which is so obvious to the nonfaithful but which gets effaced in a million spurious "the problem is not that without Christ they'll believe in nothing, it's that they'll believe in anything" Christian apologist moves. And the most interesting part of the book is the systematic destruction of the idea that God sacrificing his only son for our sins is anything more than grotesque. I mean really, go ahead and try to argue otherwise.

But these are the handful of gems in a great fetid wash of regurgitated hate, solipsistic argument, and reductive self-congratulation. I don't want to pretend it's not a problem, the "how do you talk to the freaks?" thing, but really the freaks don't have to come on board for positive change--they just have to be marginalized, which is a crueller and less satisfying but ultimately more realistic solution. Stop hacking on religion at its worst, which is so easy; tackle the far more interesting question of what religion at its best--tolerant, compassionate, secular, humanistic, preserver of communal life, a powerful balm for the spirit and spur to political action, to say nothing of simple love--can do for us in the here and now. Anything? Maybe, maybe not. But that's the first step, before we loose the hounds of intolerance(even intolerance-of-intolerance): is religion as a practice separable from the hateful, atavistic aspects of sooooo much actual religion as practiced in the present day, and can it thus be helpful? Looking around at all the religious people I know who are brilliant, amazing, progressive, powerful, and who yes, often have sources of moral strength that are less readily available to us secular types, I say yes. Hitchens doesn't even tackle the question. ( )

Wonderful essay on atheism, or rather, against religion. Won't sway the believers, but won't dissuade the nonbelievers either. ( )

Hitchens makes me crazy, but I always read Hitchens. I'm sure he's aware of the dissonance and enjoys it. ( )

A rational and eminently sensible critique of religion and its destructive influences on society. Read by the author himself (who sounds a lot less ranty that you would at first expect) there is enough dry humour that you can bear to listen through the horrors of what religion has wrought upon societies throughout time and space, up to and including the current age. Where Hitchens is at his best is dismantling the ridiculous arguments religion uses to support itself, as well as using the arguments it uses against atheism/secularism to point out the flaws with organised faiths. ( )