Christopher Hitchens is a thoroughly modern, Enlightenment thinker—by that, I mean he is completely devoted to the Enlightenment worldview that essentially believes science and reason to be the keys to human freedom. Freedom from what, you may ask? Hitchens will say, “From religion, first and foremost!” In his book, Hitchens lumps all the religions in the world together and makes the proclamation, “All religion is violent, evil, and the source of all human suffering!” Needless to say, that is quite a broad and over-simplistic brush, to say the least.
Hitchens’ basic take on religion is that it is residue from a long, evolutionary process. It is primitive, beastly, violent, and sexually repressive. Religion is, as Hitchens states in his book, “the original sin,” and now that we science and can figure out more how nature actually works, it is high time we work to make religion extinct. “Science and reason” will lead us into an enlightened and peaceful age.
But let’s look at his arguments that claim religion to be the poison of everything. Do his arguments hold water? Are they logical? Are they reasonable? Hitchens calls himself an Enlightenment thinker—let’s see if he can make a coherent and truly enlightened argument.
Religion and Violence
Hitchens begins his argument by briefly talking about the violence that occurred in Belfast (Protestant-Catholic conflicts), Beirut (where the Catholic militia cooperated with Ariel Sharon during the massacre of the Palestinian refugee camps in Sabra and Chatila in 1982), Bombay, Belgrade (where war criminal Slobadon Milosevic and his Bosnian Serbs massacred countless Croatians), Bethlehem (and the fighting between Christians and Jews and Muslims), and Bagdad, (where, Hitchens claims, Hussein was not a “secular” ruler, but rather a devout Muslim who built the largest mosque in Iraq, called “The Mother of All Battles,” and who supposedly had a Koran written in his blood). In each example, Hitchens argues, the motivating factor to the violence and bloodshed was religion.
I would have to say that although religion was certainly a factor, other factors were involved as well: different ethnicities, different political affiliations, and different cultural issues to name a few. To claim, therefore, that religion was the only factor is quite naïve. Furthermore, what Hitchens successfully proves is that bad people do bad things, often in the name of religious faith. But does anyone honestly think that no one has ever realized this before? If we were to be precise, religion does not kill—people kill, often in the name of religion. But for that matter, people kill for many other reasons.
That doesn’t dissuade Hitchens from making some incredibly inflammatory accusations. Consider the following: “Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience. …religion looks forward to the destruction of the world” (56).
Now, it is absolutely true that every religion, Christianity included, has numerous black spots in its history of which anyone should be appalled. But let’s step back and look at what precisely Hitchens is claiming, and not claiming, for that matter. All of these accusations can be made to a whole host of other things, not just organized religion. To paint all religion with such a broad brush of racism, bigotry, intolerance, etc., carries the same rationale and logic as of Hitler saying all Jews are evil, money-grubbing, and filthy. Sure, there have probably been a number of Jewish people who have been evil, greedy, etc., but for that matter, there also have been evil, greedy Germans, Poles, Swiss, and Africans as well! What Hitchens is doing is basic stereotyping, pure and simple.
That Bad, Bad Christianity!
Another thing Hitchens likes to repeat in his book is how throughout Church history, Christians “could simply burn or silence anybody who asked any inconvenient questions” (115).
Wow…really? That’s what Christians have been doing for the past 2,000 years? If you don’t know your history, and are susceptible to propaganda, you’d no doubt swallow what Hitchens is saying. The fact is, though, although there have been specific times throughout Church history in which injustices were committed (i.e. the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Salem witch trials), any reasonable-thinking person can see that these were by far the exceptions. This is not to excuse the atrocities, but we need to get some perspective. Consider the following estimates:
- The Crusades (which happened over a span of around 200 years) killed 1.5 million people
- The witch hunts throughout Europe and America (1400-1800) claimed about 60,000 lives
- The Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834) was responsible for 350,000 lives
- American settlers killed about 1 million American Indians
- All the atrocities and genocides mentioned in the Old Testament (1200-500 BC) totals about 1.3 million deaths.
If one totals all these numbers up (for these are the most cited atrocities of Christianity) the number is 4.21 million deaths in the name of Christianity over approximately an almost 3,000 year span. By contrast, when one looks at the Communist/Atheistic regimes in the 20th Century alone we find these numbers:
- USSR: 65 million
- China: 40 million
- Cambodia, North Korea, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia and other socialist-communist countries: 97 million people
That is a death total of 203 million people by Communist regimes within the 20th century alone. Simply put, is it logical or reasonable at all to accuse Christianity of the worst atrocities in world history when the death toll over for the most cited “atrocities” related to Christianity (and this includes the Old Testament) amounts to 4.21 million over a span of thousands of years, while, in the 20th Century alone the atheistic Communist regimes have been responsible for over 200 million deaths? The answer is obvious: it is completely absurd.
Not surprisingly, Hitchens conveniently avoids this issue at all. In chapter 17, he gives the impression that he will address the question, “Aren’t secular regimes far worse than the worst of the Inquisition, witch trials, Crusades, etc?” Instead of actually answering this question, though, Hitchens comes back with the following: “…it is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists. One might hope that religion had retained more sense of its dignity than that.” (230)
Let’s be clear, this is precisely not what “people of faith” are saying. They’re not saying, “Hey, Stalin and Mao are just as bad as us!” In response to accusations like the ones Hitchens makes, they are saying, “If atheists are more moral than religious people, how do you explain the historical fact that atheistic regimes in the 20th century alone have killed more people than all the religious atrocities in human history combined?” Not surprisingly, Hitchens never addresses the question at any point in chapter 17. Instead, he spends his time criticizing certain religious figures for not standing up against the regimes of Stalin and Hitler. This is what is commonly called, “A diversion from the issue at hand.”
Hitchens has much more to say about how religion is the root of all evil, but as we can already see, there are holes in his claims that you could drive a truck through. Tomorrow, we’ll see some real doozies. If you have read any of Hitchens’ work, please leave a comment. If nothing else, if you like debates, you can watch Hitchens in action on a variety of things posted on youtube.
