All Comments (29)

Ratliner: "A good example of a shallow view of religion, from outside. The "leaders" do not all state that [damnation]."

Right, but their mutual authoritative source, the Bible, DOES state that. So they are going against their original leader - Jesus.

In that respect, they do have much in common with atheism. DO they also not believe in the miracles? If so, they're practically atheists.

I am afraid that most of the supporters of Mr. Hitchen's book, at those that oppose it, miss the fine points of the fundamental argument.

Life is based on belief. Logic, is a lens (I believe the proper one) that life must be viewed through to sort the chaos of life around us. Faith is fundamental to life because without it, life would have ceased to exist due to a lack of exploration. At some point, you have to accept that there is something better out there (often based on evidence) and seek to prove this belief.

Religions of any kind are the result of a similar exploration. However, as an established society they have often gone very wrong in the past and will most likely continue this as long as there is life. It is the PERSONAL path that is important. Religion and faith are a personal thing and as such are about the exploration of our belief that there is something better out there.

Science is a fath based concept as well. There are many examples in history where science of the times were completely wrong (remember the Greek "humors"). People of great vision, had faith that there was another explanation and sought proof of this faith. This is the heart of the scientific method we love so much. However, there are equally bad examples where the "established" scientific communities have castigated and attacked those that did not follow "mainstream" scientific theories and accepted facts. Mr. Hitchen's exposition on belief applies equally to these narrow-minded individuals as well.

Many of the posters on this thread as well as the other associated threads have asked for evidence of God. Since every major religion I know accepts that this power is beyond understanding, and that they acknowledge that they have build a common frame for attempting to commune with this power, it is hard to give concrete evidence of God. However, using the scientific method I can say that there is proof that there is something out there that we cannot define.

There are countless examples of real-world events that cannot be explained by science. There are definitely limitations in our ability to measure, quantify, and explain. The athiest has faith that there is no deeper meaning, the religious have equal faith that there is. Science also falls down in explaining the origin of things. There is always the question "where did that come from" that cannot be answered because we have not learned how to determine where it did indeed come from. For example, there is scientific evidence to suggest that the universe as we know it, came from the "big bang". What created that large "sun" that exploded.

Science is fallible because the people using it are fallible. Religion is fallible because the people expressing it are also fallible. This is accepted within the major religions and most new religions because humans by their very nature are flawed. We seek to define our world based on our experience and knowledge. When the experience and knowledge are flawed the definition will continue to be flawed.

You want proof of God? I want proof that what we have measured, calculated, and defined with science to develop our Theorums are not based on anomalties. Show me a picture of a complete atom. Scientist believe that they have figured out the composition and characteristics of the atom based on the evidence we have found from the interaction of atoms using scientific study. But then again the scientists of their time thought that humors controlled the world. The two are not completely the same because our scientific method is more logical and we have increased our knowledge greatly since those times. However, we cannot say that we fully understand the world or that our definition of the LAWS of the universe are complete. In the grand scale of time that the universe covers according to science, all of our scientific measurement could have occured during anomolyse periods. We have faith that this is not the case but we just don't know. That is why a theory is just a theory.

Many people have likewise experienced what they would qualify as a miricle in their lives. The evidence they see lead them to believe in a higher power. You will never be able to disprove this because there are fundamentally too many things science just cannot explain.

You use the argument that you want to see "proof", well, so do I. Prove to me that Mr. Hitchen's arguments don't apply to athiest as well. Those of us that believe in a God already know that we are flawed, why don't you try accepting the same truth.

Anon wrote "Unless you are a member of some tiny, unorthodox, dissident Christian sect, your religious leaders state, with the absolute authority of God suporting them, that your friends are going to spend eternity in hell."

A good example of a shallow view of religion, from outside. The "leaders" do not all state that. Some do, and if that's your background, I can see why you rejected the belief. There is much to learn since you abandoned Sunday school. Atheists who wish to argue like Hitchens need to really spend some time studying apologetics, and theists need to apply more intellectual honesty. However, things are heated, because the atheists are perceived as actively attacking theism - and based on this kind of Post coverage lately, I don't disagree.

Reminds me of Terry Eagleton's much celebrated, and quite wrongheaded, review of Dawkins's book. One does not need to be an expert in astrology to prove it bunk. Nor does one need to have studied the biology of unicorns to say they don't exist. Theology is a bankrupt science, the study of something that doesn't exist. There can be no sophisticated theological discussion, only obfuscation and empty thought experiments. Beyond this, I'm quite sure the Oxford professor and the similarly learned Hitchens are quite aware of Aquinas and C.S. Lewis, if that's what is meant by sophistication.

Reply to CHERIE, who wrote: "I'm Christian, but I have Jewish friends...Muslim friends...a Hindu friend. All of us disagree with some aspect of our beliefs. But we are still very much friends - because our core belief (we all love each other and even those who don't believe as we do) is consistent."

And, Cherie, what do the authoritative voices of your brand of Christianity say will be the eternal fate of those Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu friends? Unless you are a member of some tiny, unorthodox, dissident Christian sect, your religious leaders state, with the absolute authority of God suporting them, that your friends are going to spend eternity in hell.

That's the part that many of us have a little trouble with.

Cherie: "But we are still very much friends - because our core belief (we all love each other and even those who don't believe as we do) is consistent."

Good - Cherie -better that your cultivate that belief in friendship, because your individual different religious beliefs condemn each other to hell. (Maybe not the Hindu). Oh, I know you as individuals may eschew certain aspects of your religion - but I'd say that's you using your common sense. Do it more often and maybe other religious beliefs would fall away and your friends could be appreciated just as friends - without the cloud of belief in disagreeing invisible supernatural beings.

Tauber writes: "While some of these authors understand, write and speak about the nuances, depth and even ambiguity of old and even more recent religious approaches and traditions very well, others -- Hitchens included - simply caricature all faiths, doctrine, tradition, spirituality and lived practice according to the narrow set of the worst and most suspect beliefs, events and religious figures of the past and present."

OK, just for starters:
1. When have Christians--all of them, not just the fundies--NOT believed that the only way to eternal salvation is to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Thereby, of course, condemning the overwhelming majority of humans that have ever lived, including billions alive on this earth today, to eternal hell? Any nuance, ambiguity, or depth there? Caricature, or reality? And how can believing that everybody except those who believe exactly like you are going to hell anyway not color and even determine the worth you put on those people's lives? Where is there one iota of morality in that attitude?

3. Which speaks more to whether or not Hitchens has it right or wrong: The fact that some tiny minority of all religions have demonstrated nuance, ambiguity, and depth--Or, the fact that the leader of all Roman Catholics has just issued a resounding reaffirmation of the belief that everybody but those relatively few Roman Catholics are headed straight for hell? Not even Protestant Christians, for God's sake, can avoid eternal damnation.

Thank God (Oops! There I go again) that Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins et.al., are at last pointing the way for humanity to escape the awful, narrow-minded, twisted vision of the Roman Catholic Pope, who just condemned the vast majority of the human race to hell--thereby also declaring that their mortal lives are worthless.

Give me a break. When someone's opinion is counter to their own it is convenient for the aggrieved party to note the lack of qualifications or credentials of the one making the criticisms. Nowhere do I see where Tauber cites and counters the arguments of Hitchens. Religion is not really that complex - insecure people who cannot deal with their own death and bad things in the world fall prey to irrational beliefs and deceptive people out to make money and obtain power by manipulation. Pretty simple process, the layers of complexity are all invented.

Give me a break. When someone's opinion is counter to their own it is convenient for the aggrieved party to note the lack of qualifications or credentials of the one making the criticisms. Nowhere do I see where Tauber cites and counters the arguments of Hitchens. Religion is not really that complex - insecure people who cannot deal with their own death and bad things in the world fall prey to irrational beliefs and deceptive people out to make money and obtain power by manipulation. Pretty simple process, the layers of complexity are all invented.

Mr. Tauber,

I have read criticisms similar to yours concerning the atheist's misunderstanding of the "depth and diversity" of faiths. Yet your charges against Hitchens are misplaced for several reasons.

First, Hitchens does not claim that different faiths are lacking in depth and diversity, but rather that believing in a spiritual tradition has all-too-human consequences of intolerance, violence, and bigotry, such that we are better off without these traditions altogether.

Second, one need not be an expert in divinity to criticize, or, for that matter, compliment, spiritual traditions. If that were the case, only clerics, and not any laypersons, would be able to speak about religion. Yet laypersons need to scrutinize the claims of religious texts and clerics, even if for no other reason than edification.

Hitchens's approach to religion has a narrow character because the topics he addresses are those commonly overlooked by people involved in those traditions, such as the Catholic view of condoms, the Christian view of stem cell research, and the curious aversion to pork. So he does gloss over many of the intricacies of different religions, only because he does not need to examine those aspects to make his point, that religion poisons everything.

In short, religion is not an esoteric topic, and is not so abstruse that a non-believer cannot offer valid criticisms of it.

Whoa, man. What?! Once again, we who have a God in our lives must insist on saying we have not read a book (or 30 similar ones) that tell us we are wrong....
I'm Christian, but I have Jewish friends, and a couple of Muslim friends, and a Hindu friend. All of us disagree with some aspect of our beliefs. But we are still very much friends - because our core belief (we all love each other and even those who don't believe as we do) is consistent.

We all have faith in God. Why is it okay for others to profane our beliefs? Why is it okay for others to tell us (who have faith) to deny it?

Tauber says Hitchens and other anti-religionists "simply caricature all faiths, doctrine, tradition, spirituality and lived practice according to the narrow set of the worst and most suspect beliefs, events and religious figures of the past and present." That's undoubtedly what Tauber would like to believe, but the fact is that Hitchens is anything but a superficial caricaturist. On the contrary, he is extraordinarily learned in the history and doctrines of a number of the world'sreligions.

Burdened with this mistake, Tauber makes it clear in alluding to such arcane matters as "nuances, depth and even ambiguity of old and even more recent religious approaches and traditions" that Hitchens, "wonderful" as he is as a writer, is out of his league when it comes to really deep subjects like religion. Like many amateur reviewers Mr.Tauber attacks this book he dislikes for what it was obviously never intended to be, an acknowledgment of some of the rarely encountered benign aspects of spirituality. Hitchens aim is to expose the social and psychological malevolence grounded in the core premises,beliefs and practices of several major institutionalized religions. To say that he selects for his demonstration "the narrow set of the worst and most suspect beliefs, events and religious figures of the past and present" is simply not true.

Jim Colvert

You talk about Hitchens lack of depth but it remains a gratuitous assertion throughout your piece. Explain.

While not an exhaustive treatise, "God is not great" is not a small book, and it is devoted to a well-defined subject with well organized chapters in which anything but Hitchens' breadth of knowledge and detail on the subject is in evidence. It is not a philosophy book, like Michael Martin's "Atheism," if that is the depth you think is lacking; nevertheless Hitchens explains the book's central argument magnificently, at length, and with lucidity. It doesn't hurt that Hitchens is incapable of writing a dull sentence, and has the knack for capturing the essence of question in memorable phrases.

When I screw up, thank goodness I have Stone Age myth and Medieval superstition to fall back upon. That way, I don't have to take responsibility for my actions. Not only that, but if I hate somebody because they are different from me, I can find a reference in the Stone Age writ to justify my hatred and dignify it as belief. And, I can have faith in the "truth" of my Stone Age myths. Faith means that nothing will shake me from my belief, not even facts, not even proof established using the scientific method. Secure in my faith, oblivious to facts, freed of responsibility, I can hate, hound and kill with abandon, secure in the knowledge that my "God" (the only true god) is on MY side.

A non-essentialist & non-reductivist but nonetheless historically informative definition of 'religion' would have been helpful - - -

X is a religion if X has at least a majority of the following characteristics: . . . . . . . . .

Otherwise claims about the vices or virtues of religion-as-such or a particular religion are worthless and only invite self-serving defensiveness from the so-called "faithful" of all "faiths", religious & non-religious, naturalist & non-naturalist, X & non-X!

As it was once well put, all of us live by "the substance of things unseen, the evidence of things hoped for", that is, that part of each person's web of beliefs in which we each, respectively, put our ultimate trust, only to vindicated or not by living by those beliefs.

errr. their lives!!!

Sounds to me like intolerance for the supposedly intolerant.

Excuse me while I digress with my own form of nonsense.

Does anyone know how hard it is to describe a complete lack of faith? I don't feel as if I am missing something inside. My lack of faith is not substantive. I'm not even an Atheist because most quantify their lack of faith. Empty is not so bad if you really think about it. Where the hell is my support group?

I am back.

Believers and non-believers just need to kiss, make-up and get on with there lives.

Sounds to me like intolerance for the supposedly intolerant.

Excuse me while I digress.

Does anyone know how hard it is to describe a complete lack of faith? I don't feel as if I am missing something inside. My lack of faith is not substantive. I'm not even an Atheist because most quantify their lack of faith. Empty is not so bad if you really think about it. Where the hell is my support group?

I am back.

Believers and non-believers just need to kiss, make-up and get on with there lives.

Mr Tauber's essay would be a perfect response to an sssignment that read

Write three paragraphs that are completely devoid of content.

You would get an A on that assignment from The Master, Mr Tauber.

Breathtaking.

Rather than unfairly latching onto a few "fundamentalist" (read 'wacko') ideas to tar religious faith, as Mark Tauber suggests, Hitchens actually treats scripture as something that intends itself to be taken seriously. This is why he finds it so easy to debunk.

Non-fundamentalist people of "faith" (whichever one), on the other hand, ask us to simultaneously treat their sacred texts as both metaphor and absolute truth.

Unfortunately, metaphors can never be absolute.

Yet another version of the Courtier's Reply.

And for all the mention Mr Tauber makes of Hitchens' "God is not Great," his characterization of the same gives a strong indication that he hasn't read the thing.

A typical and disappointing reply from yet another religionist speaking through his hat, his arguments running afoul of his own words that clearly indicate he's constructing straw men.

Tiresome stuff.

There is nothing good about any entity that promotes the headline of the Creator not being great for who are we to define what exactly "GREAT" means. There is nothing entertaining, trendy or good about show-boating negativity that challenges the Devine Higher-Order of rules, perfection and decisions that are made above human levels of understanding and intellect

Leave the poor God people alone. They are champions of a moribund belief system that is on its last legs. Like Luddites, or your grandpa who won't use the ATM.

In 50 years, today's religion will seem as curious and outdated as Egyptian burial practices of 3500 years ago.

Mr. Tauber's essay was remarkable in that it said absolutely nothing other than the fact that he disagrees with Hitchens. It reminded me of a high school book report written by a bright sophomore who hadn't read the book at issue but who labels it as "both interesting and informative".

Speaking of trendy books, fortunes have been made with dooms day books. Tere's a golden opportunity to supply still another one with a real Bible base.

Once one understands that Moses made a deal with the Devil, supernatural being on fire in the burning bush, then it's a matter of remembering that being is the father of Jesus. Thus Jesus is really the son of Devil and not God at all.

Naturally His book, the holy Bible makes Lucifer out to be God as well as the good guy at the end of the world. The trick is that both sides in a conflict, end of world Armagedden scenario, see themselves as the good guys. Both sides want to win don't they else why are they fighting. It's us, the ones who's souls are at risk that must decide and correctly just which side is really God's.

The bottom line is that the great anti Christ is really Jesus "would be" Christ. If Jesus is as the evidence says, the son of Lucifer then He is not THE Christ. Therefore there must be another Christ. Since God has seen fit to never reveal He/She?ItSelf to anyone then God has yet to send a Christ. The anti Christ spoken of in the Bible that is yet to come is actually the REAL Christ.

Thinking about http://www.hoax-buster.org makes evangelical heads hurt. Better known as the gut grabbing truth.

Mr Tauber wrote, "The recent trend in agnostic/atheist books, of which "God is Not Great" is currently one of the centerpieces, has over the past year or so become very much a part of our national, cultural conversation."

How great is God not? http://www.hoax-buster.org/sellyoursoul AKA interpretation 1,501 of sacred scriptures explains. The Bible says that the being in the burning bush, the one Moses got his marching orders from is actually the biggest Devil of them all, Lucifer.

Note: there is but one God while there are seemingly an unlimited supply of Devils.

The facts say that Moses sold his soul to Devil in a manner of speaking. No one seems to be able to make even a weak argument that is not the case. Well except for the author of that web page who says the whole tale, Moses and the burning bush is a hoax. Maybe you could supply some reasonable counter argument. As it now stands, all world's religions are actually saying Devil is God.

This is a bit worn out but maybe you haven't thought about it: Calling Devil God does not make Devil God but surely makes Devil happy. That's based on the fact that Lucifer wanted to be God, even attempted a coup de gras in haven. There are as many eye witnesses to that event as there are for Eve taking a bite out of the apple so we know it's an absolutely true story.

Thought you might like to know, ah, "God is Not Great" really should be "Devil wants to be great" and has many supporters while God is being ignored by almost all the people of earth. That goes 10 fold for religions that all worship Devil calling Him God. That's what the Bible says and no one has a counter argument. Maybe you?

First, Let me correct an error above. I meant to say: “Please demonstrate how it is superior TO the superficial view of the supernatural presented by trendy new atheists.”

And now a few questions: I notice “supernatural” is not mentioned anywhere in your essay, only in your title. Perhaps you didn’t make up that title yourself? Maybe the Washington Post thought it would be an attention-getter and you had nothing to do with it?

Please, Mr Tauber, and other religious believers posting here, give us a sophisticated view of the Supernatural.

Please provide a nuanced, deep discussion of why belief in invisible supernatural beings is a sophisticated postion for twenty-first century humans. Please demonstrate how it is superior the the superficial view of the supernatural presented by trendy new atheists.

Thanks

"Supernatural" is, of course, a nonsense term. Does Mr. Tauber suggest that an in-depth view of nonsense is in order?