Critique of "God is Not Great" by Christoper Hitchens

[Fidel_Castronaut]

I want to ask why we should not mock and ridicule the beliefs of others, and what interest any of us should have in sharing a planet with people who are prepared to blow themselves up to appease their imaginary friend?

Simple - because it's not optional. There are billions of pre-rational religious people on the planet.

Unless we are going to somehow wipe out around 2/3rds of the planet's population, we are going to have to find a way to live with them peacefully. 

We already live successfully with lots of primitive dangerous beings. Crocodiles, lions etc. The key to living successfully with dangerous organisms without living in fear is to understand them.

So your options are give up values of the 'enlightenment' (I am still curious to know what exactly about it are obsolete) or kill? I am in no way advocating murder, that is ludicrous.

It must be noted that we do already live in relative peace. We are in fact in one of the most peaceful periods of humanity's history.

The clash of civilisations is a disproven theory if by nothing else than the fact that most conflicts are, by Huntingdon's thesis and definition, intra-civilisational. I would recommend further reading by instrumentalists and de-constructivists on the thesis.Fukuyama's last man is a good start, though I don't necessarily advocate the conclusions.

It seems like your proposal is to capitulate to the distinctly backwards and intolerant ideologies that persist and fester in areas of the world still 'to get along'. Your proposal is not one I would adopt. Rather, just more of what we already do. Develop, advance, evolve.

A further question. Do you give more, less, or equal credence to the un-evidenced hypothesis of universe creation or the null-hypothesis?