Geoff Arnold's Blog

Over the last year, there have been three important books published on belief and non-belief ((Yes, I know that there have been many other interesting books in this genre – Stenger’s God: the Failed Hypothesis, Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation, and Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto. But let’s stick with the big 3.)) :

• Dan Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
• Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion
• Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

I’ve already written – appreciatively – about the Dennett and Dawkins books, and I must admit that I approached Hitchens with some trepidation. After all, people have been lambasting Dawkins and others for their “intemperate” and “disrespectful” attacks on religion, and that’s the kind of thing that seems likely to get Hitchens’ juices flowing (metaphorically and literally). But I needn’t have worried.
First, let me say directly and unambiguously: this is a really good book. Hitchens is a mercurial toper, and he may be (nay, he is) dead wrong on Iraq, but he is a great writer. I find myself reading all of the book reviews that he writes, even if I have no interest whatsoever in the book, just for the pleasure of his prose. He is a literate writer, and he assumes that his readers will recognize quotations and literary allusions without having to be spoon-fed. And he achieves this in an utterly contemporary voice, without retreating into anachronism. So please buy this book, to keep the author well supplied with the vodka which seems to fuel his muse. We need more of his work.
Enough of the style: what of the substance? I think that I can best describe my reaction to this book by considering the different uses to which I would put it and its two companions.
If a committed theist asked me why she should pay attention to the “new atheism”, I would give her Dennett’s book. I would hope that she would realize that the modern world provides clear evidence of the diversity of beliefs and non-beliefs, and that perhaps she would agree that this was a subject worth studying, worth considering from outside her (probably exclusive) world-view. What explains belief? Why has belief changed over the years? I wouldn’t expect to change her beliefs, but perhaps she could accept that belief and non-belief were legitimate subjects of inquiry.
If I met a curious man, embedded in a religious tradition but uncertain of whether (or what) he believed, or if he might actually be losing his faith, I would give him Dawkins’ The God Delusion. I’d be hoping that he could appreciate the role of science (and its stepchild, technology) in both understanding and creating the world in which he lives. It’s not just iPods and cruise missiles, but also polio vaccine, and clean water, and instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope that help us understand our universe, and DNA sequencing that allows us to diagnose disease but also to see our place in the web of life on this planet. And I would hope that he might come to realize, with Carl Sagan, that the realities of the universe are far more majestic and beautiful than the myths of religion.
But suppose that an old friend came to me and asked, “Why are you so fired up about atheism and religion these days? I remember you 15 years ago, and back then you were posting on alt.atheism, and having fun roasting creationists on talk.origins, and reading books on the philosophy of religion. ((Such things as Atheism: a Philosophical Justification, and the Moreland-Nielsen debate, and Mackie’s Miracle of Theism.)) But you didn’t talk – and write – about it all the time, and you certainly didn’t publically define yourself by your disbelief. So what happened?”
Instead of trying to explain all of my reasons, I think I’d simply give them Hitchens’ new book and say, “Read this. He puts it better than I ever could. I merely experience the occasional (but increasingly frequent) feelings of frustration, impatience, outrage, and even anger. Hitchens is an unequalled exponent of the art of the rant: he says what I feel, with passion, intensity and wit.”
This is not a book that seeks to convert. Its purpose is, first and foremost, to explain. To explain why atheists are no longer willing to sit meekly on our hands when the President of the United States says that I don’t know that Atheists should be considered as citizens”, or when the Archbishop of Canterbury excuses the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, or when Catholic cardinals and archbishops preach that condoms transmit AIDS. Yes, Hitchens also explains why he is an atheist, and the things that he finds mad, bad, or ridiculous about religion. Individual believers will naturally snort, and say that he’s not talking about their belief, but that’s not the point. He’s not seeking to win a debate, or persuade the uncertain: he’s laying out facts about the world and his opinions of those facts. And I agree with most of what he says.
Perhaps because he is a student of history, and a former Marxist Trotskyite, Hitchens pays particular attention to what he calls An Objection Anticipated: The Last-Ditch “Case” Against Secularism. He’s talking (p.230) about the charge that “secular totalitarianism has actually provided us with the summa of human evil.” Hitchens’ response is lengthy and detailed, and rejects the simplistic lumping-together of the various dictators of the 20th century. He describes how fascism and National Socialism co-opted religious institutions, which responded with unseemly enthusiasm. On the other hand, Communism in Russia and China had more in common with the anticlericalism of the French Revolution. Obviously Communists wished to eliminate any competing source of ideology or loyalty; beyond this, their secularism was less an expression of ontological atheism than of hatred towards the religious institutions which had supported the previous autocracies or imperialists. In fact, Communists were not trying to negate religion, but to replace it, complete with saints, heretics, mummies and icons. It’s a complex topic that could fill an entire book, and Hitchens handles it very well.
As you may have gathered by now, I really like this book. I really think that it’s my favourite of the three, mostly because I learned more from it than the other two, and because it caught my mood so well. Of course there are many things to learn from Dennett and Dawkins, but I’ve been steeped in their works for the last twenty years, and I think I understand the world from their perspective. With his literary and historical bent, Hitchens provided an intriguingly different point of view. And, as I think I mentioned, the writing is simply superb.