Book Review: God is Not Great
Among the boorish assertions skeptics and freethinkers must endure is why our interest is provoked in questions – the existence of a god, or the singular truth of his supposedly revealed religion – is not in fact proof that we are sublimating our real beliefs due to hubris, indolence or attraction to a particular sin (beyond those aforementioned of pride). This is a favorite apologetic device of many who respond to the contemporary progenitors of rationalism by suggesting that anyone so emphatic about why god does not exist must surely be hiding the fact they would not accept any such proof, even if presented with the most inescapable of arguments. Were such an assertion to be accurate, Christopher Hitchens’ new book would belie a devoted theist wrapped in the denial of his arrogance, surely the only error standing in the way of salvation. Fortunately for us, he feels the need to accede no such calamitous high ground to the moral sophists of our day, and chooses instead to meet them on the ground of their own texts and arguments, a thankless job but one he whole-heartedly embraces.
We might first deal with the obvious response to Hitchens’ book, that he overlooks the spectrum of religious belief outside of its fundamentalist adherents, by acknowledging that this is quite correct and need not be repeated as proof of that which it is not. Because the only metric with which he measures the worthiness of his beliefs is rational thinking and linear argument, the contribution of evangelical Christianity’s arranged marriage between postmodernity and theology beggars debate for precisely the same reasons as does its more strident parent, the community of literalists: both are susceptible to the same logical missteps and consequently, it suffers few to take the time and deconstruct both as if they were actually separate intellectual arguments. That one embraces mystery revealed by literal events and the other because its propositions are literally true, but absent the colloquialisms given by poetry and a casual appreciation of literature, are so insufficiently distinguishable as to make separate treatments duplicitous.
Much of what Hitchens discusses will be familiar to those acquainted with Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins. Fortunately for his readers, Hitchens’ treatment of questions of religion are girded by giants of literature and philosophy, which makes his book a more emotive contribution to the question of religious belief than others previously mentioned. Reviewers will likely miss the fact the nowhere does Hitchens sidestep the thorny questions of the errors of past systems which embraced disbelief, and in fact few modern essayists have been more active in revealing the true nature of totalitarian systems than has he. In this book, he devotes an entire chapter to “The ‘Case’ Against Secularism” and says:
“It is certainly true that emancipation from religion does not always produce the best mammal either. To take two salient examples: one of the greatest and most enlightening scientists of the twentieth century, J.D. Bernal, was an abject votary of Stalin and wasted much of his life defending the crimes of his leader. H.L. Mencken, one of the best satirists of religion, was too keen on Nietzsche and advocated a form of ‘social Darwinism’ which included eugenics and a contempt for the weak and sick. He also had a soft spot for Adolf Hitler and wrote an unpardonably indulgent review of Mein Kampf. Humanism has many crimes for which to apologize. But it can apologize for them, and also correct them, in its own terms and without having to shake or challenge the basis of any unalterable system of belief. Totalitarian systems, whatever outward form they may take, are fundamentalist and, as we would now say, ‘faith-based.’” (page 250)
This then becomes the great prize of humanism, and consequently that which religion most fears, that man should see his own errors for what they are and all that is and see himself as the only savior he will ever have. While we may have need of divine intervention, in much the same way as we may need another deposit in our bank account or a mentor to speak to the errors of our ways, such need has no relevance to what is, what was, or what might be. That religion makes so much of what was and what is yet to come is to suggest, as Hitchens does, that it might not be worthy of entrusting with that which is currently occurring. Fanciful wishes have their place in adolescence, and Hitchens is certainly not the first author to suggest that our childish desire for parental intervention inexorably leeches onto our subconscious, reinforcing our religious impulses and making us unwilling to see only ourselves as the source and solution to that which both plagues and empowers the human condition.
“God is Not Great” says Hitchens, evoking the bathroom scrawl of Nietzsche that “God is Dead” to which every potty-trained literate responder, at what stage in emptying its bowels we may only imagine, responds “Neitzsche is Dead … God”. But in Hitchens book we find no assertion of absolute truth, only a means by which truth is to be found, a means of viewing reality that is utterly scalable, truly trans-historical, and without cultural uniqueness. Were god great, or if he even “were” the debate would be ultimately answerable in ways whose profundity, clarity and largeness would be inescapable; that they are not suggests we embrace what we know, what can be tested and verified, and discard that which resists validation. We may give ourselves the freedom to do this with the awareness that knowledge has never been the enemy to human progress, and that any line of thinking which advocates at its core a set of unassailable truths which are not subject to proof but are requirements for belonging are the vestigial organs of our mythic past.
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“If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.”
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July 1st, 2007 at 2:07 pm
[…] ull-length review of Hitchens’ newest book, his much awaited tome on religion, can be read here. Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power is Transforming the Worl […]