The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

by Christopher Hitchens

You may think I spoof. That I invent the names. I do not. Ask the rector to lend you any good treatise on comparative religion: you will find them all listed. They were gods of the highest standing and dignity—gods of civilized peoples—worshipped and believed in by millions. All were theoretically omnipotent, omniscient, and immortal. And all are dead.

“Why do you write to me ‘God should punish the English’? I have no close connection to either one or the other. I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.”

Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told.

If you cannot travel, seek out people with whom you disagree, and read a newspaper belonging to a party that is not yours. If the people and the newspaper seem mad, perverse, and wicked, remind yourself that you seem so to them.

All “scriptural” pseudo-scholarship is a strenuous attempt to make things come out right and to square a circle. Here, a serious mind trains itself on one such attempt, and shows that stupid ideas have stupid consequences—and nasty consequences as well.

Craig takes the first premise to be self-evident, with no justification other than common, everyday experience. That’s the type of experience that tells us the world is flat.

How could we stop ourselves from indulging in murder, rape, theft, perjury, and genocide if we believed the heavens were empty? The question is posed upside-down and inside out and wrong-way round, as this elegant and tough-minded essay confirms.