Hitchens on God
by Robert Philbin
[ bookreviews ]
"The whole consideration of this - of this horrible little person is offensive to very, very many of us who have some regard for truth and for morality, and who think that ethics do not require that lies be told to children by evil old men, that we're - we're not told that people who believe like Falwell will be snatched up into heaven, where I'm glad to see he skipped the rapture, was found on the floor of his office, while the rest of us go to hell." - Christopher Hitchens (on the passing of Jerry Falwell, CNN, May 16, 2007)
Christopher Hitchens, liberal gadfly, supporter of US neocon Middle East war policy (and multi-martini lunch) joins his intellectual, if less vitriolic, colleagues - Daniel C Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris - with an aggressively meandering proclamation to the cause of atheism, a populist attack on gods, religions, and assorted other human indignities, aptly titled God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
The title alone is cause sufficient for entrée to an already crowded and growing camp. Unfortunately, there's little we of the humanist ilk haven't already learned about, 'The nightmare of the Old Testament', (the chapters stack up like parts of an 18th century morality novel) 'The tawdriness of the miraculous and the decline of Hell', 'The Koran as borrowed from both Jewish and Christian myths' and, of course, the ever persistent 'Does religion make people behave better?' (The answer, if you haven't guessed by now, is a thunderous no!)
With his many interesting, at times tedious, digressions aside, Hitchens' more relevant arguments borrow randomly from the three more carefully reasoned scientist philosophers mentioned above. Like a June bug, Hitchens scuttles across the surface of one historical moment to the next, delivering an interesting historic insight here, an antidote there, a bit of myth on one hand, a pop-history insight on the other, and all of it entertaining to the more informed, even as he surely must churn emotional frenzy in the less informed solipsists among the "believing."
Hitchens delights in closing battle with the low end of the belief demographic. And he does it well, hand-to-hand, knee-deep in the trenches, even if slightly baffling the rest of us. (There are, it appears, deeply felt if unexplored beliefs operating in Hitchens' psyche as well.) One brief example: while conjuring a recent and idiotic Mormon practice - the "praying in" or "baptizing" of dead, non-Mormon souls from past history, garnering them into its cult, incredulously expanding an after life power base, one assumes - what purpose might the following insight serve? "This retrospective baptism of the dead seems harmless enough to me," Hitchens writes, "but the American Jewish Committee became incensed when it was discovered that the Mormons had acquired the records of the Nazi 'final solution' and were industriously baptizing what for once could truly be called a 'lost tribe': the murdered Jews of Europe. For all its touching inefficacy, this exercise seemed in poor taste."
What is this, idle bar-room banter? How about the treatment of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories by the current government of Israel? What role might organized religion, belief in godly real estate, holy books filled with utter nonsense, and afterlife fantasy, play in this more immediate and murderous conflict? Likewise, Hitchens appears cautiously politically correct in this book, particularly when it comes to American interest groups.
What of the un-great god, holy books and oddball irrationality (worthy of Mr Hitchens' acerbic explication) in President Bush's self-professed consultation with his un-great deity of choice as source for spiritual sustenance and self justification throughout the invasion and occupation of Iraq? An invasion which, unlike the lunacy of Mormons huckstering dead Jewish souls, has cost hundreds of thousands of real lives, largely women, children and elderly Iraqis? Does Hitchens somehow morally equate those deaths with bringing down the Ba'athist regime, horrid as it was? Collateral damage?
He does mention without discussion the religious motivated Bush foreign policy of using aid payments to manipulate behavior to conform to Christian principles and sustain human suffering in Africa - no condoms or family planning for AIDS-plagued peoples - an issue more successfully argued by Sam Harris in his books, and public appearances. In fact, apart from that passing comment, Hitchens has little else to say about President Bush, his faith-based foreign and domestic policy, his conduct of war for oil, the Orwellian intrusions into first amendment separation of church and state. Here's Hitchens, at his most critical, concerning the administration:
"At the time, the United States had an attorney general named John Ashcroft, who had stated that America had 'no king but Jesus' [..] It had a president who wanted to hand over the care of the poor to 'faith-based' institutions." (p32)
For all his wit and rhetoric, Hitchens is not arguing at the level of his colleagues: Dawkins' argument is elegant and confrontational (religious education is child abuse, he argues, for example); Dennett is more thoughtfully reticent, logically persuasive rather than offensive; while Harris, the skilled philosopher, plows right into the onslaught, taking no prisoners, especially among the moderate religious. All are highly trained philosophers and scientists, meticulous in logic, language and argument, while Hitchens is - well, Hitchens is Hitchens - verbose, brilliantly acidic, tangentially informative, always amusingly clever, if less well groomed or carefully reasoned.
A brief example to the point: in Breaking the Spell, Professor Dennett advances his idea of "belief in belief" as a possibility that there exists hardwired human capacity to "believe in belief" which might serve some useful survival purpose over time. Humans have the capacity to suspend disbelief and accept a useful hypothesis or belief (the rain gods are unhappy, ergo, drought) in order to resolve tensions and anxieties about the scary "unknown" and "uncontrollable" environment. We are liberated by belief from fear of the "unknown," at least for the moment, and are likely more capable to confront the pragmatic and immediate needs of self or community survival (like finding more water). These beliefs are jettisoned over time, replaced with "knowledge" such as information gained through science or discovery.
We learn to dig a well, for example, or channel water to move it toward fields and in the process of engineering, lose interest in rain gods. But this capacity "to believe in belief" remains for future contingencies, as necessary, like justifying war, for example, through the use of lies to instill suspension of disbelief in the general populace. The general populace believes in the government, at least until the lies become obvious. At one time navigators believed the world was flat, but that belief didn't prohibit exploration of the planet; it was readily junked in the name of "progress" or better navigation, no matter how persistently clung to by some cult believers. America's belief in God, though widespread and consistent according to polling, is based I suggest on an even deeper American belief in religious tolerance as guaranteed by constitutional separation of church and state. Here's Dennett on the vestige of waning need to believe in a deity today:
"The belief that belief in God is so important that it must not be subjected to the risks of disconfirmation or serious criticism has led the devout to "save" their beliefs by making them incomprehensible even to themselves. The result is that even the professors don't really know what they are professing. This makes the goal of either proving or disproving God's existence a quixotic quest - but also for that very reason not very important." [Dennett, 2006, p246]
The rain god simply goes away, regardless what you believe. Here's Hitchens' rather curious take on Dennett's point, in a chapter called 'Religion's corrupt beginnings':
"Professor Daniel Dennett and his supporters have attracted a great deal of criticism for their "natural science" explanation of religion. Never mind the supernatural, argues Dennett, we may discard that while accepting that there have always been those for whom "belief in belief" is a good thing in itself. Phenomena can be explained in biological terms. In primitive times, it is not possible that those who believe in the shaman's cure had a better morale as a result, and thus a slightly but significantly higher chance of actually being cured? [..] And it seems possible, moving to the psychological arena, that people can be better off believing in something than in nothing, however untrue that something may be." (p165)
I don't see Hitchens' point in raising Dennett here, let alone taking "belief in belief" into - faith healing? - which Hitchens later dismisses, quoting recent data showing no relationship between belief in the efficacy of prayer and recovery from illness. Nonetheless, one endures tangential "rattle and thunder" because, after all, Hitchens is Hitchens, and, as he demonstrated again on CNN and FOX following the death of Jerry Falwell last week, he remains primary public spokesperson for his own erudite brand of atheist fundamentalism:
"The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing," Hitchens said, "that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country, if you will just get yourself called reverend."
Who doesn't appreciate this refreshingly candid outspokenness, not to mention skilful use of the media to serve multiple purposes: pumping reality into dysfunctional cable television, shooting down mediocre pundit "journalists," and eviscerating (albeit expired) Bible-thumpers, while successfully boosting his own national best-selling book sales in the process.
If you enjoy reading Hitchens, you'll likely love this book. If you're serious about the debate, it may disappoint.
Notes
Related reviews: Of God and War: Will the 'mindless' spell of global religious war ever be broken?; The God Delusion; Deconstructing Christianity
Hitchens quote, CNN video
Hitchens on Falwell: Faith-Based Fraud Jerry Falwell's foul rantings prove you can get away with anything if you have "Reverend" in front of your name.
