I stand corrected. My examples were wrong. Thank you for pointing that out to me. In referencing Stalin, Hitler, Polpot, etc I was thinking of a quote by Mark Twain - "Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel."

Nevertheless, I still stand by my last paragraph.

Hitchens comes across as angry, bitter, juvenile, and vapid. The only conclusion you can come to reading this book is that its totally irrational. Random examples and lots of nasty words do NOT make a rational case. A critic of religion who fails to accept anything good about it - anything at all - is just not living in the real world.

In retrospect, such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity that Noah didn’t miss the boat.

Wookie1974 wrote:I can't imagine a French Revolution, or Bill of Rights, or the unwritten English Constitution without the freedom of thought that first stretched its legs within the confines of the church.

That's the kind of concrete illustration I could have included but didn't. What I want to suggest, further, is that only rarely, if ever, is anything in history wasted, coming to no account. Ideas can be carried forward along with religion, then lose their connection to religion and become part of our cultural heritage generally. This is a different way of looking at the record of religion than to say an opposing force had to expel it before any intellectual progress could be made. It is also different from the view that we ourselves have somehow freed ourselves, by declaration, from the influence of the religion of the past. We don't need to be apologists for religion to have an appreciation for its role in how we arrived at a current state which we preceive as more enlightened. There is a good analogy somewhere for what I'm trying to say, but I can't come up with it.

Thrillwriter wrote: He completely forgets the most famous atheists who have decimated millions of horrible God-Believers- Stalin, Hitler, Polpot, etc.

I get the impression you don't like the book much!

The thing to be examined about Stalin, Mao, and Polpot is whether their forcing an ideology on their peoples (which included the destruction of religion) is essentially any different from totalitarianism of any kind, including theocracy. That they wanted their countries to be atheistic is true, but the evil came from the methods they were willing to employ to enforce that, methods that are well known to Christian and Muslim rulers, to name two examples.

I don't think atheism gives anyone an automatic boost in virtue or morality. But I don't see evidence anywhere that it raises unique problems. In my thinking, which may be peculiar for all I know, the flaw does not reside in the particulars of any relgion or ideology, but in the aggressive desire to rule over all aspects of people's lives.

You are correct I did not enjoy the book at all. I am not criticizing anyone for liking it. It is only my opinion. I did not care for his writing, arguments, or views.
I have nothing againts atheism. Atheists have served in the military proudly and with distinction for as long as there has been a military. Today, Military Atheists face unique challenges from without and within.
America is home to more atheists than Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, combined and doubled.
Freedom of choice is one of the things we as Americans have always been proud of having. As I believe Mark Twain said, A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.
It is not the subject that I did not care for it was the writer's summations.

Chris has indulged us with a chapter by chapter book discussion of an apologist's text. I find that just as adequate we need to have a Devil's Advocate also discussed in this forum.
I, for the most part, am a theist, though I yield such conclusion from taste rather than reason. However many here prefer a reason-based faith, an oxymoron if you ask me, than a simple and pure choice. This book is for them to address, not me, though I shall offer my view on matters at certain points of the discussion, if one even develops...I have a knack for still-born threads.
So let's begin with Chapter 1 "Putting it Mildly".
There if first and foremost a distasteful aspect about religion that he tackles. He says:
"Why, if god was the creator of all things, were we supposed to "praise" him so incenssantly for doing what came to him naturally? This seemed servile, apart from anything else. If Jesus could heal a blind person, then why not heal blindness? What was so wounderful about his casting out devils, so that the devils would enter a herd of pigs instead?"
Three questions. The first one is even addressed by Marcus Borg ("The Heart of Christianity"), page 83, "If we think that his wisdom, compassion, courage and healing powers were the result of his divinity, then they are in a sense "not much". Even the most spectacular events attributed to him- walking on water, stilling a storm, feeding a multitude, raising the dead- are not much more than parlor tricks for someone who has the power of God." Or as I may add "God Himself". The second and third questions are problematic in relation to the assumptions of the first: Why just this or that miracle? Why, so to speak, a revolt rather than a revolution, or why just win the battle when you can win the war, the war against sickness, blindness, hunger and every other affliction of our species? Which just brings us back to Epicurus and his logical destruction of God as conceived by priests in a world besset by a variety of ills and evils of all sorts, natural and man-made.
But a bit later, page 4, he addresses the four main objections to be treated in his book:
1- "that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos"
2- "that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism"
3- "that it is both the result and cause of dangerous sexual repression"
4- "and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking."
How well he addresses all of these is questionable. One ought to enumerate some facts about the author. He is a former Marxist, which he now sees as another religion. In fact he also sees nationalism as a form of religion as well, along with anything that breathes totalitarianism. He is not above innocent belief, but he is a man of principle who calls it like he sees it and his life informs his opinions, not just any dogma blindly accepted. He judges the tree by the fruits it bears and his motives for leaving Marxim behind helps us begin to understand the objections to anything he sees that is similar to it. A book trying to answer him (like Keller) asks just how this author, Hitchens, reached the heights from which to judge all religions and all of the faithful. I hope to answer for Hitchens as well as for any other critic in the world. The critic of religion brings us the consequences of variety. Hitchens life has been colored by the encounter with the other and saw in the similarities of what was found the humanity we share rather than the common God. In our differences he found human selfishness rather than one true path among a sea of errors. He saw that all were errors because all pandered to the same ungodly brutality of tribalism and group mechanisms. He saw, like Paul, that none was righteous. Like all of us he praises some, but he qualifies it as a praise for their humanism, rather against their religions than in the fulfillment of them.

Thrillwriter
Nevertheless, I still stand by my last paragraph.

That is your opinion and you are entitled to it

Thrillwriter
In retrospect, such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity that Noah didn’t miss the boat.

Later

Hitchens is a first-rate intellect and occasionally brilliant writer- perhaps one of the world's brightest minds engaging the public arena of culture, politics, literature and most things human...and he produces a mighty persuasive case against Religion, important and necessary and in some instances courageous and, yes, even brilliant. Religious abuses must be exposed, confronted and held accountable; and Hitchens' work is essential in this process.

And this is not the book, nor is Hitchens the place to go to get beyond the abuses: ie, the terror, ignorance and futility of Religion is all you get with Hitchens. I think it is a collosal error and sheer prejudice that sees only the abuse, and in its narrow minded, rigidly one-sided approach becomes abusive and destructive in its own way...reproducing the intolerance and bigotry it purports to fight against. The complexity and depth of Religion is completely lost in a struggle of black versus white, good versus evil, rational versus irrational puppets on a one-dimensional stage that exists nowhere beyond Hitchens' narrative...except in another similar guise and like-minded binary struggle fought by the same theocrats and fundamentalists he eviscerates across his pages.

This is the first book I've read by Hitchens ...

Hitchens is a first-rate intellect and occasionally brilliant writer- perhaps one of the world's brightest minds engaging the public arena of culture, politics, literature and most things human...and he produces a mighty persuasive case against Religion,

Perhaps in another of his works I would like it .. I don't know. I do feel solidly that random examples and lots of nasty words do NOT make a rational case for his interpretations. That is my opinion. You don't have to agree with it nor must I agree with you.

Continuing the discussion of the chapter ... I think maybe religion's original appeal was that it provided means for which people could control their own destiny. In a world where rain and plagues and other natural phenomena were the primary cause of your success or failure in life it's very appealing to think that by saying a prayer or doing a dance that you can influence these events and somehow have a say in what your future will be. However as the times have changed, I think we're far past those concerns. In todays world people look to religion to tell them that they are personally important... that they are not lost in the sea of humans that roam any given society. You are recognized as an individual soul and you have value as such. It used to be your skills and craft had value to society and you were identified and valued by your work, which no one else or very few others could porform... but now, everyone is replacable.. no one person is essential to society... in religion they are given value for their souls.. and just by existing they have a purpose and function to perform in the greater scheme of things... even if that purpose and function remain hidden... it's good enough to know it's there...

What I am basically trying to say is that, I think today, religion is more about giving meaning to your life, and allowing people to have value for something other than their work and skills. Either in this life or the next.

Hitchens is a take-no-prisioners polemicist, true. I have been trying to suggest, though, that he holds a softer, more tolerant view of religion than he admits explicitly. One indication is his fondness for some things associated with religion. Another is a remarkable statement (which I will try to find and quote later) that, in terms of the information available to them at the time, people who answered the questions of existence in terms of their religion were doing the best they could. This is statement I haven't seen before from atheist authors. It means that they could not have been engaged in error which, had they only chosen, they could have avoided.

DWill wrote:

Hitchens is a take-no-prisioners polemicist, true. I have been trying to suggest, though, that he holds a softer, more tolerant view of religion than he admits explicitly. One indication is his fondness for some things associated with religion.

I'm not bashing the guy. He has his beliefs. Great. All men and women should have something they believe in. However, in one example of his view it is demonstrated in Letters to a Young Contrarian , in which Christopher Hitchens writes: "I'm not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful."
If this were the fifteenth or sixteenth century where all was governed by the church, I would totally agree. But that is simply not the case. People have the right to believe what they want, how they want, and where they want. How on earth could this be harmful? Harmful to whom? Him? You? the entire population?
I fail to see the soft side in this quotation. However, I am trying to remain open minded and I am willing to see your point of view. I just don't and didn't see a soft side in the first Chapter, much less the entire book. And the above quote confirms my belief. Isn't it our right to choose, right or wrong?
Whose to say religion is harmful to those who pray only. That is all they do. They don't go to church, they don't read the bible, they don't have a specified religion, and yet they believe in a higher power and they prey. How is that harmful?
I think Mr. Hitchens makes assumptions without forethought.