Hitchens Bros. Clash Over Belief
Writer Christopher Hitchens is drawing widespread attention with his latest provocative oeuvre, "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." But one person close to him questions the integrity of his atheist stance: brother Peter Hitchens, who told the British paper The Independent (irking Christopher in the process) that he wonders if Christopher protests too much about his lack of belief.Writer Christopher Hitchens is drawing widespread attention with his latest provocative oeuvre, “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.” But one person close to him questions the integrity of his atheist stance: brother Peter Hitchens, who told the British paper The Independent (irking Christopher in the process) that he wonders if Christopher protests too much about his lack of belief.
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On a book tour in Los Angeles, Christopher agrees to read the review by email and then flatly rejects the idea that he is, as he put it, a ” repressed seeker.” Prefacing his response to his brother’s review with faint praise — “a quite stirring and eloquent piece” — Christopher says: “The sickly idea that this interest is a disguised cry for help … only demonstrates the insecurity and the bad faith of the godly.” The elder brother then adds: “Though I slightly dislike to say this, [Peter] offers himself as yet another example of how the religious mentality forces honest and reasonable people to say dishonest and irrational things.”
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Americans’ discomfort with other peoples' religious faiths goes hand in hand with Islamophobia. Americans’ discomfort with other peoples' religious faiths goes hand in hand with Islamophobia.
"The majority of Americans identify technically as Christians,” writes Amanda Marcotte at AlterNet, “but a deeper look at how our people act, believe, and think shows that we’re not at all a ‘Christian nation,’ but a largely secular nation that suffers a small but vocal minority of theocracy-minded conservatives.”
People who knew the man accused of gunning down three Muslim American students in North Carolina -- an act many suspect to be a hate crime motivated by cultural differences -- describe him as angry and lacking compassion.
Primatologist Frans de Waal pays religion the ultimate atheist compliment: Religion is so great that we humans acquired it through the natural process of evolution.Primatologist Frans de Waal pays religion the ultimate atheist compliment in his book: Religion is so great that we humans acquired it through the natural process of evolution.
"The appearance of atheists, a growing wariness of religious controls on society, as well as the continuing lure of jihad and ultraconservatism signal a breakdown in the conformity and consensus that has marked the Saudi religious field in the recent past," Caryle Murphy writes at GlobalPost.
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