Hitchens’ Book is not Great

Christopher Hitchens, the author of the best seller “god is not Great: How religion poisons everything” was born in an elite prosperous family in England and went to expensive private schools. I was born in a family on the rocks and went to free religious schools in India. We both became atheists but with a different ‘attitude.’

Two factors were critical in my early years in the development of my thought process. My parents stayed together through a succession of struggles and brought up three sons who became successful professionals. Both of them were deeply religious and believed wholeheartedly that God would look after them. While it can be argued that this faith contributed to their misfortunes by shifting responsibility from their shoulders, it did provide them strength to stick it out. My brothers believed the later and follow their own versions of Hindu belief systems. Although I think that there is some truth in both viewpoints, I became an atheist. Second important factor in my growth was that considerable reading about religions and numerous discussions with advocates of different faiths did not convince me of the existence of a super power or of the need to believe in one to lead a normal productive life.

One of the gifts I received last Christmas was the book by Hitchens. It took me a while to get to the book because I have a natural reserve towards popular things. As a writer whose book and the blog are rarely opened, I am not qualified to express an opinion on what makes a best seller. However, I do think that most books are bought not to be read but to be given as gifts. I suspect that the kindly gift givers only rarely read the books they give. They came across a good review, think of some one they owe a gift to who may enjoy it and help the book on its march to the top of the charts by ordering it. I was afraid that the book fell in this category and my fears were realized when I read it.

Hitchens accuses all major religions with complete impartiality in nineteen different ways in nineteen chapters of the book. The author focuses on monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam excepting occasional contemptuous comments on Hindu and Buddhist practioners. The 283 page long tirade can be summarized in a few words: God is a creation of man. It follows that all religious tracts, Old Testament, New Testament, Quran are human constructs which have misled their followers. Religion is the root cause of all evil; not only has it spread falsehoods through the ages, it has deliberately attempted to thwart the search for truth.

As Hitchens acknowledges towards the end of the book there is nothing in it which has not been said before. The misuse of authority, whether arbitrary or based on religion, has always been acknowledged and harping on it makes no contribution to the debate on God and religion. On the issue of the source of scriptures, atheists and agnostics do not need to be told that all scriptures have human origin. For the book to serve a purpose, it has to reach beyond the converted and convince the faithful away from their belief in the existence of God. Ear-splitting preaching of the fundamentalist, whether evolutionist or creationist, does not convince and it can’t be done by repeated blows of the same hammer on every page. Persuasion may sometimes succeed but that art is not displayed by Hitchens in this book. Moreover, it does not merit his consideration that the crimes he blames on religions were committed just as often in the era before religions took hold nor does it matter to him that educational institutions, hospitals, care facilities for the homeless, elderly and otherwise helpless have been provided through the ages much more frequently by religious organizations than by the self-righteous non-believers. Very conveniently, Hitchens equates the atheist criminals like Mao, Stalin and Hitler with religious figures because they used the strategies of religious tyrants. It escapes him that megalomaniacs use whatever systems are available to them to gain and retain power without necessarily believing in their underlying principles. He harps on the evil actions of clergy, without realizing that clergy is made up of ordinary humans who sometimes bend their beliefs for their own ends. He overlooks that from the groups of men and women who go through the same schools and pray in the same churches, some grow up into solid upright citizens, some not so good adults and vast majority in between. Noble humans act nobly and evil ones despicably. They have through the ages and so they will till Armageddon, with or without the backing of religion.

For this atheist the book has another basic problem: its only focus is reason; emotions have no place in this book. No doubt one has to eat and drink and have sex, though perhaps not as often as Hitchens repeats in the book. But a human being also has the stresses of daily life to cope with, failure to meet expectations, rejection by or the illness and death of the loved one(s), sudden unforeseen unpleasant change in circumstances of one’s life just to name a few. Hitchens may find it easy to toss such events in the life of others lightly as statistical mishaps; most people believe that the suffering individuals need support. If that support is provided by beliefs held over by humanity for hundreds of generations, how does it help to tell them that their beliefs are not based on facts? I find my solace in Mahler’s symphonies, my parents found it in Bhagvad Geeta, some friends find it in Bible or Quran and yet others in Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. The origin of these is immaterial as long as they help us cope with the vicissitudes of life. An ideologue like Hitchens needs to comprehend that there is more to life than living by his idea of realism. Every man and woman has a right to live by the principles he or she is comfortable with. Whether they are based on an idea, Messiah’s vision or a charlatan’s hallucination is not other people’s business