If God really is as great as many people claim , he (she?) would show some compassion and grant Christopher Hitchens a longer life.
Yet, as Hitchens is the first to concede, the chances of him making a full recovery from cancer of the esophagus are very slim indeed.
If, as some will doubtless argue, his condition is the work of a vengeful deity then they should also be prepared to explain why the almighty has such sadistic tendencies – a thunderbolt would be more humane.
The truth of the matter is that the victims of this terrible disease are just as likely to be saints as sinners so when the chips are down it matters not one jot whether you a fervent believer or unrepentant heathen.
Hitchens’ 2007 book, God Is Not Great, may not convince entrenched believers of such a secular perspective but if you have even a merest shadow of a doubt of the higher being’s infallibility, I would urge you to read his arguments with an open mind.
At the very least the book should make you question the credibility of holy texts and the blind acceptance of religious teachings.
For us devoted atheists, it is simply cool to have someone to argue the case for non belief with such passion and eloquence.
Hitchens states four “irreducible objections” to religion: “that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos,that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking”.
As well as being a highly gifted writer, Hitchens is an erudite and witty public speaker with a wealth of anecdotes to add to his wide ranging knowledge of science, history and literature. For him “literature, not scripture, sustains the soul”.
Tony Blair is only the latest in a long line of individuals who know to their cost what a formidable debater he is. Even when Hitchens is on very shaky ground (notably as an apologist for Bush’s policy of regime change in Iraq) he always manages to argue his corner persuasively.
You may not always agree with him, but you can never accuse him of superficial thinking .
His charisma and arrogance can be seen to good effect in the talk and Q & A session for the launch of his best seller in which he defends the deliberately provocative subtitle ‘How Religion Poisons Everything‘.
Atheists are frequently portrayed as nihilistic in the mistaken belief that without faith there can be no morality. Hitchens roundly dismisses such claims and goes further by saying that religion itself is immoral due to the impossible precepts it demands. Furthermore, he points out that people of faith are just as capable of committing terrible acts using the defence that God is on their side. Suicide bombers are just one extreme example of belief leading to barbarity.
My chief reservation about the book is that he occasionally gets bogged down in the weight of detail and forgets that it is often more effective to keep arguments simple.
Hitchens knows full well that he is partly preaching to the converted but he also wants to reach out to those who are sceptical about religion. At the end of the chapter The Tawdriness of the Miraculous , he writes: “There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking”.
Long may he live – are you listening, God?
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