God Is Not Great: The case against religion, by Christopher Hitchens

In some quarters the appearance of another anti-religion book might prompt recall of the Hungarian parliamentarian who remarked, on rising to his feet in the course of a long National Assembly debate, "Everything has been said but not everyone has said it yet."

But application of this sentiment to Christopher Hitchens' examination of the claims, character and record of religion would be mistaken; for not only has the anti-religion case never been put so well, so comprehensively or so definitively as in this razor-sharp book, but much is added to it here from the joint resources of Hitchens' wide first-hand acquaintance with the personalities and effects of religion in our tumultuous world, from his formidable range of reference, and from his sheer acuity of intelligence.

A common charge levelled by defenders of faiths against their critics is that the latter do not understand the enticements of religion from within. As in so many other ways, they meet their match here. Hitchens was brought up as a Christian in a family of partly Jewish extraction, and well understands the throat-catching beauty of language in the King James version of the Bible, the moral stature of such figures as Martin Luther King, and the point of Marx's analysis of the role played by religion in the lives of the oppressed. But none of these things disguises, still less excuses, the false and far too often wicked pretensions of religion as it infects history and the present, and Hitchens addresses them one by one.

Hitchens begins by demolishing the metaphysical claim that the universe contains any supernatural agency or agencies, for once this is done and religions are seen for what they are, namely man-made constructions whose original point was to supply the ignorance of mankind's pre-scientific infancy, the main point can be tackled, which is to expose their many falsehoods, harms and dangers. With steely assurance salted with wit, Hitchens proceeds to do so, devastatingly and inexorably. He shows that religion's foundational documents are transparent fabrications, and that its limited usefulness lies well in the past, since when it has been a persistent balk to science and enquiry, and an enemy to freedom of speech and thought as well as to individual liberty. He shows that it sustains itself on lies and fears, that it has not only been the promoter of ignorance, guilt, sexual repression, torture, murder, hatred and violent fanaticism, but the accomplice of slavery, genocide, racism and tyranny.

None of these charges is deniable, and some of the main bureaucracies of religion have admitted the fact: witness the "apologies" issued by the last Pope for the manifold sins and wickednesses of the Church throughout its history. In light of the remark that "by their fruits ye shall know them" this is most telling. Hitchens relentlessly exposes those turpitudes, and scarcely needs to answer the putative counter-argument that says there would be no great works of art and architecture without religion. Of course there would: they are the product of humanity's creative urge, and any excuse would evoke them. (In any case: is the apologist's claim that burnings at the stake, witch-hunts, child-molestation, wars and mass exterminations are an acceptable price for cathedrals, plainsong and endlessly iterated paintings of the Madonna?)

Hitchens also answers the weary canard that the secular tyrannies of fascism and communism have as bad a record as religion. One way of countering it is to observe that Torquemada's Catholicism, Talibanism, Nazism and Stalinism all share the same character: they are monolithic ideologies that coerce subservience to an ideal identified by those in power (the priesthood, the Party: same difference); and even display such similarities as enforced credos, the concept of thought-crime, and saints embalmed in mausoleums. Hitchens does not put the point in quite this way, articulating it instead, in closely similar terms, of their comparable totalitarian structure. He astutely notes the similarity of outward forms, interestingly adds the details that apologists like to forget - for example, Hitler's religious sentiments, Stalin's education in a seminary - and reminds us that absolute monarchy was underpinned by the doctrine of the divine right of kings.

How did the religions respond to the 20th century's secular tyrannies, given their "own record of succumbing to, and promulgating, dictatorships on earth and absolute control in the life to come", as Hitchens pointedly asks? Well: Pope Pius XI described Mussolini as "a man sent by providence"; a 1930s slogan of the Catholic right in France was "meilleur Hitler que Blum"; almost all German Catholics agreed with the tenor of this sentiment as applied to their own country; and so one could go dispiritedly on. Hitchens points out too that another of the aggressor tyrannies of the mid-century even had a god as head of state, viz. Japan.

It is hard sometimes not to be withering about the absurdities and evils of religion, and Hitchens is not one to mince words. But his book is not a rant, any more than a report of the crimes of the Inquisition or Pol Pot would count as a rant. Hitchens accumulates a devastating case, and only the blindest and most determined refusal to concede to reason could allow a defender of religion to come away from reading his book without very big - with Hitchens I say insuperable - questions to answer.

Hitchens ends by calling for a "new Enlightenment", premised on the idea that the proper study of mankind is man and woman. The unfettered pursuit of science, the study of literature and poetry, and a generous attitude to relations between people - all of this now being within the reach of humankind for the first time ever - is the true basis for achievement of the good, and Hitchens urges it upon us.

Not, he concedes, that achieving it will be easy or quick: but it is possible. The obvious first required step is liberation from religion: Hitchens' book is an outstanding contribution to that goal.

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