Examples of immoral behavior by the devout permeate the entire book, and are certainly the locus through the remaining chapters, beginning with CH's take on the beginning of religions (to control people and bilk them out of their dough), to their decline (abandoned for the newer, shinier model), to the question of whether religion makes people behave (many examples to the contrary), and the summation of religion's crimes in forcing impossible expectations on the faithful (augmented by horrific visions of hell), its Stalinist mind control and exploitation of children, complicity in the nightmares of atheist totalitarian regimes, and suppression of free inquiry.
"Religous" people have been participants in, if not instigators of, all of the above. No one would even debate this and I wonder if it's insecurity in the weaker arguments of his treatise that compelled Hitchens to compile example after example after example of people behaving wickedly, often in the name of God.
One is particularly befuddled (though this may be a product of my 21st cetury lifestyle and the freedom that comes with it) by CH's tirade against church suppression of free inquiry. Indeed, his book closes with a rallying cry for a new enlightenment and to "know the enemy and prepare to fight it." Excuse me, fight whom? Does the grand inquisitor knock upon your door, sir? Granted, one wonders if Hitchens would be so bold if his publishing house and place of residence were located in Jakarta, but given the circles in which Hitchens travels, his admonitons against theocratic control strike one as a little tired. Indeed this is a straw man. Rather than the faithful living in fear of the Papacy, or other religious institution, it is the brave and determined likes of Hugh Ross, Fazale Rana, William Dembski, Guillermo Gonzalez, Michael Behe, and Phillip Johnson who face ridicule and ostracization, and loss of livelihood--and who nevertheless stand ready, nay chomping at the bit, to meet the likes of Hitchens in public debates.
But again, this is all smoke and mirrors to obsfuscate the fact that Hitchens cannot answer the one and only challenge that brings his house of cards crashing down. The question isn't whether religion can, does, or should "make" people behave better (although there is an argument to be made that someone adhering to the tenets of a benevolent sort of system will do better than others (ie, someone sincerly living by the Ten Commandments will be more likely to be a nicer person than someone living out the tents of a religion based on human sacrifice)). The primary question is, is there "better." Is there "worse." Is there any objective moral code at all. Hitchens writes as a man who passionately believes that objective values exist. The second question is "how is that possible in a meaningless universe," a question that Hitchens never addresses honestly. He wants to say that one can be moral by virtue of their reason, and leave it at that.
But as I said before, reason is the mechanism by which you apprehend the morality that exists outside of you, not a machine by which you create morality internally. And Hitchens clearly believes that morality exists outside of one's self. At least he doesn't write as a moral relativist would. He thinks that the evil things that men do really are Evil, capital E, and not just evil for Christopher Hitchens. And yet he never addresses how objective morality exists in a Godless universe, and how such a proposition is not like hammering a nail into thin air. There's no way around a metaphysical inquiry if you want to get to the heart of this.
From there you can have all sorts of discussions and inquiry about if God exists, and why, if He exists, does He not do this or that to our liking, and why do some people confuse good and evil and all that. But attempting to posit morality as a given without further inquiry seems to me to require a more dogmatic "submission" than any commonly identified organized religion.
And about this word, Religion. This word is not a very helpful or useful one (particularly for the argument Hitchens is trying to make), as it means many different things to different people. For example, this word has fallen into serious disfavor with the evangelical Christians in recent years, because many of them associate the term with a rigid, cold, rules-based system for staying out of trouble, which they feel sells Christianity far short. A common slogan that I've heard is that Christianity is about "relationship, not religion."
Hitchens on the other hand uses the term as a catchall for all faiths/dogmas (with the exception, I'm sure, of atheists and evolutionists, and perhaps, in moments of nostalgia, communists): "religion poisons everything." Myself, I think the word is quite useful for it's basic purpose, ie, as a describer/identifier of a system as faith basedor for serving to demarcate the ontologies of various systems (ie, once an ostensible christian denies the deity of Christ, they have moved themselves outside of the religion of Christianity). In my humble opinion, Judaism, Islam, Atheism, Communism and Darwinism are all religions. Even Agnosticism seems to me to have a quasi-Hindu vibe to it, with it's alleged "open minded" willingness to grant that their "might" be something out there, it's just that we can't be sure. (Don't upset the Karma, dude.) It's sort of like the Bizarro version of Pascal's wager.
So if we're all religionists, I can find a fairly large amount of room for agreement with Hitchens when he denies that there's any power in "religion" to influence behavior or says things like "religion is man made" (it is my conviction that all but Judaism and its fuller revelation of Christianity are). I can agree that most religions have been founded out of sinful if not exploitative motives. I can also find agreement with him that religion, generally speaking, is not a prerequisite for moral behavior, and I concede the numerous examples that he gives to illustrate that people of faith (most people) behave quite wickedly, a lot of the time. I wish that Hitchens could likewise concede his own dogma, but I suppose that's a vain hope.
Well, I'm glad I read this book. Hitchens is an exceedingly bright man and an engaging writer, and (despite all of the ad hominem and slander with which the book is replete and which serve to make it more base) expresses an openness to engage in the marketplace of ideas with those of differing points of view--as evidenced by his willingness to engage in a three hour debate with Mark Roberts on Hugh Hewitt's show. I thank Mr. Hitchens for reiterating to me that I have nothing to fear from the best arguments that can be conceived in the mind of a brilliant atheist.
