god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything


I have always preferred to take a two-sided view in subjects of religion and superstition.

On the one hand, I will agree that religion is bad because it kills free thought (among other insidious things).

On the other hand, I will also admit that religious faith is sometimes the only light that lifts the darkest moments in a person’s life. To take that faith away from a desperate person during a time of need by demolishing his/her belief in God, is most cruel. Everyone is entitled to faith of some kind. Even non-belief is a faith until proven to be fact. As they say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.


So, when someone recommended a book called “God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” by Christopher Hitchens, I felt I knew what it was all about and assumed it was simply going to be a long one-sided, self-important argument about the non-existence of God (which in my opinion cannot be proved either way).


But I found that Hitchens’ book is not about proving or disproving the existence of God.


The title is misleading. It should be “Religion is not great” or “Why Religion is Evil”, or “How Religion is used in the Tyranny of Innocents”. This is because the book is really about religious people and institutions that have, and are, poisoning people’s lives and minds with twisted ideas while maintaining their tyrannical rule of misery and dread over poor innocent people, particularly women and children.


Religion is used to cover atrocities that would not have been tolerated under normal, rational conditions, even in modern USA. Hitchens cites the case of a 57 yr-old Jewish mohel (an appointed circumciser and foreskin remover) who was found to have given genital herpes to several small boys whose penises he had sucked after circumcision. Despite it being an abandoned ritual due to its unhygienic nature and disturbing associations, the mohel was still performing this in 2005, New York City. Yet instead of condemning the practice, the mayor forestalled the public health department’s verdict on it, overrode reports of warnings of the custom, and said that the important thing was to be sure that the free exercise of religion was not being infringed.


Other examples include parents denying urgent medical care to their offspring due to their beliefs of “Christian Science”; “Jehovah’s Witnesses” parents refusing blood transfusions for their children; “Mormon” daughters married to favored uncles and brothers-in-law who sometimes already have wives; and even the Vatican with its vast network of dioceses, being part of a huge racket of child rape and child torture.


Even more terrible is what is done to young girls in animist and Muslim Africa. Hitchens describes the horrifyingly cruel and primitive practice of circumcision and infibulation--slicing off of the labia and the clitoris, often with a sharp stone, before stitching up the vaginal opening with strong twine that is not to be removed until broken by male force on the bridal night. Only a small opening is left for the sake of “compassion” and biology, for the passage of menstrual blood and urine. The stench, pain, humiliation and misery inevitably result in infection, sterility, shame and death of many women and babies in childbirth.

Personally, I have seen this in a documentary shown on television many years ago and it was horrific. There were no close-ups but the procedure (or butchering and mutilation) is performed by women, surrounded by other women looking on while the poor girl’s legs lay spread. Imagine women partaking in the destruction of members of their own sex--adult women who should have better sense than committing this crime on young girls. It is unimaginably barbaric and absurd. Even, surreal. It begs the question of where the hell are we. Can this be Earth? The same Earth that we know and live our lives upon?


As Hitchens observes, it is fine and dandy for consenting adults to indulge in self-flagellation in any manner of ways, but it is criminal and wicked to inflict such abuse on young innocents.


Churches and other religious authorities not only denounce the use of condoms and vaccines, they even spread lies and rumors that damage the benefits of these medical aids, going as far as to say that condoms transmit AIDS and that the polio vaccine is a plot by the United States against their religion. In the poor countries of the world, what harm do such lies and rumors cause? Instead of being eradicated, polio remains and spreads. AIDS becomes an unmentionable disease whose sufferers are denied treatment while prostitution continues, and women are expected to die like martyrs from the disease that their husbands give them. Instead of solving problems for the benefit of the masses they claim to protect and save, the hypocrisy of these so-called religious peoples are causing millions to die needlessly and miserably.


What light that Science and Medicine bring us, religious authorities try to snuff it out. It leads Hitchens to three very salient, most agreeable and wise points: 1) Religion and churches are manufactured. 2) Ethics and morality are independent of faith, and cannot be derived from it. 3) Religion is not just amoral but immoral. Those who claim a heavenly license to kill and abuse, are tainted by evil and constitute a far greater danger than the average, savage brute.


Hitchens observes how much power religion wields over matters of sex, and highlights a point which I would say, is the root of much misery in humanity: the fact that religion is not just man-made and anthropomorphic, but it is indeed “man” made, in the sense of the masculine. The contempt and dread of the female in religious texts is amazing and ludicrous. While half the human race is feared to be unclean and defiled, that same half simultaneously presents a temptation to sin that is impossible to resist. It is a dilemma that would be funny, were it not for the abuse and cruelty sprung from such irrational ideas. There is thus, the fascination and obsession with virgins, virginity and celibacy, to the extent that it becomes a disease.


Contrary to what I had first assumed, Hitchens is far from being self-important and arrogant of his views. Instead, as one reads, one finds that he is a kind and upright man, exploring ideas that frankly, I have often wondered about too: “Does Religion Make People Behave Better?” and “Is Religion Child Abuse?”. I believe every intelligent and observant person will know the answer to the first. It goes with the fact that ethics and morality are independent of faith, and cannot be derived from it. As for the latter, I am inclined to agree with Hitchens: How many children have been ruined by the compulsory inculcation of faith? How many millions of wonderful young minds have been destroyed and made to think only in one way and live a life dictated by that way? Hitchens calls this “moral terrorism”.


With regards to circumcision of male and female infants, Hitchens notes that it is in fact, a mutilation of a powerless infant with the aim of ruining its future sex life. Far from being beneficial, such procedures have caused infections and deaths. Hitchens notes that were it not for religion and its arrogance, no healthy society would permit the amputation, or allow any surgery to be performed on the genitalia without the full and informed consent of the person concerned.


Indeed, with its long history of abuse, cruelty and torture, it is hard to see religion as anything good. Or rather, in the hands of the hypocritically religious, religion becomes evil and innocent people suffer because of it. It becomes worse when foolish people driven by blind faith throw in their lot with the hypocritically religious, believing that they are observing God’s commandment and hence ensuring their place in Heaven.


Hitchens’ book elucidates many salient and interesting points with witty humor. However, as it is written in a more scholarly prose than what the reader may be used to, it can be rather too erudite and not easy to read. Hitchens also meanders a great deal within his chapters and again, this makes for a less easy reading.


The title also leaves much for thought, as it is misleading.


Throughout, Hitchens focuses on religion which is observed as man-made, and hence the title suggests that by default, this manufacture extends to God, or rather, to the anthropomorphic idea of God. However, without evidence to the contrary, it would be arrogance and close-mindedness to assume that God does not in fact, exist.


While Hitchens highlights the fanatics across the religions, pointing out the poison, he does not consider even a little good that faith in a religion can bring to those who require it for more personal reasons than to do harm to others. Persons who are critically or terminally ill, who find strength in a religion in order to live another day, for instance. It does not matter if God does not exist as long as they believe that He exists. I see no wrong in such faith if it can grant strength in such situations.


The existence of God need not necessarily be linked to religion which admittedly has become man-made or “man” made.


However, Hitchens’ book is still enlightening, provocative and interesting. Certainly, it is one man’s view. It would be unwise to nod along with it without keeping an open mind, as it is for fanatics who nod along with their faith.

~Ed


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