God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything [Kindle Edition] Author: Christopher Hitchens | Language: English | ISBN:
B00287KD4Q | Format: PDF, EPUB
Download God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Download Download God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything from 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link 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. Direct download links available for Download God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything [Kindle Edition]
- File Size: 426 KB
- Print Length: 307 pages
- Publisher: Twelve; 1st edition (May 1, 2007)
- Sold by: Hachette Book Group
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00287KD4Q
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
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- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #62,711 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #17
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Sociology - #44
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Religion & Spirituality > Spirituality > Atheism - #69
in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Sociology
- #17
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Sociology - #44
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Religion & Spirituality > Spirituality > Atheism - #69
in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Sociology
After looking through some of the other customer reviews found here, I was dismayed by the amount of "blog-style" entries: that is, people who may have only glanced at the title or saw Hitchens promoting the book on CNN or YouTube and decided to just speak up, either in support or condemnation. However, if you're curious about the book and just want to know what to expect, may I humbly offer some actual information?
Hitchens, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, author of books too numerous to mention and contributor to smaller magazines such as Free Inquiry, adds to the recent renaissance of pro-atheist books with his own provocatively-titled contribution. Whereas Sam Harris (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason) sees dire warnings and Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion offers a defense of science, Hitchens uses his long experience in journalism to illustrate the madness that results when faith is unchallenged by reason. Dawkins has been criticized for adopting a harsh tone (an assessment I disagree with), but Hitchens is the one who really pours on the anger and witty derision.
My favorite part of the book is the last third. By that time Hitchens has made his arguments about how Religion Poisons Everything and is now rebutting the best intellectual arguments against his thesis. What would become of human decency, morality and ethics without religion? How do you address the inherent human need to believe in something and take comfort in a higher power? What are the god-less alternatives and aren't those institutions as bad or worse? Doesn't religion provide stability to society by pacifying individuals in times of darkness and uncertainty? It is hard to sum things up and provide sound bytes about something as complex as religion, but my take-away from this book is that any religion (by design) has the ingredients of becoming totalitarian, when successful; and totalitarianism of any kind leads to ultimate power corruption.
Hitchens makes his arguments and rebuts the best counter-arguments with passion and panache. If you are amongst the majority of people in the world - believers - his irreverent sense of humor may lead you to immediately brush him off as a partisan hack; while the unbelievers will get a kick out of each of the thousands of punchlines that Hitchens artfully mumbles. However, if you belong to the third category - an intellectual who chooses to look beyond a bi-polar view of the world when it comes to religion - I would urge patience with Hitchens' indulgence as a genius linguist (when you have it, it is hard not to flaunt it!) and you will find this book extremely rewarding and will not go un-satiated. If you are seriously debating the merits and demerits of religion as an institution in the society we live in, you have glanced at the perfect place, no matter what your affiliations.
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