RE: Critique of "God is Not Great" by Christoper Hitchens
January 24, 2016 at 6:23 am
(This post was last modified: January 24, 2016 at 7:09 am by phil-lndn.)
(January 23, 2016 at 8:23 pm)Cato Wrote:(January 23, 2016 at 5:40 pm)phil-lndn Wrote: My only argument is that Christopher has made a truth claim without offering fact and reasoning to support the claim.
Unlike arbitrarily assigning 'enlightenment ideas' to the fourth rung of one person's hierarchy of personal cognitive development? Perfumed and polished bullshit is still bullshit.
Do you not think that perhaps a rational thinker would have asked me what evidence I had to support the theory?
(January 23, 2016 at 10:33 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote:(January 23, 2016 at 10:05 pm)phil-lndn Wrote: 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.
Just curious...why have you registered here at AF.org?
To post the post I posted at the start of this thread. Which I wanted to do for multiple reasons: I wanted to see if valid criticism could be levelled at it - this seemed like good place to find it. I also wanted to hear the reactions of people who identify as atheist to having the book and Christopher criticised.
Christopher seems to have broad support in the atheist world, and my impression from hearing Christopher speak is that he operates from a belief system because his truth claim over-extends. Since his belief system seems to be critical of belief systems, I thought that would be a very interesting topic to explore.
(January 23, 2016 at 10:41 pm)Homeless Nutter Wrote:(January 23, 2016 at 5:42 pm)phil-lndn Wrote: No, he wrote exactly the book I had wished for.
I had a wonderful time criticising it :-)
In other words - you read it with your mind already made up and with an expressed wish to criticise it. Mission accomplished. Now - as far as I'm concerned - you can f*ck right off...
Haha! Perhaps :-)
Interestingly, (as noted in my post) Christopher himself admits to having made up his mind at the age of 9 (long before he had an adult knowledge of science or religion) as a result of an insight he had regarding the position of his biology teacher.
Do you think there is something wrong with his behaviour? And if so - what?
