Christopher Hitchens

After reading the first three chapters of Hitchens' book God is not great I am even more upset that I will be unable to attend his talk this week. He raises some incredibly interesting points. I enjoyed his thoughts on the power of religion to corrupt otherwise good people. Many religious people preach that religion is saving people from a life of sin, but the things that are done in the name of religion are some of the most terrible things that are done in this world. He asks his reader to consider a life without an afterlife in his first chapter. He questions whether or not if people thought this is the only life that they had that they would act better while they were living. One of the things about religion is that in many of them if you ask for forgiveness it can secure you a place in heaven, no matter the sins that you have committed. Hitchens says that if people do not have this idea of ultimate forgiveness later in their lives, then they will behave better during this life that they are currently living. He also tackles some of the things that people accuse atheists of. I love when he says that they still believe in music and literature. He says that he would rather read the works of Shakespeare or Tolstoy than the holy books. So it is not that atheists do not experience the wonder and awe that most associate with religion, but that they simply experience it differently than religious people. I thought that the first chapter of the book was more interesting, for me, than the second and third chapters. That is because there was a lot of background in these chapters and I have taken religion classes before so they were not as interesting. In fact, I was in a religion and politics class when Christopher Hitchens was scheduled to come the first time. Once again, I wish I could attend this talk.