God Is Not Great How Religion Poisons Everything

by Hitchens, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9780446697965
• ISBN10: 0446697966
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-04-06
• Publisher: Twelve

Summary

In the tradition of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris's recent bestseller, The End of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope's awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix.

Author Biography

Chistopher Hitchens is a widely published polemicist and frequent radio and TV commentator. He is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School in New York.

Table of Contents

Putting It Mildly	p. 1
Religion Kills	p. 15
A Short Digression on the Pig; or, Why Heaven Hates Ham	p. 37
A Note on Health, to Which Religion Can Be Hazardous	p. 43
The Metaphysical Claims of Religion Are False	p. 63
Arguments from Design	p. 73
Revelation: The Nightmare of the "Old Testament	p. 97
The "New" Testament Exceeds the Evil of the "Old" One	p. 109
The Koran Is Borrowed from Both Jewish and Christian Myths	p. 123
The Tawdriness of the Miraculous and the Decline of Hell	p. 139
"The Lowly Stamp of Their Origin": Religion's Corrupt Beginnings	p. 155
A Coda: How Religions End	p. 169
Does Religion Make People Behave Better?	p. 173
There Is No "Eastern" Solution	p. 195
Religion as an Original Sin	p. 205
Is Religion Child Abuse?	p. 217
An Objection Anticipated: The Last-Ditch "Case" Against Secularism	p. 229
A Finer Tradition: The Resistance of the Rational	p. 253
In Conclusion: The Need for a New Enlightenment	p. 277
Afterword	p. 285
Acknowledgments	p. 295
References	p. 297
Index	p. 305
Reading Group Guide	p. 319
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