Anti-religious or an atheist?

TED ROBERTS

Chris is at it again. I refer to Christopher Hitchens – an essayist – a scholar of our culture, you might call him. You might also call him a skeptic, an iconoclastic former Trotskyite – and 20 more synonyms, all describing a curious intellectual mind. Oh, and you might also accurately describe him as a four-star atheist.

Atheists must try to live well in this world, as they certainly don't believe they'll find a reward in the next. So carpe diem – live it up – as they say. And Mr. Hitchens isn't doing badly. His book is No. 5 on the New York Times bestseller list. It's called God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. You get the idea – it's as plain as a blazing cross. Actually, considering Hitchens' lack of faith, it is a flattering title. A thing must exist in one world or another before it is condemned. If, as Hitchens contends, He is not great, well, He must exist – an axiom that the author rejects.

In his book, Hitchens does not defend his atheism. He does not explain how the cosmos happens to hang in infinity without an architect or even a big hook. He just continually harps on the bloody history of the three major religions, selectively underlining their poison – ignoring their gifts to civilization.

Two attributes must be allotted to Hitchens. He is not a trickster – he argues like a gentleman and he tries to leave emotion out of the discussion. I think I could sit with him at the corner bar over a beer or two and not leave drenched with his beer. Even when we discussed the Tanach, a document he sees as a weapon of destruction – due to its intolerance. Of course, most thinkers (secular, Christian and Jewish) see it as a blinking lighthouse of civilization in a stormy world.

His point – simply put – is his subtitle: religion poisons everything. The vile superstitions of the Abrahamic trio (mainly the three) have brought us nothing but suffering and bloodshed, according to Hitchens. "Religion – all religions – are fantasies and they breed hatred among people," he rants. Well, point two is no news bulletin. Anybody with a high school education knows about the Jew hatred of the early Church, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the pogroms of central Europe, the collapse and collusion of the Church with Nazism. Yes, it must be admitted that a religion that advertises turning the other cheek has made its share of ghastly ethical errors. And more than Jews have suffered. Its own heretics did, too. Catholics and Protestants and third-party heathens turned Europe – for several centuries – into the World Wrestling Federation, with their disagreements over what Hitchens would call "superstition." They did, but they don't anymore. Civilization – spiritual refinement, reformation, or whatever you want to call it – won out.

And us Jews? Well, we get off no easier than the Christians. How about that angry, thundering, vengeful God of the Chumash? Every fifth page – Hitchens reminds us – instructs us to kill Canaanites, Jebusites, Moabites. The best way to stay separate from those idol-loving, fornicating, child-sacrificing heathens was to kill 'em. Hitchens has a point, but a treacherous one. You can't transpose today's ethics to yesterday, when the world was a butcher shop and everybody was killing everybody, including Philistines spearing Israelites. And even in his early days, the Thunderer is often merciful and He becomes even more so as we move to the prophets and writings. And again, civilization prevails. We no longer hunt down Jebusites.

But Sunnis do pursue and kill Shiites, and vice versa. It seems that of the three major religions, only Islam, today, bears the Mark of Cain and validates Hitchens' accusation of theological blood lust. So, 90 per cent of the author's gripe – that religion engenders hate, resulting in crowded ERs in hospitals around the world – comes from Muslim sources: from extremist readers of the Koran, but not from Judeo-Christian wellsprings. Hitchens does not remark on the evolution of Judaism or Christianity – or the possibility of Island transforming. Instead, he reminds us of Christian/Serbian massacres of Bosnian Muslims, but forgets to tell us that a "Christian" NATO force sheltered Muslims and even bombed Christian Belgrade.

Among the examples of religious poison, he brings up the metaphor that American broadcaster Dennis Prager uses often: "You're in a strange city. It's getting dark and here comes a group of youth. Would you feel safer or less safe if you knew they were coming from a prayer meeting?"

Who wouldn't answer with a loud "safer"? Not Hitchens, because, as he asks, what if the city is the eye of some religious storm – say Beirut or Baghdad or Bethlehem or Bombay or Belfast? You'd prefer a secular gang. A clever, but tricky answer. There are 10,000 other cities in the world where you'd welcome and fear no evil from a group of worshippers. It is the Islamic threat – and mainly extremists at that – which makes Hitchens' point about the violence of believers.

Again, note the book's title: God is Not Great – an implicit recognition of the Creator's existence. One could be charitable to the author and state that Hitchens' thesis is not the denial of a creator, but humanity's error in how it worships that creator.

Hitchens is an exotic breed of atheist. He seems more anti-religious than anti-spiritualist. Scratch an atheist, find a lost soul.

Ted Roberts is a freelance writer living in Huntsville, Ala.

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