Can We Give God an Okay?

Christopher Hitchen's "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" is an unapologetically, acerbic stab at the celebration and reverence of modern-day Christianity. His book recently celebrated its best-seller status. "God is Not Great" is quaint in its title. It sets a stage for Hitchens to set up an all-out attack against grandiose expressions of Christianity in our culture. I picked up the book as more of an impulse buy. The title suggested that, perhaps, Hitchens and I might find some common ground of agreement, and I thought it would be a refreshing read.

I read much of this book while traveling away from home. Of course, I was more surprised to find that no one had any choice words for me reading this text publicly in various airports, among which included George W. Bush International in Houston.

According to the front flap cover, "Hitchens tells the personal story of his own dangerous encounters with religion and describes his intellectual journey toward a secular view of life based on science and reason, in which the heavens are replaced by the Hubble telescope's awesome view of the universe..." Further down, Hitchens takes issue with how Judeo-Christian conceptions of our world, its origins, and its course are taken wildly askew and are perpetuated as such.

Hitchens takes religion to task over eighteen chapters, the nineteenth serving as a pinnacle argument on where do we go from here. He takes issue on a wide range of topics: Koranic regimes in the Middle East, an aversion to pork, creationist theory (attempted to be) taught in schools, intelligent design, the fault of original sin, human sexuality and other contemporary issues. His last chapter delivers a rather simple and somewhat disappointing solution. His ideal is to encourage learning for its own sake and to empower people to study literature, arts, and science in order to gain real knowledge. He also discusses in brief the moral advantage of "unfettered scientific inquiry," though I imagine that this would serve as choir-preaching to the correct combinations of scientists (social and biological) and their respective funding agencies.

His overall arguments, however, seem diluted for a couple of reasons. First, let me state a general admiration for someone who is quite intellectual and very well-traveled. One certainly would not dispute how much experience Hitchens has in his journalistic career, and readers would easily notice how he has put in reporting hours at many places around the world. He has quite the pool of international experience to draw from when commenting in general terms about how people talk and think about religion. But what comes across in his text suggests an overall loftiness that diminishes the strength of what he attempts to convey. I would read along, trying to foresee where he is heading with his points, only to get engrossed in a lot of flowery, aerated language. Readers might be able to get by skimming the first and last couple of sentences per paragraph (since he tends to write long ones) to glean his points. And since his individual points become drowned in prose that seems a bit too self-serving for his own good, his overall argument becomes lost as well. "God is not great. Religion poisons everything," to be sure. We understand that. But I believe that Hitchens' overall tone suggests that in the process of getting drowned in unwanted religiosity, he leaves us with little more than ipecac syrup as an antidote -- a bit too bitter and sweet for taste, and no one really likes the vomiting part either.

Don't get me wrong. I liked the book, not because of its convincing subject matter -- which seems rather moot since I'm already sympathetic to nontheistic views -- but because it has its moments of entertainment. Readers probably shouldn't pick this up as a guide to understanding the values, ethics, and philosophies of an antitheistic framework, but rather because they need a good chuckle after watching someone like Pat Buchanan or Creflo Dollar, Joel what's his name of the mega-church, or any other sort of scoff at infomercials claiming to heal the cancerous and those unable to walk. And for being so smart, one would think Hitchens would create more of a digestible, content-filled book. It certainly doesn't come across that way. It is an interesting read, but not particularly an enlightening one. An injustice indeed.