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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
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God Is Not Great summary
Christopher Hitchens
How Religion Poisons Everything
16 mins
Brief summary
God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens is a critical analysis of religion and religious beliefs. It argues that religion is harmful and often used to justify violence and oppression. It challenges the idea of a divine creator and promotes the idea of science and reason.
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God Is Not Great
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Key idea 1 of 9
Religious texts are clearly man-made, as their historical inaccuracies and selective accounts prove.
In 2006, after having been hidden for years, the Gospel of Judas was published.
This work was written around the same time as the four gospels of the New Testament and also describes the life of Jesus, but, like many other gospels, it was declared heretical by the Christian church and banned.
The canonical gospels contained in the Bible were cherry-picked by the Church to reinforce their view of Jesus’s teachings. The Gospel of Judas obviously didn’t fit their narrative.
Such selective inclusion of certain religious texts clearly demonstrates the Bible’s man-made design. Far from God creating mankind, it is we who in fact created him.
Further strong evidence for human (rather than divine) creation can be found in the religious texts that do appear in the Bible: they are full of historical inaccuracies and self-contradictions, and are based on faulty source material.
Originally, religious stories were kept alive in mostly illiterate communities by word of mouth, a notoriously unreliable way to transfer information. The authors who collected and wrote down these oral tales mixed the various stories together, creating a historically inaccurate narrative.
Consider, for example, the story of the birth of Jesus: it references various historical events as occurring at the time of his birth, but in reality these took place many years apart. Also, the Jews’ flight from Egypt – a major event in the Bible – is not mentioned in any other historical record.
The original traditions were further corrupted when later religious leaders developed and strengthened their own doctrines. Stories that didn’t fit the desired mold, such as the Gospel of Judas, were discarded.
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What is God Is Not Great about?
God is Not Great traces the development of religious belief from the earliest, most primitive ages of humankind through to today. It attempts to explain the dangerous implications of religious thought and the reasons why faith still exists today. It also helps explain why scientific theory and religious belief can never be reconciled.
Who should read God Is Not Great?
- Those who want to know how religions developed
- Anyone who wants to understand the fight between religious and scientific thinking
- Those who wish to see the negative aspects of religious belief
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