'Here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true - that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no beter than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.' From the introduction to God Is Not Great. In the tradition of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. In a series of acute readings of the major religious texts, he demonstrates the ways in which religion is man-made, dangerously sexually repressive and distorts the very origins of the cosmos. With robust clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope's awesome view of the universe and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix.
God is Not Great marvels at the possibility of society without religion, arguing that the concept of an omniscient God has profoundly damaged humanity. Hitchens proposes instead that the world might be a great deal better off without 'him'.
