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God Is Not Great
How Religion Poisons Everything
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.
- 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
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) was an British author, journalist and broadcaster. He wrote for a number of publications including The New Statesman, The Nation and Vanity Fair and was a regular commentator on various issues.
He remained a popular but divisive figure on both the left and the right and was never afraid to take a stand on controversial issues.
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God Is Not Great
How Religion Poisons Everything
- Read in 15 minutes
- Audio & text available
- Contains 10 key ideas
Synopsis
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.
Key idea 1 of 10
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.
Key ideas in this title
- Religious texts are clearly man-made, as their historical inaccuracies and selective accounts prove.
- Miracles are not as miraculous as they first appear.
- Far from being the guardians of morality, religions are positively immoral in their teachings.
- Like a dictatorship, religious belief is totalitarian.
- The way religions treat children demonstrates how blind faith encourages people to act irrationally and bizarrely.
- Religions are incapable of being tolerant – they must interfere in the lives of others.
- Though persecuted by religions, freethinkers have always been a driving force in the progression of knowledge.
- Religion and science are fundamentally incompatible.
- As long as religion exists, it will attempt to impose itself on the rest of society – it must be fought against.
- Final summary
