Christopher Hitchens is one of my all time heroes. I read this book for the first time when I was a little 14 year old going to a strict protestant high school on the west coast of Scotland. It didn’t go down well with my teachers. They considered it “beyond my years” and “out of my scope of learning at this this time”. Hitchens, in general, helped shape my personality, but “God Is Not Great” helped me understand some important things about the personality of others. It is a tough read, and has no pictures (sadly), but Hitchens brings comic relief to a subject matter that really isn’t anything except scary. If you want to learn about Hitchens and his free thinking, philosophical, and loving approach to the criticism of organized religion, then this is your book. Here’s a couple quotes to get you juicing: ds106dc
“I leave it to the faithful to burn each other’s churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can be always relied upon to do” – C.H
“The essential principle of totalitarianism is to make laws that are impossible to obey.” C.H
“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.” C.H