I probably agree with Christopher Hitchens on many substantive points. But I won't be reading his book. Instead, we can thank this reviewer for their critical, ascerbic, and I suspect in the end accurate review of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
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Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris have had things to themselves for too long. Now it's time for Christopher Hitchens to join the party. His new book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is now available.
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The cover of the latest issue of Maclean's magazine, which is the Canadian equivalent of Time or Newsweek, asks "Is God poison?" The secondary headline to the feature, which is online, says "a new movement blames God for every social problem from Darfur to child abuse." Well, I don't know if it…
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Christopher Hitchens' appearance on the Daily Show was a disappointment—largely because Hitchens seemed to be half in the bag, and Stewart kept stepping all over his words trying to make them funny, and the short format was not to the favor of a fellow who tends to speak in complete sentences and…
Although I like your blog after reading many posts, I have to disagree with your post on Hitchens. Only lazy thinkers rely on others to review books for them to post! Either read the book for yourself or keep quiet. You can't know what he's written unless you read it. Summaries and opinions are great in order to inform, but how can you let someone else comment for you about a book you've never read?!
I only hate this review a little less than the book it is reviewing. The only interesting part is the third paragraph where Mr. Douthat actually goes out of his way of using pointless rhetoric to combat pointless rhetoric and actually engages the arguments head on (unfortunately, he kindly forgets to cite these powerful counter-arguments).
I'm too tired now to go paragraph by paragraph pointing my complaints about this review, but here are a couple of high-lights:
"Bart Ehrman, the ex-fundamentalist who abandoned Christianity once it became clear to him that there might have been actual human beings involved in the composition of its sacred texts." Gotta love those ad hominems. The sacredness of holy texts are a vital component on modern religions and the fact that the consensus is that humans were a little more than just involved in writing and editing them is a huge blow to all major religions.
"The trouble is that this two-step contains a certain contradiction, which is why liberalism has tended to lurch in one direction or another ever sincetoward a spineless relativism on the one hand or a scientistic utopianism on the other, with New Testament morality the first thing to be jettisoned in either case." It is always amusing when a reviewer complains about an author using to many overarching generalities and then in the next breath happily endeavoring to do their own generalizing. I really want to meet a liberal/socialist/Marxist who has thrown out "New Testament" morality any more than modern Christians have.
"Of this last objection, at least, Hitchens seems well aware, and he devotes an entire chapter to arguing strenuously that both the Nazis and the Communists were effectively religious and effectively theocratic, their secular experiments poisoned by religion. But with this move he begins sawing off the very branch he occupies, since if faith tends to infect even secular politics, then what separates Hitchens from his religious enemies?"
I don't even know how he got to the conclusion in the latter part of the second sentence. Of course, faith can infect secular politics. Just look what is happening in the good ol' US of A and just look at the beautiful results it has brought up. The fact is not that faith cannot infect secular ideals, the point is that faith and the absolutist claims it brings along with it must be kept away from secular institutions.
But enough is enough. Horrible book, horrible review. But please don't let this review stop you from reading the book, even though I know you'll regret it though :D.
If you've followed the Agnostic/Atheist debates here and elsewhere, you might think I'm trying to tweak the noses of Certain Other Bloggers. I couldn't possibly comment.
"If you've followed the Agnostic/Atheist debates here and elsewhere, you might think I'm trying to tweak the noses of Certain Other Bloggers. I couldn't possibly comment."
Sorry John, but I think the law of diminishing returns is kicking in for that strategy. That is, if you were persuing it, of which I'm in no way certain. ;)
Ahh, subtle blog politics. I should have known better. An atheist talking in absolute terms is as bad as an agnostic using vacuous definitions to defend the position of uncertainty. No human concept is purely bad, be it religion or slavery. Religion certainly does not poison everything, but it does certainly attract a lot of snakes to do the poisoning.
And come on, angry atheist writing is 'in' at the moment, just bow your head and ride with the storm. If you are really lucky, in a couple of years you'll be defending the rising angry agnostic writers against the reasonable atheists.
As it happens, I am writing a semipopular book about religion myself right now. It may one day find a publisher...
It may not be what you expect.
New Atheism is reactionary.
What it's reacting to primarily is the political power of the Religious Right in the US - although it's scrupulously fair in its contempt for all religions. The point it misses - or, rather, the lesson it doesn't draw strongly enough - is that absolutism or totalitarianism is the real problem. It's what religious and secular tyrannies have in common.
People instinctively look for certainty in a world terrifying in its uncertainty. They're drawn to any group - and, more particularly, anyone - who claims to have found The Answer like moths to a candle. Religion or political ideology, it doesn't really matter, as long as there's a charismatic "guru" figure as the focal point and and a chewy but easily-digested Truth to satisfy that nagging spiritual hunger.
Religion arguably has the edge over politics because it can offer all sorts of goodies in the next life and nobody's been able to check on whether it delivers - at least, not so far. When politics fails to live up to its promises, it's a bit more obvious, like no food on the shelves.
Where the New Atheists have it right, in a sense, that campaigning against absolutism is as bad as having a War on Terror - abstractions are notoriously hard to shoot down or blow up.
People, on the other hand, are a different matter. Not that I'm suggesting shooting or bombing anyone, you understand, nor are the New Atheists. It's just that there are so many figures on the Religious Right just begging for a metaphorical pie in the face.
Which makes me wonder when we get to see The Main Event - Hitchens going head-to-head with Ann Coulter.
John Wilkins wrote:
NOBODY expects The Laddish Disquisition!
How do you know that it will be semi-popular?
You might write the next "Make Way for Ducklings" or "Kane and Abel".
As long as it isn't very expensive I'ld firmly consider possibly buying a copy and if I knew what to expect why would I buy it?
On Good Morning America at 7am local time on Sunday outdoors :o)
That would be good, especially if Hitchens had a hangover (the proverbial bear with a sore head).
Christopher Hitchens is the proverbial stopped clock. It's disheartening to me when freethinkers and skeptics heap accolades on him when he says something they agree with, only to act shocked -- shocked! -- when he goes on some cryptofascist authoritarion rampage. Christopher Hitchens is always wrong. Even when he's right, he's right for the wrong reasons. He was an empty gasbag on Iraq and the clash of civilizations, and he's an empty gasbag on atheism and religion. He's a pontificating egoist who happens to be blessed with a marvelous facility for prose that blinds people to how incredibly vain, shallow, and stupid he is.
I think the review was pretty shallow. What seems to happen lots in negative reviews, is people will forget what a book was about.
"In this vein, he is exhaustive but largely unpersuasive. I remain unconvinced, for instance, that religious practice has no significant effect on moral character" That would be a great comment if he was trying to make that point anywhere in the book!
Whats with this "New Atheism" speaking crowd? It seems to pop up everywhere, and all this group seems to do is complain about people complaining about religion by giving personal attacks towards people. For example, calling Dawkins extremist, or comparing Hitchens to Ann Coulter. "How useful! How intelligent! Way to go!"
I'm starting to think this crowd is composed of young earth creationists in disguise. Or at least, robots programmed by them.
I'll have you know my nose is becoming increasingly insensitive to tweaking. You guys may have to try some new tactics to draw my link-fire.
Pshaw! That reviewer is being much too kind to Hitchens! This fellow on the other hand ...
Oh, and do I get to review a copy of your book? Or do I just get a link to a review that I can use to review it? (this is a dangerous practice for an author to promote, you know.)
I liked the book as polemic and hated the review. (To write like Hitchens, you've got to be Hitchens.)
I suppose the book's chief sin is that it chooses to do battle with religious believers using the unseemly rhetorical weapons of the religious right -- only wielded more deftly and with panache. In that regard, I have to admit to the guilty pleasure of seeing them skewered by a master of the art. This is writing as blood sport. As a polemicist, Hitchens beats Coulter ("Godless: The Church of Liberalism"), Ponnuru ("The Party of Death") and D'Souza, who writes screeds like "Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history".
The review in the New Yorker allowed that Hitchens� bill of indictment against religion had merit but complained about his uncouth style compared to David Hume, who went about dismantling religious belief much more dispassionately and with more discretion.
Having read several other reviews, such as the one in Salon, I'm a little puzzled as to why atheists feel obliged to be ever so critical of Hitchens and solicitous of believers, whose feelings may have been hurt by the tone of his prose. I hope it's not with the expectation that such civility and impartiality will be reciprocated or will open the way to some sort of real 'dialog' or will demonstrate the Christian virtue of turning the other cheek. I suspect it�s because Hitchens gives atheism a bad name (!), the same way that professional wrestling, a spectacle for the unwashed masses, taints greco-roman wrestling (as a spectator sport, about as much fun as watching grass grow.)
Maybe in Australia or elsewhere, atheist can afford to be more sanguine since secularism isn�t being seriously challenged. I don�t know. But here in the US, that�s not the case. Majoritarian religious militancy of the type Hitchens attacks is a real threat on a number of fronts, including scientific education and, more importantly, women�s life and health through draconian anti-abortion laws whose only justification is religious dogma. Then there�s the continuous pressure to declare that the United States is a Christian nation, with the unsavory implications that has for any semblance of tolerance. Recalling the Terry Schiavo fiasco, where religious zealots were able to flex their muscle and bend congress and the president to their will, this is no laughing matter.
If you don't read the book, you can only suspect the accuracy of the review, and it will make your opinion and your intellectual integrity suspect.
I think that means he is aiming for "decidedly middle-brow."
PZ I will write your review for you. No need for you to read anything. See how helpful I am?
As to semi-popular, that is philosophical code for "I can't be arsed finding all the references and checking the data".
As to suspect - if you haven't figured out that I am suspect by now, there's no help for you. But I have listened to and read a fair bit of Hitchens in the past. I dislike the man, but as I say, I expect we agree on a great many things int his topic.
People have told me that I can afford to be sanguine here in Australia before. Hell, I've said it myself. But no matter whether America is in the grip of a fundamentalist talibanate or they are just making a lot of noise on the popular media (the truth being likely somewhere in between) it doesn't change my view that dealing with intellectual issues by evoking emotional responses is wrong. Not a bad strategy, not a rhetorical ploy, but wrong. I will not further defend this view - you either think argument is rational or you do not. I hold to the increasingly disparaged view that a liberal approach to social issues is a priori always the best. Experience teaches me that it is, and that civil outcomes are never due to emotional tribal disputation. If my readers think otherwise, they are free to, but I will not join or exclude any tribes because I happen to like or dislike them. Sue me.
A Neville Chamberlain hagiography?
[Applause]
I hold to the increasingly disparaged view that a liberal approach to social issues is a priori always the best. Experience teaches me that it is, and that civil outcomes are never due to emotional tribal disputation.
Would that were always true in practice, in which case Martin Luther King would never have had to wite "Letter from a Brimingham Jail".
You think that if King's opponents hadn't been liberal in their reaction, things would not have gone better?
You think that if King's opponents hadn't been liberal in their reaction, things would not have gone better?
Yes, things may have gone better but what I'm taking issue with is your assertion that "civil outcomes are never due to emotional tribal disputation". In fact, for many issues of import history shows otherwise. In these cases, the disputants usually live in such different universes that no rational discourse is possible.
In that regard, the letter to which King replied was entitled "An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense". According to their lights, the authors were reasonable men, who believed that King's street demonstrations in defiance of the law should cease, because in due time the legal system would produce justice.
Calling attention to the fact the the writers were hardly in a position to judge, since they had not been subjected to legally-sanctioned discrimination for 350 yeayrs, King replied:
"...Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
Of course, wisdom is in knowing whether or not a basis for rational discourse exists. In the USA, close to the epicenter of these controversies, it's tempting to conclude that it does not.
I think there is room for a study of religious belief that approaches the topic with the same seriousness, sympathy and detachment as William James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience".
I'll have to admit I'm not a huge fan of Christopher Hitchens. I've read the occasional article by him, I've seen interviews, he always seemed to come off as rather pompus and arrogant. Someone gave me "God is not Great" and, to my surprise, I rather enjoyed it. I thought all of the arguements he made against religion were very thoughtful and accurate. Mr Wilkins talks of evoking an "emotional response" in discussing "intellectual issues" but Hitchens manages to frame his debate in a very studied and, what seemed to me at least, intelluctual manner. (Although admittedly, the title of the book was obviously intended to evoke an emotional response) I believe when one is discussing religion either pro or con, it's impossible to not to get emotional, it's so deeply ingrained in our psyche.
You want to talk emotional though. I was reading the book at a local coffee place, where I've read a lot of books, and within half an hour I had two people tell me I was going to "go to hell" and another woman came over to my table to discuss biblical history with me because she felt compelled to offer the counter arguement to the book. I've often read in public places, occasionally I've had someone ask me about a book because they were curious about it, but I've never had a response like that before.
My mother was raised Catholic my dad was Pentacostal when they met, both were pretty fed up with the extreme views expressed by their famlies, as a consequence, I was raised to come up with my own opinions. As an adult, I realized I was an athiest. I am amazed, in talking to the rest of my family, how willfully ignorant they are of the world. I am also extremely put off by the backward and often bigioted comments they are inclined to make. These are average folks, living normal lives, in the 21st century, who just happen to believe that Jews are trying to take over the world, that evolution is "just a theory", that global warming isn't real and that the apocolypse is just around the corner.
From the weirdness of the Bush administration to what's going on in Islamic countries around the world to atrocities in the past comitted in the name of
"God" I don't see how anyone cannot see how "religion poisons everything".
(The one criticism of the book that I have is how Hitchens carefully steped around the fact that he was in favor of the U.S. led invasion of Iraq and the possible religions connontations of that political move)
Susan wrote: From the weirdness of the Bush administration to what's going on in Islamic countries around the world to atrocities in the past comitted in the name of
"God" I don't see how anyone cannot see how "religion poisons everything".
But by parity of reasoning it also follows that from the weirdness of the Bush administration to what's going on in Islamic countries around the world to atrocities in the past committed in the name of "National Security|political affiliation|cultural identification|etc" I don't see how anyone cannot see how "National Security|political affiliation|cultural identification|etc poisons everything".
Point is, these are human attributes, and pretty universal and if you identify only one aspect of human nature (yes, there is such a thing, sort of) to the exclusion of all others, then you haven't identified the problem at all, just restated the symptomatology.
What makes human beings behave that way under the rubric of religion is also what makes them do it under the rubric of ethnicity, nationality, polity, class, and so on. It is about power relations in hierarchical social structures, and Hitchens is happily (as you note about Iraq) playing in that sandpit while decrying others who do it in other ways. It's no more enlightening than the person who says "the trouble with Islam is that it isn't Christian". For that reason I find the reports of Hitchens' arguments annoying, not enlightening. He's just special pleading for his own in-group.
Now although I haven't read his book, I have read online material of his and seen him interviewed, and none of it encourages me to think he has resolved the problem here. Religion isn't the problem - the problem is that we do not constrain universal human behaviours, whether they are religious or not. Conservatism (which Hitchens promotes) acts in exactly the same way as religion in this regard. First remove the post...
Any account of religion that treats it as exceptional in the ills of society is a priori incomplete if not totally misleading.
I suppose we are all heartily tired of the topic by now, in which case I apologize for not resisting the temptation to include this snippet from page 5 of Hitchens book, where he contrasts religious dogma and scientific inquiry:
"We [Hitchens and his co-thinkers] do not hold our convictions dogmatically: the disagreement between Professor Stephen J. Gould and Professor Richard Dawkins, concerning "punctuated equilibrium" and the unfilled gaps in post-Darwinian theory is quite wide as well as quite deep, but we shall resolve it by evidence and reasoning and not by mutual excommunication"
Thereby demonstrating that Hitchens was not a close observer of these debates in the 70s, 80s and early 90s...
Hmmm ... does "mutual excommunication" include pitchers of ice water?
John Wilkins wrote: But by parity of reasoning it also follows that from the weirdness of the Bush administration to what's going on in Islamic countries around the world to atrocities in the past committed in the name of "National Security|political affiliation|cultural identification|etc" I don't see how anyone cannot see how "National Security|political affiliation|cultural identification|etc poisons everything".
National security, political affiliation, cultural identification...These are fairly recent concepts, didn't they, in the past, fall under the definition of religion? Caste and class systems were enforced for religious reasons. The higher class/castes were destined by some devine fate to hold sway over the lower class/castes. Religion was an excuse for one group of people to feel superior over another group of people and thus make it easier to subjugate that group and force them to convert to the "superior" faith. The fact that this is such a large part of what religion is makes me suspicious of religion. Sure, people will be shitty to each other no matter what. We can take "devine destiny" and substitute it for "genetic destiny" and have a whole new reason to feel superior to someone else. We can take any former religious concept, remodel it, and make it into a secular concept and use it as a weapon against another group of people.
Religion has been around for thousands of years, meanwhile our modern way of thinking, of scientific discovery, has only been around for a few hundred and our brains are still locked into the religious modes of thinking in some ways. (In fact maybe the religious way of thinking is something that has been hardwired into our brains during the "great leap forward" period some 40-50 thousand years ago) And you can't convince me, even today, in modern day America, there aren't people who believe, right up too and including George Bush, that religion doesn't play a part for both sides in the conflict in Iraq.
Any account of religion that treats it as exceptional in the ills of society is a priori incomplete if not totally misleading.
Well said, John. I've really enjoyed (and concur) with your comments in this thread -- but please don't link to the Claremont Institute. Just not my cup of tea. Those guys actually have Bill Bennett listed as a "scholar" on their staff.
Susan, if you say that nations, cultural identity and so on are modern inventions, you must also say that the religions that are supposed to be poisoning everything are also modern inventions - in the case of Christianity and Islam the modern versions are less than two thousand years old, and in fact they defined each other. Nation states go back as far as agriculture, though, so I think that if you grant the one (religion as a generic category) you must grant the other (nation states, ethnic identity).
I do not think the "great leap forward" is a warranted conclusion. Humans evolved well before then, and the "great leap" is just the accrual of sufficient cultural novelties to be recognizable in the archaeological record.
If religion is a cause of superiority over others, and I agree that it often plays that role, then the real question is why we use religion for that purpose. In other words, why should there be a drive to define superior and inferior, in-group and out-group? The answer is that there is a fundamental human behaviour - social dominance. Religion is the effect or outworking of that, not the cause.
Trinifar, I do not know Bennett. What is his thoughtcrime?
Susan, I'm with Mr Wilkins on this one even if I will criticise his standpoint shortly. Your opinion that all aspects of society are driven or determined by the force of religion is both naive and simplistic. The interrelationships, interplay and interactions between the political, social, economical, religious, cultural and environmental factors that make up, determine direct and steer any advanced culture or society (and any so called primitive one for that matter) are incredibly complex and it is oft very difficult or even impossible to say which factor or factors are dominant in any given situation. As a historian one can at best list the contributory factors and try to give a balanced assessment of their respective weightings. This assessment will continually change as new research and new viewpoints contribute new data to the matrix. To get some idea of what I am trying to say take a look at Mr Wilkins diagram in his post "I have a method".
Mr Wilkins your statement that both Christianity and Islam are comparatively young religions is totally correct Islam weighs in at around 1300 years (and probably less as around 700 CE it was still basically only a local cult) and Christianity manages at best 1700 years, as it is impossible to speak of "A" Christian religion before the council of Nicaea in 325 CE and the Catholic Church as we know it is really a product of the High Middle Ages. However the early societies to which you refer as predating The Christian Era are also deeply religious cultures.
I'm not an ancient historian but I have studied the evolution of mathematics, in order for arithmetic to develop beyond rudimentary counting one needs a fairly advance society. Advanced arithmetic then becomes necessary to fulfil various social and political administrative needs such as tax assessment and collections, food distributions, calculation of calendars etc. The people who developed and utilised this arithmetic in all early societies where this development took place i.e. Egypt, Babylon, India, China and the Maya were a caste of priests serving as public servants in what were effectively theocracies. Of course in these societies the same things apply as stated in my answer to Susan above.
I myself have and continue to learn, in my own research work, just how difficult it is to separate the factors that I have listed above. I am studying the evolution of the mathematical disciplines i.e. mathematics, astronomy, astrology, medicine, cartography, linear perspective, optics, navigation and physics in their cultural, social, economic, political, religious and environmental contexts in The Early Modern Period (1400 - 1700). I have already been doing this for several years and I estimate it will probably be another twenty years before I can produce the first paper that satisfies my wish for completeness!
P.S. We've got the tent maker working on that t-shirt!
Hmmm.... does a pitcher of ice water on the head of E.O. Wilson represent "mutual excommunication", let alone an endorsement of methods by Gould of a group he belonged too? Not to mention that it has nothing to do with punk eek or Richard Dawkins. Sounds like a non-sequitor to me.
I didn't know that Hitchens' point was so limited. I thought he was trying to illustrate some larger difference between those who practice/accept science and those who practice religion (or his caricatures of those groups, at least).
But it is at least an open question as to whether punk eek (in some of its manifestations) was part and parcel of Gould's objections to Dawkins' reductionism and adaptionism, that were, in turn, part and parcel of Wilson's sociobiology.
John asks, Trinifar, I do not know Bennett. What is his thoughtcrime?
As Sec. of Education, Bennett was part of Ronald Reagan's cabinet. He's a fairly radical rightwing social conservative. A "family values" guy who is a leading figure in the movement to deny homosexual rights, he wants religion in education (and not it a good way), thinks multiculturalism is a bad thing, and wants us to stay in Iraq. He now regularly appears on CNN to present the view from the right.
My problem with him is he has written three books about "American morality" and yet seems to know nothing about it. He's a classic hit-below-the-belt, twist-the-facts political pundit -- in spite of once upon a time having been a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Texas. Guess he skipped ethics classes.
The Claremont Institute which published the review you link to is a conservative think tank with similar values. That's not say it can not be a good review, but it did cause me to read it with a "how are they going to spin this" attitude.
Hmm, this is a problem with institutes that uncritically include political figures, but given that this is a pro-religion review, I suppose it's not surprising.
But the review stands on its own, whether or not the source is tainted. Even the conservative reactionaries can say something right occasionally.
I'm reviewing Kitcher's Living with Darwin soon. Could be a better book. He is also not overly happy with Hitchens.