My review, posted on Amazon and Goodreads, of a pretty good book I read a while back and just finished rereading.
god is not Great, by Christopher Hitchens
A must read for any freethinking person who still practices
or defers to religion. I didn't find anything startlingly new, but Hitchens
makes a strong case that religion is both false and destructive. Then he
addresses counter-arguments to his case, and concludes with the hope of a “new
enlightenment.”
Hitchens’ argument is well constructed and informed by his
many years of travel, journalistic experience, and reading. He writes with
sharp wit and great, highly literate style, dissecting and sometimes flaying
his subject.
I can't quite give this book five stars because he sometimes
lost focus and missed opportunities to develop his ideas. It's a fairly short
book, and I would have liked more on alternatives to religion. For example, it
seems clear to me that religion is so transparently false that it would not still
be with us unless many people felt a great psychological need for it to such
extent that the need will be satisfied in one way or another. So if people need
to feel persecuted, or an authoritarian father figure, or can't accept death,
or whatever (I really don't know what people want), then some person or
institution, a religion or dictatorial political system, will be more than
happy to fill that need, and so what is to be done about that? Hitchens states
that most people are capable to the extent that we can avoid this pitfall, but
I don't know.
