God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens

Abstract

Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything Christopher Hitchens. New York: Twelve/Hachette Book Group USA, 2007. There is most certainly demonstrable market these days for books concerning religion and its excesses and its discontents, especially books about jihadists and Moslem terrorists in paranoid America fraught with fear; so it is not at all so surprising maverick journalist Christopher Hitchens might risk possible fatwa against himself by using title proclaims God Is Not contrary to what terrorist might declare before immolating himself to praise his Creator of choice. Hitchens comes not to praise Him but to bury Him. So, is an act of courage, or simply insanity? At very least, Hitchens earns points for courage. Hitchens is an iconoclast who attempts to knock Mother Teresa off her canonical pedestal (see, e.g., 45-48) after having already attacked Henry Kissinger as war criminal in another nasty little book. More recently, he even took on Harry Potter, beloved of all devoted little readers; but if even is not great, can Rawling's junior wizard hope to come out much better? Christopher Hitchens is flip-flopping champ among journalist who have worked both sides of political street-now you see him in pages of The Nation, now you do not-but he certainly knows how to get attention, like chimp at zoo, who throws pooh at you to get your attention and rile you up. He is an in-your-face provocateur, as likely to insult as to inform. Some will read him because they will be amused by his reckless invective. I recently approached Stephen Prothero's Religious Literacy as an optimistic agnostic, hoping to be illuminated, and I was not disappointed. I lowered my expectations for Is Not Great, however, since Hitchens is more bare-knuckled polemical street fighter, not scholar given to illuminating manuscripts. An accomplished sophist possessed of rhetorical tricks, Hitchens is master of outrageous opinions, as when, for example, he refers (110) to The Passion of Christ as a soap-opera film about death of Jesus ... produced by an Australian fascist and ham actor named MeI Gibson. Readers of this book may also expect to find violations of taste, as when Hitchens writers of Church of Rome (41) befouled by its complicity with unpardonable sin of child rape, or, as it might be phrased in Latin form, 'no child's behind left.' In this instance both sense and syntax are strained for shameless cynical humor. Understandably, some Roman Catholics may not exactly find it hilarious. Others may be outraged. Perhaps to book's advantage, bile is somewhat balanced. Catholics and Jews both become objects of ridicule, as when (on 111) Hitchens gives Jewish perspective on Crucifixion, when he cites Maimonides as describing the punishment of detestable Nasarene heretic as one of greatest achievements of Jewish elders, insisting that name Jesus never be mentioned except when accompanied by curse, and announcing that his punishment was to be boiled in excrement for all eternity, then exclaims: What good Catholic Maimonides would have made! …