RE: Critique of "God is Not Great" by Christoper Hitchens
January 23, 2016 at 10:05 pm
(This post was last modified: January 23, 2016 at 10:06 pm by phil-lndn.)
(January 23, 2016 at 8:32 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: I rather think you miss the whole point of GING, which you might not have done had you taken into account the rest of the title: 'How Religion Poisons Everything'.
Hitchens isn't attempt to disprove religion, or conduct a 'rational analysis' to prove atheism, or even to validate the scientific perspective. Hitchens' main goal is to demonstrate that religious belief is, in and of itself, a bad thing for human beings. He cites sufficient examples of this in order to present what is a very strong case that he's right.
Additionally, the book isn't intended to give a fair shake to the religious viewpoint. It is a polemic, and Hitchens' purpose is to present his viewpoint, and no other: he isn't debating whether religion is good or bad. He is starting with the assumption that religion is bad, and then provides a sort of a case file to show why.
Essentially, I think, your review attempts to take Hitchens to task for writing a polemic, rather than a debate. But when the author intends to write a polemic, a review should be conducted on how well he's done that, not that (as has been said) the author wrote the book you didn't want.
Boru
OK - some of this feels like it hits the mark, perhaps I had not sufficiently considered the premise for his book. Although I did give mention in my post that I thought his writing (insofar as achieving what he'd set out to do) was very well done, perhaps it's reasonable to say that I am criticising the book's premise rather than the book itself.
Nevertheless (for the reasons stated in my post) I do not feel he does demonstrate 'How Religion Poisons Everything', I think through a developmental lens, religion looks more like a symptom (of low levels of development) than a cause and I think his inability to see that creates something of a red herring argument that runs throughout the book.
Example: as an experiment, try and use religious beliefs to "poison" someone who is a fully rational thinker. They are immune to such beliefs, it won't work. So in that context, religion poisons nothing, it's just a meaningless old book.
