Atheism vs. Religion

For most people alive in the 21st Century, the British-American author Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was the voice of atheism. Although he was the politest of debaters and a exemplary rationalist, his remarks often sparked intense, angry rebuttal. In case you're not familiar with his point of view, here are some of his best-known quotes:

(A) "Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith."

(B) "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."

(C) "We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid."

(D) "Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you."

(E) "One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think—though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one—that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell."

(F) "Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it."

I have prefaced each quote with a letter, so that I may reference them later on. To give you an idea of how Hitchens's remarks have inflamed religionists, consider first the following article by Elizabeth Breunig that appeared in a recent issue of The Atlantic:

I grew up in a faithful Methodist household in deep-red Texas during the George W. Bush years, when the political sway of evangelicals was at its zenith. At the same time, evangelists of a robust atheism--figures such as the biologist Richard Dawkins, the critic Christopher Hitchens, and the neuroscientist Sam Harris--toured the country offending salt-of-the-earth Americans with their contempt for religious belief. It was hard for me to ignore that a number of their assertions were clearly correct: Young-Earth creationism, for instance, instantly struck me as absurd when I first learned about it from a history teacher in my public junior-high school, who confidently told me that the world is only a few thousand years old.

In an essay titled "Christopher Hitchens Wasn't Great" that appeared in the February 2022 issue of the e-magazine Commentary, Meir Y. Soloveichik was much harsher:

"'Tis the season to remember Christopher Hitchens." So my fellow Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti wrote in December in a Washington Free Beacon essay marking the 10th anniversary of the controversial writer's untimely death. Continetti's tribute to Hitchens is one of many over the years by authors I admire, and that is why I feel compelled--if 'tis truly the season--to explain why I consider Hitchens's legacy to be so unworthy of celebration. In his writings about faith, and especially in his critiques of Judaism and the State of Israel, Hitchens reflected, with disconcerting constancy, the very vices that he purported to criticize throughout his career: bigotry, dishonesty, and ignorance.

In a review of Hitch's book "God is not Great" (2007) that appeared in the Christian Reserach Journal (2008), Douglas Groothus was particularly hard-hitting:

Christopher Hitchens does not like 'god' one bit. In his polemical and sometimes bombastic tome, god Is Not Great: How Religion Ruins Everything, the acerbic author presents what aspires to be a tour-de-force refutation of religion in all its forms. He refuses to capitalize the word god, since that would be a grammatical compliment to an entity that does not exist. Hitchens says, unlike belief in other nonexistent entities (such as unicorns), belief in god “poisons everything”—from politics to sexuality to art to education and beyond. He offers a litany of evils committed in the names of various religions, but his main targets are Christianity and Islam. The title of the book is a negation of the Muslim affirmation "Allahu Akbar," or "God is great."

Hitchens gives no concessions to religion in this book. He instead prosecutes a scorched earth (or heaven) policy on every page. Amid his chronicaling of various religious people who supported or who failed to oppose Nazism, for example, Hitchens injects but one sentence about Protestant pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s opposition to Hitler (p. 241). Hitchens says nothing of The Barmen Declaration (1934), a document written principally by German theologian Karl Barth, which unequivocally opposed Nazism for theological reasons. Neither does Hitchens mention the heroism of the Protestant Le Chambon-sur-Lignon village community in France, which bravely sheltered six thousand Jews to protect them from the Nazis. This is typical of his approach: expose religious vices, and ignore or redefine religious virtues.

Finally, on Reddit there is a thread that outlines a number of inaccuracies in "God is Not Great", including:

Historical Inaccuracies Hitchens has been criticized for several historical inaccuracies in his works. For example, he incorrectly states that the Vulgate was a vernacular translation of the Bible, and he confuses John Wycliffe with William Tyndale regarding their fates.

Cherry-Picking and Decontextualization Critics argue that Hitchens often cherry-picked historical examples and decontextualized them to fit his narrative, particularly when discussing the negative impacts of religion.

Specific Examples of Inaccuracies Hitchens's claim that the Protestant Reformation was due to the struggle to translate the Bible into the Vulgate is widely debunked. The Vulgate was a Latin translation, and the Reformation was driven by the desire for vernacular Bibles.

MLK and Christianity Hitchens asserted that Martin Luther King Jr. was not a true Christian, which has been challenged by scholars and historians.

Fred Hoyle and Cosmology Hitchens's account of Fred Hoyle's contributions to cosmology is noted for being highly inaccurate.

It's clear that the first three writers (plus many more) are objecting to Hitch's argument from the standpoint of indignity. They all feel, in one way or another, that Hitch has personally attacked them or their 'tribe'. It's worth analyzing their complaints, one by one.

Ms. Breunig says that Hitch "...toured the country offending salt-of-the-earth Americans with [his] contempt for religious belief." Of course, if she had read Hitchens carefully, she would have seen that his beef was with religion itself, rather than with religious belief. Quote A above: "Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason." While it is unfortunate that so many gullible people have been ensnared by Western religion through the centuries, it's clear that Hitch would have us prosecute the perpetrators rather than the victims.

I'm tempted to hand it to Ms. Breunig, because her recognition of the serious flaw in Young-Earth Creationism hints at a possible 'about face'. Or does it?

After cycling through the tired old arguments that the latest discoveries in physics and cosmology somehow prove the existence of God, she falls back on the age-old assertion that faith is all the proof one needs:

"To imagine that one might find traces of the divine strewn throughout the universe, or that earthly methods of inquiry might uncover some of those signs, isn’t ridiculous. But this latest round of arguments in favor of intelligent design seems aimed mostly at establishing that God could or should exist within the rational frameworks we already employ. This is both weak grounds for belief and a fundamental misunderstanding of faith. The route to durable faith in God often runs not through logical proofs or the sciences, but through awe, wonder, and an attunement to the beauty and poetry of the world, natural and otherwise."

As we shall see, awe and wonder are not the exclusive property of the Abrahamic religions.

Meir Y. Soloveichik's dismissal of Hitch is fairly transparent. The author regards any criticism of Israel, especially of the holocaust that has been visited upon the Palestinians in Gaza since the attacks of 7 October 2023, as 'antisemitic'. But the state of Israel should not be confused with Judaism in general, and rational, compassionate people around the world, including many Jews, reject this kind of smoke screen. Who is being "bigoted, dishonest and ignorant" now?

Douglas Groothus complains that Hitch, in his condemnation of religious leaders who condoned Nazism, failed to mention German theologian Karl Barth or the villagers of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. Does that negate Hitch's premise regarding religion? Obviously not. (See quote F above). There is plenty of other evidence (cited by Hitch in the book) that organized (Western) religion is the villain, and Groothus hasn't bothered to debunk any of Hitch's statements, even given the surprising number of errors in scholarship (see above). All Groothus can do is express his indignation.

The comments on Reddit are damaging, but again, they don't refute Hitch's argument. Hitch himself acknowledged that he wasn't a historian (his degree was in philosophy and economics). Too bad none of his friends and colleagues caught the errors, or that a corrected version of the book was never issued.

Hitch and his fellow travelers (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Carl Sagan) had legions of detractors, some rational, some angry and confrontational, but I dare say that none has succeeded in blowing a lasting hole in Hitch's carefully-conceived theses.

Myself, I'm in complete agreement with every one Hitch's arguments cited at the beginning. So I guess that makes me an atheist. But not exactly.

Atheists and religionists both feel that their respective worldviews constitute the 'truth', yet they fail to recognize--indeed, are oblivious to the fact that there is an alternate philosophy, a potential common ground that is a path to greater understanding about themselves and the world we live in. Called "The Middle Way" or "The Perennial Philosoiphy," it is essentially the traditional philophies, or ways of liberation of Asia--Vedanta Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism, minus the cultural and religious trappings that accrued to all three over the centuries. I invite you to read my essay about The Perennial Philosophy here.

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