By BEN SZMANDA
I don’t think there has ever been a time when I completely agreed with Christopher Hitchens. Prior to 9/11 he was a Trotskyite; days after the attacks, Hitchens did a costume change and re-emerged as a military interventionist –one that used the same arguments as the neo-conservatives, only with far more skill, and with an actual sense of humor. That’s the thing about Hitchens, whatever his opinions, he always kept up the quality level of his output. And that’s why I keep reading his columns, in spite of the fact that I almost always disagree. In general, my take on Hitchens himself sums up my take on his book God is Not Great, too: I sort of agree, but I mostly don’t, I find some really disturbing elements in his position, and his sense of style keeps me reading.
Style is the key word for this book. Come on now, it’s not like in 2008 we expect to hear something new. If you believe in god, you say a, b, or c; if you don’t you respond 1, 2 or 3; the only difference is that now the Hubble telescope gets involved. So when you pick up a book arguing one way or another, you approach it like you would listen to jazz performers playing Autumn Leaves: You listen for their handling of an old standard, rather than to hear a novel composition.
Obviously, Hitchens comes down on the atheist side of things. His basic argument is that religion is a reactionary force that gives us a false understanding of ourselves, the world, and it’s origins, and reinforces those false claims with violence, while imposing stifling sexual prohibitions.
I’m not religious, but I’ve got a few problems with this argument. This is way too broad a brush. Some religions do that, certainly, but others don’t There are plenty of liberal denominations inside the worlds religions that are cool with evolution, see Genesis as an allegory, and don’t really care what you do in the bedroom, provided it is consensual. If Hitchens had said fundamentalism did these things—hey, great: I agree completely. But he didn’t, because fundamentalism isn’t the target here. Hitchens wants to discredit all religion, which is fine, but this isn’t the right argument to use.
Hitchens thinks it is. He goes on to say that he would not ”prohibit [religion] if I could”. Which would be decent of him, but unfortunately it’s just the beginning of a feint. “But will the religious grant me the same indulgence? I ask because there is a real and serious difference between me and my religious friends, and the real and serious friends are sufficiently honest to admit it.” Did you catch that? This is a standard authoritarian trope: You claim that you personally have nothing against leaving blank group unmolested—after all, some of your best friends are verminous blanks—but sadly, that group won’t ever return the favor. I’ve heard fundamentalist Christians say the same thing about gays, atheists, liberals, etc. Keep that in mind, I’ll come back to it. Bonus points for the “friends” technique too, if only because it’s pretty funny. What kind of friends are these, that over drinks tell you, “haha, no, but seriously, I’m going to cut your head off and put it on youtube, because you are vile infidel scum”? I have friends I disagree with. Sometimes we have arguments. Sometimes those arguments get heated. But while we each think the other is misinformed or whatever, we always assume that the other arguing in good faith. That’s how we can disagree and still call each other “friends”.
But anyway, this is the basic argument. From here Hitchens tries to flush out its finer points. There are two threads here: First, that religious extremism is responsible for an amazing amount of suffering, and second, that the fundamental basis for belief in the supernatural is absurd. For Hitchens’ broadside against all religion everywhere to work, and in order to prove that religion, as Hitchens says repeatedly, ”poisons everything”, these two threads need to be connected. Ultimately, I don’t think he does it.
Hitchens goes through the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran, and finds he doesn’t like any of them. Neither do I, to be honest—not as a source for “truth” anyway. But I know, however, that among the folks that enjoy the Yahweh Action Trilogy, there is a considerable number of textual interpretations. There are Jews, Christians and Muslims that draw benign comfort from these stories; some extract a measure of wisdom — or enlightenment, if you like. And yes, there are others that decide the best way worship their god is to kill as many non-believers as they can. The deciding factor is not the focal point of the believer, but it is the believer themselves. It’s the way you believe. His line of attack against all three books is familiar. The Penteauch was not written my Moses, the New Testament was written decades after the death of Christ, and the Koran was drawn at least in good part from oral traditions from the two earlier faiths. He also tells us that the Old Testament is incredibly brutal, depicting scenes of genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass rape, and all the other atrocities expected from a bloody tribal existence. All true, and for the most part accepted by modern followers. What he says is very worth considering, but I don’t think he makes the indictment he was trying to make.
In order to extend his critique to all religion, Hitchens goes after eastern religion as well. Honestly, this chapter was a bit limited. His response to all eastern faiths is summed up in critiques of the Bhagwan Sri Rashneesh, the Dalai Lama and Japanese Zen. Rashneesh is a cult leader—easy. Hitchens doesn’t like the Dalai Lama because he is a monarch who makes statements condemning homosexuality. His criticism of Zen is drawn from Zen at War, the excellent book by Brian Victoria, which I’ve covered here. So two kinds of Buddhism and a cult leader define all of eastern religion. This leaves out the Zen sects from other countries that didn’t fall sway to fascism, the Theravaden school(that is not only totally ok with homosexuality, but is also not run by a king), Hinduism, Taoism, Jainism, Sikhism, etc. You can certainly criticize all of these –some of them very harshly—but he doesn’t do this. And again, he has no interest or sympathy for the believers–like Brian Victoria, in fact– who have dedicated themselves to reforming their faiths. He does touch on some of the abuses of Hindu society, such as the caste system and the now banned practice of suttee, in other parts of the book. But even including that, it doesn’t feel like the best made argument.
The closest Hitchens comes to proving his case is in his discussion of the Catholic Church. This is about as “mainstream” a religion as you can get. The extremists in Catholicism are not necessarily the ones responsible for the worst of the Churches crimes, either. But two if the worst of these crimes, the vast sex abuse scandal, and Papal complicity with fascism and Nazi Germany, are better explained as a result of authoritarianism, rather than as a result of faith. When reviewing Zen at War I said that it’s not surprising to see a religious elite ally themselves with the political elites. That’s what elites do: they maintain their power by working together. As for the sex abuse scandal, it seems that the ultra-hierarchical nature of the church, its leader’s interest in self preservation, and the church’s belief in its own infallibility are enough to explain the results. But this is an argument for transparency and democracy, not atheism. If a Lutheran or Baptist minister, who is hired by his parish, gets caught raping kids, the same thing doesn’t happen. He would be prosecuted, and if for some reason the was a miscarriage of justice, you could at least be assured that he would be out of a job. What he wouldn’t be is spirited to another parish in the middle of no where to victimize another round of children. Hitchens’ best point is that both actions (as well as others) point to the absurdity of claiming papal infallibility. No argument from me on that count.
This difference between the dangers of absolute power and the dangers of faith is something that Hitchens glosses over. He argues that while religious apologists claim that their faith has “reformed”, they ignore the fact hat they would behave quite differently if they were still in power. He’s right, but that’s because no one should have the power the church had, religious or secular.
He anticipates people might remind him about the 20th century’s secular totalitarianisms, but he chooses to do a silly side step rather than address this point, because it undercuts his argument.
He also seems to give Lenin and Trotsky something of a pass, by the way: He acknowledges that they were indeed atheists and then quickly moves on. I’d ignore it, but it suggests a certain absolutist mindset most authoritarians have. If so and so agrees with me, their crimes are probably explainable. Thankfully, Hitchens doesn’t give Stalin the same treatment; unfortunately, he resorts to some rhetorical dodges that are beneath him. Stalin is said to have developed a cult of personality, and therefore was kind of religious, sorta. He actually cites the book The God that Failed as an example. I agree that there is plenty of common ground between communism, fascism, and religion—John Gray’s excellent Black Mass does a good job showing this, and then connects the dots to neo-conservatism as well—but Hitchen’s argument here is strained.
I’m probably coming off as sounding a lot harsher than I would like. God is not Great is enjoyable, challenging and informative—it is also very obviously heartfelt. You can sense him getting angry, righteously angry, through the page, and for the most part you’re on his side. Hitchens concludes his book by calling for a new enlightenment, and he offers a sincere hope that reason and science take back some ground against the forces of superstition and irrationality. I’ll happily agree to that one, God knows it’s about time.
Jim Montana As some of you may or may not have noticed there seems to have been a severe lack of Jim Montana over the past several weeks, this is due to the fact that like the commercial says “life comes at you fast” and i got caught up in the whirlwind. That being said i realize that i have missed the heart of the election year, believe me when i say i have not missed anything I have been there for every palinful moment of the McCain campaign. After watching the campaign progress over the past several weeks one has to wonder does McCain want to lose this election. Sarah Palin in has done to the election what Pauly Shore did to movies in the 1990’s, I will never forgive him for Son-In-Law. Even as our economic system melts down around us Gov. Palin seems more interested in playing pin the William Ayers tail on the donkey then trying to fix our broken economy. I condemn what William Ayers did way back when, however that does not make everyone that has crossed his path over the last several years a terrorist. Sen McCain needs to watch himself because at the rate she is going John McCain might be fired from the McCain-Palin campaign for not attacking Sen Obama and his connection to William Ayers. Now comes the interesting part of the column, at several campaign rallies for Sen. McCain there has been instances of supporters of McCain shouting “kill him” when Sen. Obama’s name is mentioned, and nothing has been said about this except when the dynamic duo is asked about it. At the beginning of this slugfest last year I stated that this country is not ready for an African-American president, and while that theory has proven to be wrong there are still nut-jobs out there who do not need a reason to go Lee Harvey Oswald on Sen. Obama Gov. Palin and Sen McCain need to realize that you can not let supporters at your rallies shout out anything they want and not address those comments immediately. As stated earlier Sen. McCain must have a death wish for his campaign, when he was sitting down with his list of potential running mates did he pick the only one who has no foreign relations experience, for goodness sakes if he put that little of thought into the decision I should have thrown my name into the ring for consideration. Sarah Palin might be a good candidate for president but not now, If John McCain was to get lucky and win this election and something was to happen to him we would be stuck with a gun toting hockey mom to lead this country and may god have mercy on us.
