Review of Christopher
Hitchens, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Copyright 2007 by Jeffrey Stueber, all rights reserved
My essay seeks reviewers, see how
Review other pillars of unbelief if you like - Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Chester Dolan, S. T. Joshi, B.C. Johnson, Ruth Hurmence Green, and Steve Allen
I remember my father once telling me about a
co-worker who said he would rather have someone call him a “fool” to his face
and be this honest rather than continue to pretend differently. Such candor can be appreciated and it is
within this candor that Hitchens writes God
is not Great. He doesn’t pull any punches; this yellow book does not lead
to addresses and phone numbers of your neighbors; instead, it leads to the
dissolution of the trust in religion (or so he supposes).
Hitchens, early in his book, reveals a
challenge given to him by Dennis Prager, one of
Yet, I live in a community where there are
many Christian churches (none of any other faiths that I know of) and I would
feel absolutely safe walking past a group of men coming out of a prayer meeting
at any one of those churches. So what is
the difference between Hitchens' experiences and mine?
Obviously Hitchens is ignoring the “moron”
factor (I could use any other negative terminology here also) playing itself out
in a lot of these instances and the tendency of some people to ignore evidence
contrary to their beliefs while continually adopting a theology harmful to themselves
and others. It seems as if Hitchens follows the same liberal political
philosophy as Michael Moore: just as the
presence of a gun causes gun crime and accidents (but not the mismanagement of
it by the owner), so the presence of belief in god causes other violence (but
not any defect in character by the believer).
Obviously things are a lot more complicated than that. The mere presence of a gun or religion does
not push one toward violence.
Indeed, I could follow the same chain of
reasoning as Hitchens to prove that science is a bankrupt enterprise which causes
us to follow hypotheses and facts that are horribly untrue while belief in
evolution causes racism and hence we should abandon practice or belief in both,
but Hitchens would naturally have nothing of that chain of reasoning. Frankly,
neither would I simply because I recognize that people often believe dumb
things because of either their unwillingness to follow rival theories, hard-hearted
persistence in remaining in their own state of mind, or lack of facts. (Fellow atheist Michael Shermer would
certainly agree.) So why not believe as
much with the study of religion? The
reason, I think, is that Hitchens is looking for ammunition to throw at
religion as to disprove any and all religious tenets.
After exploring the bad effects of belief in
religion, Hitchens next briefly delves into theological truth claims and
reflects on the origins of religious belief.
One
must state it plainly. Religion comes
from the period of human history where nobody – not even the mighty Democritus
who concluded that all matter was made from atoms – had the smallest idea what
was going on. It comes from the bawling
and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable
demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance, and other infantile
needs). Today the least educated of my
children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of
religion, and one would like to think . . . that this is why they seem so uninterested
in sending fellow humans to hell.
The purpose of this narration is not to tell
us that religions were present when we knew little about the natural world
because many things arose during times of primitiveness (government, education,
and so forth). What it seems Hitchens is trying to say is that belief in a god,
or gods, arose because of a lack of knowledge and it is this lack of knowledge
of the natural world that germinates belief in god while knowledge of the
natural world destroys it – or, rather, should destroy it.
If this is true, then the religious would
only believe because of lack of knowledge. This clearly is not the case and
Hitchens knows this otherwise he would not criticize theistic arguments such as
the argument to design. And what are we
to make of converts to Christianity from either atheism or agnosticism
including Alister McGrath, C. S. Lewis, J. Budziszewski, Josh Mcdowell, Antony
Flew, Patrick Glynn, and Ignace Lepp (none of whom based their conversion on
lack of knowledge of the natural world)?
Clearly Hitchens displays a blind spot toward theistic belief here,
perhaps mimicking the very single-minded fixation on one idea that causes the
religious he criticizes to behave as they do.
That brings us to the argument to design and
Hitchens has to attempt to dismantle that by suggesting that intelligent design
theory “is not even a theory” but is
“well-financed propaganda” and dissolves into “puerile tautology.” Here I must digress.
Suppose you came upon a man who said the
theory that women salespeople sell more cars than men is not even a
theory. He then, without batting an eye
lash, also told you that it was discovered that there was no difference between
the number of cars sold by men and women and this disproved the idea he just
claimed was not even a theory. What
would you make of such a man? You might
affirm that he has contradicted himself, did not have his facts straight and
was horribly mistaken, or was willfully ignorant of the facts. Such is the case, I believe, with
Hitchens. In fact, evolutionists have
been overtly quick in refuting any kind of creationism by pointing out that the
natural world does not agree with
what it would look like if a god had created it. That, in itself, makes intelligent design a
theory unless evolutionists would like to disclaim their negative theological
claims. (But I seriously doubt they ever
would.)
Stephen Gould and Richard Dawkins have both made
claims that some of the features of animal life do not appear as they should if
they were designed by an intelligent designer.
The following blurb from my article “Are Evolutionists
Fooling the Public” states:
Gould, for instance,
asks, rhetorically, why God made increasing cranial capacity and reduced teeth
(and other features) in the half-dozen human species discovered in the rocks.
Was it to mimic evolution or test our faith? Perfection, Gould says, covers the
tracks of history whereas the tracks of history are evolution's evidence.
Perfection could be imposed by a wise creator, but imperfections record a
history of descent. Why should many of us creatures do what we do with the same
bone structures unless we received them from a common ancestor, he asks.
Implicit in his argument is the assumption God would not use the same
structures again. Gould has also argued that a creator would not have designed
the panda's thumb like it is.
Richard Dawkins complains about the shape of the bony flatfish, stating
"Its very imperfection is powerful testimony of evidence of its ancient
history, a history of step-by-step change rather than of deliberate design. No
sensible designer would have conceived such a monstrosity if given a free hand
to create a flatfish on a clean drawing board." Cornelius Hunter has
recently listed numerous evolutionists who resort to "negative
theology" to bolster their evolutionist beliefs. For example, Tim Berra
and Mark Ridley believe God would not repeat a pattern, as in the use of DNA in
all organisms. Stephen Gould believes God would not make it appear as if
Orchids were made of spare parts from other flowers. J. B. S. Haldane believes
there are too many species (insects, for instance) and God would not have
created that many. Darwin himself puzzled at the odd connection of parts of
which animal and man were produced and suggested an evolutionary origin to
them.
Hitchens criticizes one particular theistic
or creationist (or even intelligent design) argument against evolution that
says a whirlwind flying through a junk yard would not be able to assemble a
jumbo jet. Hitchens says “there are no
‘parts’ lying around waiting to be assembled” and misses the point of the
argument entirely. Actually the author
of this favorite could have said jet parts falling down a mountain, or lying on
a table, or flowing down a river (or whatever) do not produce a jet. The point is that parts do not naturally
assemble themselves into meaningful functionally-whole units whether falling,
lying, or whirling around and the author only chose the tornado analogy when
others could be chosen (Actually, when considering origin-of-life experiments,
this idea about parts lying around is probably colloquially expressed but
essentially correct. However,
origin-of-life experiments don’t reveal evolution to be true there either, much
less that jumbo jets can spontaneously assemble.)
The
human eye is the victim of frequent creationist allusions to design and
Hitchens attacks this by quoting Michael Shermer: “The anatomy of the human eye, in fact, shows
anything but ‘intelligence’ in its design.
It is built upside down and backwards . . . for optimal vision, why
would an intelligent designer have built an eye upside down and backwards?” Michael Denton has written an article
advocating that the eye is designed as it is because it promotes the better
blood flow the eye needs and placing blood vessels behind the photoreceptors of
the eye would impede the flow of light to the brain. I have perused this
article and found it difficult to digest, but we don’t really need to come up
with a solution to this dilemma because evolutionists have, at times,
rhapsodized at how evolution is capable of magnificent creations. For instance, an article by John Koza (and
others) in Scientific American says “Evolution is an immensely powerful creative process,” so creative,
in fact, that engineers are studying its methods.” Yet, as far as the eye goes, the powerful
creative process is a bumbling idiot, so idiotic that it got the design of the
eye wrong. So should we suspect that the
eye could not have been a result of a process like evolution that is so good at
creating intricate and detailed biological features? Perhaps this refutes the Darwinian view. Evolutionist simply cannot have it both ways
– to both claim evolution is an intelligently creative process and foolishly random
as well. (Of course, Hitchens shouldn’t
be able to say the eye is poorly designed when he complains that intelligent
design is not a theory, but, well…)
Later in this book, Hitchens defends secularism
against Christians who attempt to say it has harmful effects on society. Those who invoke secular tyranny, he says,
are hoping we will forget two things:
the connection between Christian churches and fascism and the
capitulation of the churches to National Socialism. I am perfectly willing to grant him the fact
that churches have unfortunately played friend to Hitler and Erwin Lutzer has
done a good job for me in presenting this information in a very readable form. [1]
Yet, Hitchens doesn’t so much defend secularism as throw mud at religion to
show that it bears the burden of the guilt of tyranny. This obviously obscures the true record and
shows his defense of secularism is missing very vital stories.
This is a brief record of some of the
missing facts. Hitler was not really a
secularist but more a pagan occultist.
However, his philosophy was thoroughly evolutionist in the fact he
accepted the common attitude at that time that different human races had
evolved at different times and different rates so that some people (Jews and
blacks, for instance) were more inferior biologically and had to be eliminated
for the Nordic Aryan race to progress.
As far as Communism, Richard
Pipes observes:
The
Marxist concept of social evolution arose under the influence of the Darwinian
theory formulated in 1859 in On the Origin of Species.
Marx’s intellectual pupil Lenin
announced that:
Just
as Darwin put an end to the view of animal and plant species being unconnected,
fortuitous, “created by God” and immutable, and was the first to put biology on
an absolutely scientific basis by establishing the mutability and the
succession of species, so Marx put an end to the view of society being a
mechanical aggregation of individuals which allows of all sorts of modification
at the will of the authorities . . . and which emerges and changes casually,
and was the first to put sociology on a scientific basis by establishing the
concept of the economic formation of society as the sum total of given
production relations, by establishing the fact that the development of such
formations is a process of natural history. [3]
So Communism was built on an atheist
doctrine that used biological evolution for its “impetus.” Communism ushered in years of terror and
murder that would make a Pope blush.
Sure religions have their apologies to make, but let us not ignore the
influence of evolution on the lives of those prone to fascism.
Today there is a somewhat growing desire for
acceptance of infanticide and this is led by – guess who? – evolutionists. Infanticide is, of course, a logical outbreak
of the atheist belief in the right to abort and this is a logical outbreak of
the belief in evolution. (See Humanist Manifesto I for information.) If the unborn do not have any value by any
metaphysical standard, why not those just born?
And why not the elderly and those very sick?
Of course atheists can be quite quaint and
friendly, even fully reflecting Christian morality while claiming you don’t
have to be religious to be moral.
However, this is an example of where ideas that are accepted by
non-Christians come from Christianity.
It is within the Christian theological realm where moral ideas come from
and atheists live with and reflect these ideas even though they cannot accept
the metaphysical ideas that are linked with the moral ideas.
On the other end of this debate is Dinesh
D’Souza, author of What’s So Great About
Christianity. D’Souza, early in his book, crafts a choice
much as Prager did, only this time from Randy Alcorn: You are given a choice of two beliefs
systems. The first tells you that you are the blind and arbitrary product of
time, chance, and natural forces; you have no essence beyond your body and at
death you will cease to exist; in short, you came from nothing and you are
going nowhere. The second states you are
a special creation of an all-powerful God, in his image, and if you accept his
plan for salvation you will spend eternity with Him. Only a fool, given a
choice here, would pick the first atheistic view over the second, theistic way
of viewing the universe. Atheists generally
see their world view as part of a package D’Souza accurately, I think,
summarizes as so:
Modern
atheists view themselves as brave pioneers, facing the truths of man’s lowly
origins and the fact of death with heroic acceptance. They profess to be guided not by blind faith
but by the bright . . . flame of reason.
They derive their morality not from external commandments but from an
inwardly generated calculus of costs and benefits. Setting aside hopes for eternity, they are
dedicated to the welfare of mankind.
Science is their watchword, and its practical achievements are the only
“miracles” they are willing to countenance.
There is a certain boldness in atheism and
liberalism in general that sees it the responsibility of everyone to rebel
against religious dogma. This rebellion
comes at a cost and - this is one of the more interesting facts in the book –
more secular societies reproduce less and have a poor replacement rate. This makes sense to a certain point. Christianity teaches children are a blessing
while atheism teaches us that children are the result of a choice (abortion)
that has not been practiced, a result that only gets in the way of one’s
freedom. This certainly gives one less reason to have children.
D’Souza is quite comfortable in admitting
there are religious repressions in the past, but Christianity has been the
cornerstone of the beginnings of Western civilization. For example, Christianity teaches the separation
between the secular sphere of power and the theological sphere so that neither
can encroach on the other’s realm. Since
humans are by nature sinful, a separation of powers between governmental units
needs to be upheld. Capitalism has its Christian roots as well. Christians were some of the first to condemn
slavery and they led the movement out of Roman days to the Middle Ages where
serfdom was established. It was
Christianity that elevated the status of women so much so that the Romans
considered Christianity a religion for women.
Of course religion has seen its darker side,
but if you judge atheism by the same standards that atheists want to judge
Christianity, atheism has more to defend.
Stack up the murders during Nazi and Communist regimes and any during
religious domination pale in comparison.
So how might we describe Hitchens? He’s definitely upset with religion obviously
to the point he finds little in common with it.
Yet, his analysis is deeply flawed and his book has little merit to it.