A Christian Reads "God is not great: how religion poisons everything" by Christopher Hitchens Chapter 2

 Christopher Hitchens begins this chapter with a quote pretty much sums up what the reader is to expect from this chapter. The quote is by someone named Lucretius and it says: 

                             "To such heights of evil are men driven by religion." 

As some of you may already tell, the rest of this chapter is going to be one monumental emotional appeal fallacy. What is an emotional appeal fallacy? Well, according to lumenlearning.com, an emotional appeal fallacy is "a logical fallacy, whereby a debater attempts to win an argument by trying to get an emotional reaction out of the opponent and audience". Reading this chapter has reminded me of something Dr. William Lane Craig has said before: 

                            "The span of books by the New Atheists are not sophisticated philosophical books, but instead are merely angry diatribes against religion". 

I happen to agree with Dr. Craig's assessment. Hitchens starts off by giving us a thought experiment where he wants us to imagine that "an infinitely benign and all-powerful creator, who conceived of you, then made and shaped you, brought you into the world he had made for you, and now supervises and cares for you even while you sleep". He then further asks his reader to imagine that "if you obey the rules and commandments that he has lovingly prescribed, you will qualify for an eternity of bliss and repose". 

After you have imagined this scenario, Hitchens then asks of you: 

                        "Why does such a belief not make its adherents happy? It must seem to them that they have come into possession of a marvelous secret, of the sort that they could cling to in moments of even the most extreme adversity". 

Now, there are multiple ways that I could answer this objection. First, I would like to point out what should be obvious to everyone that the happiness of someone or some people is not a proper indicator of whether or not someone's beliefs are true. I say that this should be obvious, but unfortunately, I am afraid that this fact has not been realized by the majority of people. The second thing I would like to address is the idea that somehow the belief that if one follows the "rules and commandments" of God, then they will "qualify for an eternity of bliss and repose". I understand that most religions teach some kind of version of this idea, but according to Christianity, none of us are (or ever will be) good enough to enter heaven because heaven is where God is and sin cannot be in the presence of the holy God. Since we are all sinfully depraved, none of us deserve to be in God's presence. If the Lord would have decided to leave us in this predicament, we would all be eternally punished, and He would still be Holy, Just, and Loving. However, He did not leave us where we are at because He came to earth as a human being and took on Himself the punishment that we deserve because He loves us. If any of us are saved, it is only because of the free grace of found in God in Jesus Christ alone. As for why people who follow "rules and commandments" aren't happy is because that is legalism and the law only brings death. what is legalism? According to the Oxford Languages Dictionary, "legalism is the excessive adherence to law or formula" and the other clearer definition is "dependence on moral law than on personal religious faith". You see, what separates all the other world religions from Christianity is the fact that every other religion is legalistic by nature, whereas Christianity is based on grace alone. No amount of good works or deeds will or can save anyone. However, grace is unnatural, or alien, to us because we are hard-wired for the law. Dr. Michael Horton, says, "our default setting is legalism, which is why we need to be reminded of the Gospel". As Galatians 3:!0 tells us, "For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the commands that are written in God's book of the law, and do them'." When we strive to obey the law instead of following the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it breeds a lifestyle of pain and misery, not happiness, because the law cannot save anyone. The law only serves to condemn us. The third thing I would like to add is that the Gospel does not promise us happiness in this life. As a matter of fact, in the gospel of John, Jesus Himself tells us that in this life we will experience hardship but for us to take heart because He has overcome the world. Also, the Apostle Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 3:12, "indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted". Pastor Paul Washer of Heartcry Mission puts this point rather bluntly when he says, "Jesus promises us only two things: a cross to die on and eternal life". Now, this does not mean that the Christian life is full of sorrow. On the contrary, we have hope that most people do not have because we are awaiting the return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. When He returns, He will usher in the new heaven and the new earth where we will reign for eternity with Him and there will be no more sin, sorrow, or death and He will wipe away all our tears and make all things new, This news should be a cause of great joy and excitement to anyone who contemplates on such things and this news is what drives us to be hopeful in times of great tribulation. 

Christopher Hitchens next goes on to make this claim: 

                    "The level of intensity fluctuates according to time and place, but it can be stated that religion does not, and in the long-run cannot, be content with its own marvelous and sublime assurances. It must seek to interfere with the lives of unbelievers or heretics, or adherents of other faiths. It must speak about the bliss of the next world, but it wants power in this one. This is only to be expected. It is, after all, wholly man-made. And it does not have the confidence in its own various preachings even to allow coexistence between different faiths." 

I remember hearing that once Hitchens said that if you are a Christian then it would be unloving of you not to preach the Gospel to people because if you truly believed that someone was bound for hell then it would be a moral imperative for you to share such news with them. So, it is ironic that he would complain about Christians seeking to "interfere with the lives of nonbelievers, or heretics, or adherents of other faiths." Also, according to atheism, what is really wrong with proselytizing anyway? He can say that he personally does not like it, but how dare he make it seem like it is morally wrong when his worldview cannot begin to account for objective morality. All he has is his personal preferences and no one is under any obligation to care about his subjective personal opinion. As for Christianity speaking on "the bliss of the next world, but it wants power in this one", seeing how I am not a theonomist, nor does the Bible support theonomy, all I can say is that according to Biblical Christianity, we Christians are not called to try to take over the culture, or "seek power in this world". We are commanded to live and work alongside unbelievers, to seek the welfare of the society we live in, and to strive to live peaceably with all people. I do admit that many Christians today are fighting to take over culture with "Christian influence", but they are acting contrary to God's word and not in accordance with it. For more on this concept, I recommend the book "Christians Living In God's Two Kingdoms" by Dr. David VanDrunen. Also, the reason we do not allow "coexistence between the different faiths" os because that would violate the law of noncontradiction, which says that no two contradictory statements can be true at the same time in the same sense, and as rational creatures we must not do that. Every world religion contradicts each other on various fundamental points of doctrine and they are all mutually exclusive towards one another too. So, because of this fact, all the religions of the world cannot be logically valid. 

After this, Hitchens then goes on to talk about a scenario Dennis Prager put forth to him on a panel one week before the events on September 11, 2001 took place. Apparently, Dennis Prager said to him to imagine that he was in a strange city in the evening time and he seen a large group of people approaching his direction. Prager, then asked him if he would feel safer, or less safe, if he were to learn that this group of people were leaving a prayer meeting. Hitchens, then, apparently replies with: 

                              "In Belfast, I have seen whole streets burned out by sectarian warfare, between different sects of Christianity, and interviewed people whose relatives and friends have been kidnapped and killed or tortured by rival religious death squads, often for no other reason the membership of another confession." 

Now, while I agree with Hitchens that this is indeed horrible and tragic, my worldview can account for why this is wrong objectively while the worldview of Hitchens cannot and because of that it renders his whole point meaningless and arbitrary. He cannot give a logical accounting for why this is wrong, so he is forced to admit that he simply does not like it. To which I would respond with "So What?" Who really cares about what Hitchens prefers or does not prefer? Why should we care? Hitchens is indeed borrowing from the Christian worldview because he is assuming the sanctity of human life by being morally outraged by this and thus demonstrating that he really did know that God is real and He has put His moral law on all people's hearts. 

Next, Hitchens continues to belabor the point that that he thinks religion is indeed dangerous by now making this claim: 

                             "Belgrade had until the late 1980s been the capital of Yugoslavia or the land of the southern Slavs, which meant by definition that it was the capital of a multiethnic and multiconfessional state. Bur a secular Croatian intellectual once gave me a warning that, as in Belfast, took the form of a sour joke. 'If I tell people that I am an atheist and a Croat,' he said 'people ask me how I can prove that I am not a Serb.' To be Croatian, in other words, is to be Roman Catholic. To be a Serb is to be Christian Orthodox. In the 1940s, this meant a Nazi puppet state, set up in Croatia and enjoying the patronage of the Vatican, which naturally sought to exterminate all the Jews in the region but also undertook a campaign of forcible conversion directed at the other Christian community. Tens of thousands of Orthodox Christians were either slaughtered or deported in consequence, and a vast concentration camp was set uo near the town of Jasenovacs. So disgusting was the regime of General Ante Pavelic and his Ustashe Party that even many German officers protested at having to be associated with it." 

And Hitchens also says: 

                              "The Croatian cities of Vukovar and Dubrovnik had been brutally shelled by the armed forces of Serbia, now under the control of the Slobodan Milslovic. The mainly Muslim city of Sarajevo had been encircled and was being bombarded around the clock. Elsewhere in Bosnia-Herzegovina, especially along the river Drina, whole towns were pillaged and massacred in what the Serbs themselves termed 'ethnic cleansing'. In point of fact, 'religious cleansing' would have been nearer the mark. Milosevic was an ex-communist bureaucrat who had mutated into a xenophobic nationalist, and his anti-Muslim crusade, which was a cover for the annexation of Bosnia to a 'Greater Serbia', was to a large extent carried out by unofficial militias operating under his 'deniable' control. Those gangs were made up of religious bigots often blessed by Orthodox priests and bishops, and sometimes augmented by fellow orthodox 'volunteers' from Greece and Russia. They made a special attempt to destroy all evidence of Ottoman civilization, as in the specially atrocious case of the dynamiting of several minarets in Banja Luka, which was done during the cease-fire and not as the result of any battle." 

Again, while I would agree with Hitchens that all this (if it is indeed true) is atrocious but he still has not given us any logicsl accounting for how he can know morality apart from God to begin with. So, all of this is basically him telling us, "I don't personally like that this happened", but without an objective standard for morality it is all just his mere meandering opinion. Hitchens complaining about all this is akin to someone complaining about another person preferring to play Chess instead of Checkers. It is really that absurd, Without an objective standard for morality, atheism makes morality subjective and arbitrary and if that is the case then everyone should just do whatever seems right in their own eyes, but I'm sure Hitchens, and most atheists, would shutter at that thought, 

Next, Hitchens aims his attention at the birth story of Jesus Christ. He says: 

                            "'Now the birth of Jesus Christ was in this wise: When his mother, Mary, was espoused to Joseph, before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.' Yes, and the Greek demigod Perseus was born when the god Jupiter visited the virgin Danae as a shower of gold and got her with child. The god Buddha was born through an opening in his flank. Catlicus the serpent-skirted caught a little ball of feathers from the sky and hid it in her bosom, and the Aztec god Huitzilopochti was thus conceived. The virgin Nana took a pomegranate from the tree watered by the blood of the slain Agdestris, and laid it in her bosom, and gave birth to the god Attis. The virgin daughter of the Mongol king awoke one night and found herself  bathed in a great light, which caused her to give birth to Ghengis Khan. Krishna was born of the virgin Devaka. Horus was born of the virgin Isis. Romulus was born of the virgin Rhea Sylvia. For some reason, many religions force themselves to think of the birth canal as a one-way street, and even the Koran treats the Virgin Mary with reverence. However, this made no difference during the Crusades, when a papal army set out to recapture Bethlehem and Jerusalem from the Muslims, incidentally destroying many Jewish communities and sacking heretical Christian Byzantium along the way, and inflicted the narrow streets of Jerusalem where, according to the hysterical and gleeful-- chroniclers, the spilled blood reached up to the bridles of the horses." 

Now, for me to give a full detailed account refuting the idea that the story of Jesus' birth was a copy of old pagan myths, I'd have to write an entire book on the subject. Maybe one day I will, Lord willing but for now I will note that absolutely no credible scholar believes this argument anymore because it has been thoroughly debunked and the only reason it is still around is because the internet keeps dead arguments alive. The pagan myths of virgin births, along with stories of deaths and resurrections, have been proven to have been created many years after the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As a matter of fact, by the time that these pagan myths came into existence, the story of Jesus was already well-established. So, who copied who? Furthermore, none of the examples Hitchens gave are not even remotely comparable to the story of Jesus' birth anyone with a brain that can think logically will see this immediately. dr. James R. White has undergone the task of thoroughly refuting this claim so I refer to his work on this subject for your further study. 

After failing to discredit the story of the birth of Jesus, Hitchens then goes right back to his normal form of argumentation when he claims: 

                                 "Now, comes the turn of still another religion. The forces of Hamas, who claim the whole of Palestine as an Islamic waqf or holy dispensation sacred to Islam, have begun to elbow aside the Christians of Bethlehem. Their leader, Mahmoud al-Zahar has announced that all inhabitants of the Islamic state of Palestine will be expected to conform to Muslim law. In Bethlehem, it is now proposed that non-Muslims be subjected to the al-jeziya tax, the historic levy imposed on dhimmis or unbelievers under the old Ottoman Empire. Female employees of the municipality are forbidden to greet male visitors with a handshake. In Gaza, a young woman named Yusra al;-Azami dead in April 2005, for the crime of sitting unchaperoned in a car with her fiance'. The young man escaped with only a viscious beating. The leaders of the Hamas 'vice and virtue' squad justified this casual murder and torture by saying that there had been 'suspicion of immoral behavior'. In once secular Palestine, mobs of sexually repressed young men are conscripted to snoop around parked cars, and given permission to do what they like'." 

This all sounds very tragic and horrendous, but from an atheistic worldview, where does Hitchens get off on pulling at our heart strings by complaining about all this immorality and injustice? After all, we are only stardust according to atheism. How can one even understand what "immorality" or "injustice" is from a worldview that claims any objective standard for morality and jujstice? Hitchens keeps expressing his mere opinion while appealing to our emotions but he has yet to make a logical argument against Christianity. 

Then, Hitchens continues to make another assertion based on nothing when he says: 

                          "The supporters of al-Queda led by a Jordanian jailbird named Abu Musab al-zarqwi launched a frenzied campaign of murder and sabotage. They mot only slew unveiled women and secular journalists and teachers. They not only set off bombs to Christian churches... and shot or maimed Christians who made or sold alcohol. They not only made a video of the mass shooting of a contingent of Napalese guest workers, who were assumed to be Hindu and thus beyond all consideration. These atrocities might be counted as more or less routine. They directed the most toxic part of their campaign of terror at fellow Muslims. The mosques and funeral processions of the long-oppressed Shiite majority were blown up. Pilgrims coming long distances to the newly accessible shrines at Karbala and Najaf did so at the risk of their lives." 

My response to all this is simply "So What?" Hitchens has not established how he can know for certain that any of this is indeed objectively morally wrong. Therefore, all this is just him basically saying, 'I don't personally like this or that'. Like I've already explained before, without an objective moral standard for morality, all moral pronouncements are arbitrary and meaningless. Imagine we had two different maps of Africa and we wanted to know which map was the correct one. Well, the only way we would know this is by looking at a real unchanging and objective standard for Africa (i.e the continent itself), but if Africa does not exist then both maps are irrelevant. Hitchens is actually borrowing from the Christian worldview when he makes any kind of moral pronouncement because his own atheistic worldview does not have any ground to stand on and thus it is reduced to absurdity! 

Christopher Hitchens next horrendous claim is thus: 

                        "...there were those who protested in the name of religion and who tried to stand athwart the rising tide of fanaticism and the cult of death. I can think of a handful of priests and bishops and rabbis and imams who have put humanity ahead of their own sect or creed. History gives us many other such examples which I am going to discuss later on. But this is a compliment to humanism, not to religion... these crises have also caused me, and many other atheists, to protest on behalf of Catholics suffering discrimination in Ireland, of Bosnian Muslims forcing extermination in the Christian Balkans, of Shia Afgans and Iraqis being put to the sword by Sunni jihadists, vice versa and numberless other such cases." 

He definitely seems to think that what he, and other atheists and the "some priests, rabbis, and imams" he refers to are doing are indeed good moral things. However, without an objective standard, there is no way for him to actually know what is morally good or evil. He has failed to give an account for objective morality. So, therefore this is all his opinion and that means him getting angry at moral injustices is just pure nonsense. It is just like getting angry at me for liking chocolate ice cream and until some atheist can give a logical account for morality apart from God there is no reason to listen to them on this issue. 

Hitchens then goes on to make yet another monumental blunder when he states: 

                       "On February 14, 1989, my friend Salman Rushdie was hit by a simultaneous death sentence and life sentence, for the crime of writing a work of fiction. To be more precise, the theocratic head of a foreign state--the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran-- publicly offered money, in his own name, to suborn the murder of a novelist who was a citizen of another country. Those who were encouraged to carry out this bribed assassination scheme, which extended to all those involved in the publication of The Satanic Verses were offered  not just cold cash but also a free ticket to paradise. It is impossible to imagine a greater affront to every value of free expression. The ayatollah had not read, and probably could not read, and in any case forbade everyone else to read, the novel. But he succeeded in igniting ugly demonstrations among Muslims in Britain as well as across the world, where crowds burned the book and screamed for the author to be fed to the flames as well." 

Again, I can't help but respond with a big "So What?!!" Hitchens still has not given us any reason to care about what his friend went through. This is just another appeal to emotion fallacy and quite frankly I'm beginning to think that this is all the late great Christopher Hitchens was capable of, which only further exposes the absurdity of atheism. 

Another huge blunder Hitchens dives into comes when he goes on to say: 

                   "A number of serious attemots were made to kill Rushdie by religious death squads supported from Iranian embassies. His Italian and Japanese translators were criminally assaulted, apparently in one case in the absurd belief that the translators might know his whereabouts, and one of them was simply mutilated as he was dying. His Norwegian publisher was shot in the back several times with a high velocity rifle and left for dead in the snow, but astonishingly survived. One might thought that such arrogant state-sponsored homicide directed at a lonely and peaceful individual who pursued a life devoted to language, would have called forth a general condemnation. But, such was not the case. In considered statements, the Vatican, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the chief sephardic rabbi of Israel all took a stand in sympathy with-- the ayatollah. So did the cardinal archbishop of New York and many other lesser religious figures. While they usually managed a few words, in which to deplore the resort to violence, all those men stated that the main problem raised by the publication of The Satanic Verses was not murder by mercenaries, but blasphemy. Some public figures not in holy orders, such as Marxist write, John Berger, the Tory historian Hugh Trever Roper, and the doyen of espionage, John Le Carre', also pronounced that that Rushdie was the author of his own troubles and had brought them on himself by offending a great monotheistic religion. There seemed nothing fantastic, to these people, in the British police having to defend an Indian-born ex-Muslim citizen from a concerted campaign to take his life in the name of god." 

At the risk of sounding trite, I must say, yet again, "So What?!" It is getting really annoying seeing all these unfounded appeals to emotions as if he really thought he was on to something with this chapter. I'm not going to belabor the point about him not accounting for objective morality because at this point you can clearly see the fallacious reasoning in his thought process. However, I will say that if a "So What?" response is a devastating critique of someone's argument then maybe it is time to for them to abandon that argument. 

Next , he now shifts gears to discuss 9/11. Now, as tragic as 9/11 was, I see no logical reason why an atheist should be morally outraged by that, or any immoral, event. He goes on to say: 

                      "Within hours, the 'reverends' Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell had announced that the immolation of their fellow creatures was a divine judgment on a secular society that tolerated homosexuality and abortion. At the solemn memorial service for the victims held in the beautiful National Cathedral in Washington, an address was permitted from Billy Graham a man whose record of opportunism and anti-Semitism is in itself a minor national disgrace. His absurd sermon made the claim that all the dead were in paradise and would not return to us even if they could. I say absurd because it is impossible even in the most lenient terms to believe that a good number of sinful citizens had not been murdered by al-Queda that day. And there is no reason to believe that Billy Graham knew the current whereabouts of their souls, let alone their posthumous desires. But there was also something sinister about hearing detailed claims to knowledge of paradise, of the sort that Bin Ladin himself was making on behalf of the assassins." 

Now, I do agree that it is pretty absurd for Billy Graham to preach those victims into heaven when he did not know who they were, what kind of lives they led, or whether or not they came to Christ before they died. I get angry whenever I hear a funeral sermon where the preacher says for certain that someone is in heaven because there is no way for any of us to know for sure the eternal destination of any individual when they finally pass on. That is up to God Himself alone who will be saved and who will be damned. Don't get ne wrong, though, I do acknowledge that an individual can have assurance of their own salvation. However, we cannot and must not judge whether or not someone else is saved. As for Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, those two are false teachers anyway so anyone who truly understands sound biblical doctrine should not even be paying any attention to them. I would like to point out that Christopher Hitchens was pro-life, meaning he was against abortion, although he couldn't justify why. 

He, then, moves on to make thus claim: 

"At the U.S Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, it was revealed that Jewish and agnostic cadets were being visciously bullied by a group of unpunished 'born again' cadres who insisted that only those accepting accepting Jesus as personal savior were qualified to serve. The deputy commander of the academy sent out emails proselytizing for a national day of (Christian) prayer." 

By now, I'm sure you know my response to this claim--So What?! Here I am almost finished with this chapter and he still has not given any justification for moralir or why we should even care about these events. It is almost as if he thinks his audience will be not intelligent enough to think for themselves and will be suckered into his emotional appeals. 

One thing that I found in this chapter that I actually agreed with Hitchens on was when he said: 

                      "James Madison, the author of the first amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any law respecting an establishment of religion, was also the author of Article VI, which states unambiguously that 'no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust.' His later Detached Memoranda make it very plain that he opposed government-appointment of chaplains in the first place, either in the armed forces or at the opening ceremonies of congress. The establishment of the chaplainship to congress is a palpable violation of constitutional principles." 

I agree with this sentiment because I am against the idea od chaplains being in the armed forces or government too. As a matter of fact, I am against the whole concept that a lot of Christians today hold that America is a "Christian Nation". There is no such thing as a "Christian Nation" and there never was such a thing either. The Apostle Paul, or any of the Apostles, was not concerned with "Christianizing" the world and neither should we be. Their only concern, as ours should be as well, was Jesus Christ and Him crucified and not on taking over culture. 

Finally, the last statement in this chapter that he made that I will address was most likely his weakest argument in this chapter. On page 35, he says: 

                   "Charles Stanley, whose weekly sermons from the First Baptist Church in Atlanta, are watched by millions, could have been any demagogic imam as he said, 'We should offer to serve the war effort in any way possible. God battles with people who oppose him, who fight against him and his followers.' His organization's Baptist Press News Service printed an article from a missionary exulting that 'American foreign policy, and military might have opened an opportunity for the gospel in the land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.' Never to be outdone, Tim LeHaye decided to go even further. Best known as the coauthor of the bestselling Left Behind pulp fiction series which readies the average Americans for the 'rapture' and then for Armageddon, he spoke of Iraq as 'the focal point of end times events'. Other biblical enthusiasts tried to link Saddam Hussein with the wicked King Nebuchadnezzer of ancient Babylon, a comparison that the dictator himself would have probably approved, given his rebuilding of the old walls at the Babylon with bricks that had his name inscribed on every one of them. Thus, instead of a rational discussion about the best way to contain and defeat religious fanaticism, one had the reinforcement of two forms of that mania: the jihadist assault reconjured the bloodstained specter of the Crusades." 

Now, at the risk of offending some of my readers, I will unequivocally say that dispensational theology is an unbiblical and dangerous ideology. I am someone who enjoyed the Left Behind series when I was a teenager when they first came out. However, as I grow in my understanding of theology and the scriptures, I see no biblical basis for dispensationalism. This is why I am adamantly against it because I see it as a false theology that is leading millions of people astray. For a book suggestion on eschatology that is biblically and doctrinally sound I recommend "A Case For Amillenialism" by Dr. Kim Riddlebarger. 

Quite frankly, after reading this chapter, I am sorely disappointed because all Christopher Hitchens did this entire chapter was make logically fallacious appeals to emotion. I did expect more from him because out of the so-called four horseman of atheism (Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett). I actually have the most respect for Hitchens. However, now I expect much from the rest of this book. Thank you for reading this post and I hope this was edifying to you and that it was glorifying to God. 

-David Lee Chu Sarchet 
Christian Apologist and Mental Health Advocate 

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