Blogging God is Not Great, Chapter 17

Chapter 17: An Objection Anticipated: The Last-Ditch “Case” Against Secularism

I’ve been looking forward to this chapter also. The two points that he gives have been in the back of my mind since the beginning of the book:

1. WIthout divine authority, humanity “will act in the most unbrided and abandoned manner” (230).
2. Secular governments (USSR, China, etc) are also guilty of similar grave evils.

Hitchens astutley points out the folly of saying that religions are no worse than Nazism or Stalinism. It’s a pretty weak ground to argue from. Further, he goes on to argue that religious folk in Europe and Russia lent aid and support to fascism and communism in its early years. He names Pope Pius XI explicity, but he hasn’t so far engaged Bonhoeffer, who was featured in the early chapters of the book.

I’m perplexed at his assertion about Vichy France on page 237. He says that the 1789 revolutionary motto Libertie, Egalitie, Fraternatie was removed from currency and replaced with “the Christian ideal motto” of Familie, Travail, Patrie (Family, Work, Homeland). I don’t argue that the motto was replaced, but what makes this a “Christian ideal?” It appears to me to be nothing more than a Francophone version of Arbeit macht frei, Work Makes One Free. The Christian ideal, to the contrary, is the the Truth shall set you free, not Work, not Homeland, not Family. It’s confusing to me, but I’m getting used to the attempts as proof by assertion in this book.

I’m not familiar enough with Vatican-Nazi relations to contradict formally anything that Hitchens is writing. He entertains Nazism for about seven pages here. However, his only source is Cornwell’s Hitler’s Pope. After reading one unsympathetic book on the subject, Hitchens feels ready to pontificate himself. Has he bothered reading, say, two books on the subject? Perhaps a second one with a different viewpoint? Like the Galileo affair, I’m pleased enough to know that there is more than one interpretation of the events.

However, whatever the interpretation, the fact remains: Christians of all churches were complicit in the early days of fascism. “It has been admitted by the religious authorities themselves” (242). He admits a small place for a few activities of “churchmen,” perhaps having Bonhoeffer and Barth in mind, that bore positive witness from religion. Again, the error is enough for conviction; no room is to be found for contrition, repentance or redemption.

Again Hitchens names religion as the product of idiocy and fear (245, 247). Of course, it is an idiocy and fear from which he is exempted. One wonders how he among so few have made this transcendant move and if he might, as a secular Prometheus, impart that skill to the idiotic, fearful masses. To have this wisdom and withhold it, only to watch the weak suffer, is immoral.

Toward the end of the chapter, he gives some credit to the religious folk turning over South African apartheid. He does no honor to Desmond Tutu or Nelson Mandela by bothering to mention their names. Indeed, he would not dare mention that one is an Anglican bishop and the other is a Methodist who has spoken many times about the importance of his faith. No, they are namelessly commemorated as “secular Christians.”

An interesting read to be sure. It is quite useless to assert the superiority of religion on the basis of its morality. Plenty of secular folk can be moral people and plenty of religious folk have been profoundly immoral. It doesn’t take sixteen chapters to show what can be gotten from casual observation, however.

Taking Htichens as an examplar of secular and rational humanism, I am surprised continually to find that he has no space for forgiveness. He hasn’t shown it so far and I’m not expecting him to bring it up in the last chapters.

Perhaps the gulf between these two worldviews is not morality, not intellect, not an appreciation of the transcendant and not love. The gulf is the ability to repent and to forgive.

Blogging God is Not Great, Chapters 14-16

Neither chapters 14 and 15 have any endnotes, citations or references. There are, however, numerous block quotes that come from somewhere.

Chapter 14: There is no “eastern” solution

I’ve seen this chapter coming from a long way off. It disappoints in some ways but fits right into Hitchens’s rhetoric so far. He opens with the story of Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh who ran a cult-style ashram through the 1980s. Hitchens did journalistic work on the ashram some time ago and relates his first-hand experiences there.

Again, he tries this example to prove the case. By the power of not much more than anecdote, the reader is to understand that eastern religions are all as corrupted at the western ones. To his credit, Hitchens tries to point out that the typical Western attitude toward eastern religions is flawed. He points to Hindu violence and Buddhist fascism as examples that are contrary to the common American view of those religions as peaceful, laid-back and harmless.

He never mentions Sam Harris in the chapter, but Harris’s shadow looms throughout. In Harris’s 2006 book Letter to a Christian Nation, he advocates for non-violent Jainism as a way forward in the feud between apparently-Christian America and the Middle East. Hitchens appear to have this in mind as the chapter title points to “no eastern solution.”

Interestingly, Hitchens brings up British Imperial attitudes toward Sri Lanka and India. Out of guilt, he asserts, the West often tries to paint the East and its religions as culturally accomplished, intelligent and artistic, peaceful and wise. In attempting to demolish the concept of an “eastern solution,” Hitchens seems to have done a fine job of vindicating the colonial attitude. To read his accounts, the East is just as idolatrous, barbaric and savage as Queen Victoria would like it.

Chapter 15: Religion as an Original Sin

Chapter 16: Is Religion Child Abuse?

These chapters repeat ad nauseaum points that Hitchens has already made. In greater detail, he complains about his disgust at the bizarre practices that come out of teachings on blood sacrifice and atonement.He selectively brings evidence for his one-sided arguments. He overlooks alternative explanations. He cannot conceive of religion without the embarrasing practices he describes and yet it exists almost everywhere around him.

These two chapters are an exercise in willful ignorance on Hitchens’s part. Religions must of necessity have the same bizarre practices they did centuries ago. They cannot be conceived apart of it. No notice is taken of religious people who speak against or otherwise addressed these criticisms.

At the end of chapter 14, Hitchens vindicated a Victorian worldview. Here in 15 and 16, he choses to ignore plentiful evidence to his contrary and keeps up logic that his Enlightenment predecessors would be embarrased by.