Christopher Hitchens: The case against religion.

I was Reading Christopher Hitchens the other day, “God is not Great: The Case against Religion.”  I like a lot of what he has to say, despite his constant urge to throw in pontifical adjectives everywhere. It is amusing to read because much of it is true and much of it is entertaining. I do agree that religion has often proved itself to be poisonous, monumentally ignorant, and incredibly conceited. However, I find that the book was written for the easily swayed peoples of this world, for those who have a chipped shoulder and are not interested enough to find their own answers to their modest curiosities. There were several times in the book where I thought he was exaggerating to the point of complete fiction. A few examples that struck me was a bit about the Gnostic codices found at Nag Hammadi. He claims that many were written at the same time as the canonical gospels. Forgetting to mention that the earliest Gnostic codices at Nag Hammadi were about 150 AD, half a century after the latest canonical gospel (most of the Gnostic codices date from 200-300 AD). A detail, but for some reason, not that I really care, everything he said became suspicious. He also says that all four gospels were based on a likely ‘source’ document named “Q” which has been carelessly lost by god. All four gospels?? (i believe what he meant to say was matthew and luke… certainly not Mark or John) I guess this is amusing because you learn about this in any Introduction to New Testament class. It’s always embarrassing when an intelligent author says something so ignorant with such assurance. He is far from being precise on certain matters and opinionated to the point of comedy. Which is entertaining, but not serious.

The most ridiculous thing, that made me laugh, was when he talked about the primitive attitude towards agriculture, using Jesus’ parables on plowing, sowing, and allusions to mustard or fig trees as his evidence. Adding that the analogy between humans to lilies, suggest that thrift, innovation, and family life and so forth are a waste of time. yes… well done, that is exactly what is meant by these teachings.

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