The Four Horsemen: The Conversation That Sparked an Atheist Revolution

by Christopher Hitchens

Enquiries into the legitimacy of claims that spill out into the public arena and influence education, law-making and policy have no obligation to consider bruised feelings.

Science combines a massive contribution, in volume and detail, of what we do know with humility in proclaiming what we don’t. Religion, by embarrassing contrast, has contributed literally zero to what we know, combined with huge hubristic confidence in the alleged facts it has simply made up.

religious dogmatism hinders the growth of honest knowledge and divides humanity to no necessary purpose. The latter is a dangerous irony, of course, because one of religion’s most vaunted powers is that it unites people. It does that too, but generally by amplifying tribalism and spawning moralistic fears that would not otherwise exist. The fact that sane men and women can often be found doing good for God’s sake is no rejoinder here, because faith gives them bad reasons for doing good when good reasons are available.

if you go through the world thinking that it’s OK to just believe things because you believe them without evidence, then you’re missing so much.

it’s such a wonderful experience to live in the world and understand why you’re living in the world, and understand what makes it work, understand about the real stars, understand about astronomy, that it’s an impoverishing thing to be reduced to the pettiness of astrology.

The universe is a grand, beautiful, wonderful place, and it’s petty and parochial and cheapening to believe in jinns and supernatural creators and supernatural interferers. I think you could make an aesthetic case that you’d want to get rid of faith.