The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

by Christopher Hitchens

Human sacrifices were made preeminently in times of epidemics, useless prayers were uttered, bogus “miracles” attested to, and scapegoats—such as Jews or heretics or witches—hunted down and burned.

name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.

The men who wrote the Declaration were men of an Enlightenment temper, who quite understood that religion could be (in the words of William Blake) a “mind-forg’d manacle.”

atheists have always argued that this world is all that we have, and that our duty is to one another to make the very most and best of it.

Religion, then, partakes of equal elements of the canine and the feline. It exacts maximum servility and abjection, requiring you to regard yourself as conceived and born in sin and owing a duty to a stern creator.

religion was the race’s first (and worst) attempt to make sense of reality. It was the best the species could do at a time when we had no concept of physics, chemistry, biology or medicine. We did not know that we lived on a round planet, let alone that the said planet was in orbit in a minor and obscure solar system,

Religion was our first attempt at philosophy, just as alchemy was our first attempt at chemistry and astrology our first attempt to make sense of the movements of the heavens.

All of these things cater to our inborn stupidity, and our willingness to be persuaded against all the evidence that we are indeed the center of the universe and that everything is arranged with us in mind.

And—most of all—what kind of designer or creator only chooses to “reveal” himself to semi-stupefied peasants in desert regions?

that the existence of a deity cannot be dis-proved. It can only be found to be entirely lacking in evidence or proof.

Yet many sadists and mass-murderers also claim to be hearing heavenly “voices” ordering them to commit their crimes, which would not in itself discredit religious faith.

There were many people long before Darwin or Einstein or even Galileo who saw through the claims of the rabbis and priests and imams.

The primary religion of mankind arises chiefly from an anxious fear of future events;