Books – Religion Clarity Campaign

   Christopher Hitchens has been hailed as 'one of the most brilliant journalists of our time' (UK Observer). Here he makes the ultimate case against organised religion.
   Combined with a detailed reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. In Hitchens' view hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope's awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix.
   With chapters entitled 'Religion Kills', 'The "New" Testament Exceeds the Evil of the "Old" One', 'The Koran is Borrowed from Both Jewish and Christian Myths', and 'Is Religion Child Abuse?' Hitchens argues provocatively for a secular life based on science and reason rather than the myths of a man-made wish. (back cover)
   CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS is the author of Letters to a Young Contrarian, and the bestseller No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family. A regular contributor to Vanity Fair, The Atlantic Monthly and Slate, Hitchens also writes for The Weekly Standard, The National Review and The Independent.  He was named one of the world's 'Top 100 Public Intellectuals' by Foreign Policy and Britain's Prospect. (back cover)
   Hinduism's killing of widows is criticised (p 208), and their idea of a limited number of years for hell's duration is discussed (p 219).
   Judaism and Islam are criticised in the pages opposing the circumcision of little boys, and the animists and some Muslims are criticised for cutting part of little girls' pudendae (see p 223).  He also excoriates the masturbation taboo (see pp 214-15 and 226 ff).
   The author quotes the damnation, by the elders of the Amsterdam Jewish synagogue on July 27, 1656, of the great thinker Baruch Spinoza, and their order that no Judaist have any contact with, or read anything written by Spinoza, giving any who did the curse which prophet Elisha laid upon the children (p 261).  (Two she-bears came and tore 42 children after the curse, according to 2 Kings 2:24, or 4 Kings 2:24 in R.C. reckoning.)  The Roman Catholic Vatican, and the Calvinist authorities in Holland, joined in the multi-national suppression of Spinoza's writings (pp 261-2).
   Bible: He sees a nightmare in the Old Testament stories, and shows that the Jewish savant Maimonides praised the crucifixion of Jesus as being a great achievement of the Jewish elders (p 111).  The author sees contradictions in the New Testament, reminds us that Mary seems not to have remembered the prophecies of the Archangel Gabriel and is surprised at Jesus' childhood talks to the temple scholars (p 116).  He gives evidence that the adulterous woman episode was not part of the original Gospel of John, chapter 8, verses 3-11 (pp 120-22).
   Orthodox Christian bishops and priests in the 20th century often blessed the genocidal army of Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic (a former Communist), which shelled the Croatian Catholic cities of Vukovar and Dubrovnik, and attacked the mainly Muslim city of Sarajevo.  His thugs dynamited several historic minarets in Banja Luka during a cease-fire as part of an effort to destroy evidence of the Ottoman Muslim occupation of Serb lands (p 21).
   Roman Catholic Church: Fascism in southern Europe around the 1930s was not condemned by the RCC.  Mussolini even gave as a justification for using poison gas against Abyssinia (Ethiopia), that the Christians there had persisted in Monophysitism (a dogma about whether Jesus had a human and/or divine nature). (see p 236)
   The Vatican signed a Concordat with the Nazi German dictator, Adolph Hitler, in 1933 (see p 228).
   "The cardinal of Austria proclaimed his enthusiasm at Hitler's takeover of his country at the time of the Anschluss." (p 236)
   The Nazis did not keep the promises they made in the Concordat.  Yet, on the Vatican's orders, every year from 1939, on Hitler's birthday (April 20), the German leading bishop sent praise, and wrote that German Catholics were offering fervent prayers to heaven on their altars (see p 239).
   Nazi Germany's puppet regime in occupied Slovakia was actually led by an R.C. priest, Father Tiso (p 236).
   After the warmonger Hitler suicided in April 1945, the RC leader of the RC Irish Free State, Eamon de Valera, went to the German embassy in Dublin to offer Ireland's official condolences (p 237).
   After the atrocities of September 11, 2001, and an attack on Iraq was being discussed by the West, "the pope disgraced himself utterly by issuing a personal invitation to the wanted war criminal Tariq Aziz," who murdered children, and was a senior Catholic member of a ruling fascist-style party (Iraq's) (p 34).
   Islam: The Koran had been written on "paper, stones, palm leaves, shoulder blades, ribs, and bits of leather."  Some Muslim authors say it was gathered together during the first caliphate, that of Abu Bakr, immediately after Mohammad's death; others say it was the fourth caliph, Ali, who did this.  The majority, the Sunnis, say it was Caliph Uthman, reigned 644-656, who made the finalised decision (see pp 130-131).
   The Arabic language at the time had undotted and odd vowels, generating wildly different readings.  Written Arabic even today uses dots to distinguish consonants like "b" and "t", and in its original form had no sign or symbol for short vowels.  To take one instance of the difficulty, the Arabic words written on the outside of the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, are different from any version in the Koran.  It is doubtful that the world really has a fully accurate Koran, in spite of what Muslim leaders say (see p 131).
   The Islamic belief that all is arranged by Allah in advance, in this is somewhat similar to the predestination dogma of the Christian reformer John Calvin (see p 234), i.e., Calvinism.
   Saddam Hussein misused Islam to bolster his cruel dictatorship (pp 25-26).
   After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, an Al-Qaeda leader, Jordanian ex-gaolbird named Abu Musab as-Zarqawi, launched a frenzied campaign of murder and sabotage against the long-oppressed Shiite majority!  He wrote to his leader Osama Bin Laden that one reason was the Shiites were heretics to the Muslim faith, and secondly if a religious war could be induced in Iraq, the plans of the "crusader" West could be set at naught. (pp 26-27)
   Protestantism: Calvin's Geneva was a totalitarian state, and he burned Servetus, another reformer, alive.  Some such Christians have an urge to ban books, silence dissenters, condemn outsiders, etc. (p 233)
   German Protestantism surrendered to the German Nazi regime, except for a few brave resisters (see p 238).  The Roman Catholic Vatican headquarters co-operated with the Nazis, even ordering the Catholic Centre Party to disband (p 238).  An encyclical exposing Nazi racial and political theories, and later resistance, were "too little, too late."  Pope Pius XII's infamous 1939 letter toadying to Adolf Hitler is quoted (p 239-40).
   Other faiths: The author also exposes Buddhism by the part which it played in wartime Japan in inducing fanaticism and enrolling suicide pilots (p 201), and the Orange People (Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh, pp 195-98).  Mrs Harris exposed Joseph Smith's supposed translations of the Book of Mormon. (pp 163-4).  The author attacks several religions for fostering anti-Judaism (which, like most people, he misnames "anti-Semitism").
   Scripture he did like: The Bible verse that Hitchens likes is Philippians 4:8 (p 12).