God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

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McClelland & Stewart, Nov 19, 2008 - Philosophy - 320 pages
Christopher Hitchens, described in the London Observer as “one of the most prolific, as well as brilliant, journalists of our time” takes on his biggest subject yet–the increasingly dangerous role of religion in the world.

In the tradition of Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris’s recent bestseller, The End Of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope’s awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix.
 

Contents

One Putting It Mildly
1
Two Religion Kills
15
Three A Short Digression on the Pig
37
Five The Metaphysical Claims of Religion Are False
63
Nine The Koran Is Borrowed from Both Jewish
123
Ten The Tawdriness of the Miraculous
139
Eleven
152
Twelve
162
How Religions
169
Fourteen
195
Fifteen
205
Sixteen
217
Nineteen
277
Acknowledgments
285
Index
295
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About the author (2008)

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, Slate, and The Atlantic, authored numerous books, including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and George Orwell. He was also the author of the international bestsellers god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and Hitch-22: A Memoir. He died in December 2011.

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