Christopher Hitchens Takes on God…again
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007By MARIA SANMINIATELLI, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK – Christopher Hitchens believes it is time to rid people of several notions.
Mark Twain did not believe in God, Americans are not uncritically devout and an atheist can be elected president of the United States.
In fact, the extent of religion’s hold on people, the British-born author, journalist and provocateur says, has been vastly exaggerated. Despite polls that suggest differently, people are not as religious as many think, he says.
“I knew that the zeitgeist of religion was changing, that the parties of God would … (anger people) in their various forms: Republican or Shiite,” Hitchens says. “But I had, I think, underestimated how much of this there was.”
He was referring, in part, to the comments he received following the April release of his best seller, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, in which he lambasts religion as illogical and dangerous, and blames believers for centuries of war, persecutions and other ills.
A new anthology published earlier this month, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever, continues to press the case.
Witty and feisty, the Oxford-educated Hitchens is known for his contentious stances that make him difficult to typecast. A former Trotskyist who published regularly in British and American left-wing publications, he has bitterly criticized Mother Teresa — he testified against her before Vatican officials when then-Pope John Paul II prepared to beatify the nun — former President Clinton and former national security adviser and secretary of state Henry Kissinger. (more…)
