God is not great : how religion poisons everything

This is a thoughtful, mostly fair-minded critique of religions and supernatural cogitation.  I enjoyed reading it despite experiencing difficulty repeatedly with the sophisticated (or is it florid or affected?) writing style.  But there is too little written about the benefits of faith to the faithful.  I do not see the need for balance in this sense, although one result of bettering balance might be greater reception of the criticisms which are nearly all perfectly valid.  Along these lines, the concluding sentence of the entire book refers to 'fighting one's enemies', which is clear in meaning but a better strategy probably would be to avoid a militaristic tone and instead try to find common ground with those of differing sentiments.  This said, I nevertheless concur with the basic thrust that no longer should religious intolerance be tolerated.  Long experience has proved that bigotry and hatred do not simply dissipate spontaneously with time when ignored (tolerance).  But they can be suppressed and undermined with deliberate action by well-meaning people.  However, this intolerance-to-intolerance must strike the right tone to avoid seeming to be just more of the same intolerance and just like one religion contesting another one.  Hitchens was mostly even-handed in criticism across the largest religions, albeit devoting more space (to use Gore Vidal's preferred shorthand phrasing) to the more-Western sky-god ones.  I would quibble with Hitchens' charge that indoctrination of the young as little juveniles is tantamount to child abuse.  It is clear what he means and I agree this needs changing, but every point of view no matter how correct or flawed the ideology sees the advantage of earlier instruction.  Real, or pure, child abuse probably should not be watered down in meaning by this attempt to merge it with simple indoctrination.  Only one passage seemed incongruous to me, where Hitchens gave too much credit to Pope John Paul II’s apologies and only noted his AIDS-related deficiencies: although properly raised in other passages, the priest pedophile scandal and cover-up were under this shameless pope's reign as well, and should have been included with the AIDS (and abortion/women's rights) criticisms in this passage.  In addition, supposedly John-Paul apologized for the abuse of Galileo, only to really just admit that The Church and science are in agreement, which is at best doublespeak.  I read a criticism that Hitchens relied too much upon anecdote and name-dropping to make his points, but I felt that this made the book very enjoyable to read, and his criticisms stand as valid regardless of his polemic style.  To apprise readers of one careless sentence, note on page 99: “It would be harder to find an easier proof that religion is man-made.”  Surely Hitchens meant to say, “It would be hard to find an easier proof…”  Simplifying his writing style would help avoid this sort of error/typo.

Christopher Hitchens relies on his not inconsiderable wealth of experience and journalistic prowess to examine the affects of religion on society. His conclusion, as you may have already guessed, is not favorable. However, his book is not the ranting and raving of a fanatic, but instead a very well researched expose on the detrimental affects of religion on women, children, apostates, geopolitics and more. Highly recommended.