Dan's Reading Journal

God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens

If you regularly attend religious services, you will not like this book.  If you have any affinity for the basic tenets (i.e., the sacred texts) of your particular spiritual association, you will not like this book.  If you have any attachment to the historical founders of your religion, you will not like this book.  If you have any respect for the clergy (of any stripe) based on their goodness derived from their adherence to the basic teachings of their faith, you will not like this book.  In fact, even if you are basically agnostic or atheist but are tolerant of your faith-bearing neighbors, there is a good chance you will not like this book.  And, if you are among the orthodox of your specific faith, you will not only hate this book, but actively agitate that it is blasphemy.

Christopher Hitchens has subtitled his book, "How religion poisons everything" and by God (pun intended) he means it. Compared to Hitchens, Sam Harris (the first of the recent anti-religion treatises in "The End of Faith") is a nice guy with a quaint perspective.  Harris's basic premise was that anyone who believed that their basic sacred text (e.g., Koran, Torah, New Testament, Bagvadhgita) was the literal word of God would by definition trample the rights (and eventually justify the taking of life) of anyone who did not agree with them.  In Harris's case unthinking belief drives irrational human behavior. It is my interpretation (or my feeble memory) that Harris leaves open the possibility that when tempered by real reformation, religious values might actually be put to some good.

Hitchens goes one step further...for him, the essential belief systems of religion are based on seriously flawed fables, fictions, falsehoods, fabrications, and total folderol.  Religion according to Hitchens is "man-made" and contributes nothing but oppression, violence, and the suppression of the human spirit.  Hitchens see religion as anti-science and anti-reason.  He has no time for the supposed saints and prophets. Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad get skewered as do more modern incarnations of religious leadership as Brigham Young, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, and Gandhi).  No one is spared, for example, "and in North Korea today, what has gone awry is not communism but Confucianism".  Ouch!

Hitchens' detractors (and there are many as you can imagine) argue that he is one-sided, unfair, and blind to other interpretations.  They argue that Hitchens ignores the good that religion has brought us, that evil deeds are committed by both believers and non-believers, and that not everyone is a fundamentalist.

So why read this? 

Because despite the ramped up rhetoric, Hitchens does a few things worth examining closely.  First, he clearly exposes some of the greatest hypocrisies within the major religions.  The Catholic Church is devoted to improving the condition of humans but relegates 50% of the population to second class status (women); Orthodox Jews continue rituals and practices that violate any number of laws on a regular basis. Hindus and Muslims kill each other with wild abandon and glee.  Islamist jihadis celebrate the deaths of Americans and Israelis. And on and on. 

Second, while Hitchens critics continue to hammer at him that evil is done by all, Hitchens does more than a credible job of demonstrating that deliberate evil is done by, for, and in the name of the very institutions that should be models of better behavior.  Hitchens detractors on this are simply disingenuous....he is absolutely right.  Our religious institutions, hierarchies, and leaders should be more than the rest of us..more moral.  Hitchens' litany is compelling even if most of us will reject his arguments.  His detractors maintain that most of this is ancient history.  Catholics reject the Inquisition.  Jews no longer practice animal sacrifice.  Muslims no longer convert by the sword.  Really?  The current Pope wants to saint Pope Pius -- known for (at best) his indifference to the Holocaust.  The fanatics of the BJP in India have bombed mosques.  Islamists murder cartoonists and apostates, and kill their raped daughters for dishonoring the family. How far have we really come?

Finally, read this because, despite the reviews that argue that Hitchens' arguments regarding intelligent design are overdone, I did not find that to be true. 

Overall, I certainly believe that Hitchens is monumentally angry at religion.  I am also sure he drops into hyperbole on a regular basis.  He is also monumentally erudite and viciously incisive.  He will make you uncomfortable and he will make you think.  That is worth all the rest.

The Death of a Friend: Reflections

I lost a friend last week.  My friend Steve was a neighbor for many years when we lived in Cleveland, a racquetball companion, a house project assistant (and we often reversed roles), a brilliant craftsman of his art, and an all around good guy and buddy. His wife, my wife, he and I got together regularly, cooked meals, chatted. Our wives were friends and had many mutual friends. They rented the house across the street from us for a year or two, then moved a couple streets away when they bought their first house in town.

Steve and his wife were around when both our children were born.  My eldest loved to visit Steve and their dogs (including a Newfie that she could ride like a horse). Steve and I dug gardens and built fences together. He was a California guys' guy...that means we talked talked cars, motorcycles and politics as well as cooking. He introduced me to racquetball and whirlpool at the Y and I introduced him to the old schvitz (steam bath) in what used to be the Jewish neighborhood and was by then pretty much in the center of the ghetto. Where else could guys go to get steam, get beaten with birch branches and then sit, wrapped in nothing but a town, and eat an enormous steak covered with garlic (in a room with linoleum floor, dinette sets and pictures of Moshe Dayan and Benito Mussolini on the walls) and then take a nap?  We had a great time even though he worked like crazy and so did I.

We moved first and we kept in touch - sort of...occasional emails, a couple of visits back.  But we were guy friends -- which meant we could pick up the conversation after 9 months of no communication like it was yesterday -- which is what we did for a few years.  Then they moved back to California and contact dwindled to occasional and brief emails and then mostly nothing. 

Steve is dead, now, at the age of 48 from an apparent heart attack.  I found out a couple of days after the event and could not make the funeral. The loss of Steve is a tragedy - for his family, for his friends, and for those who loved his art.  He had so much more left to give us, to do, to accomplish. 

I am so damn angry about Steve's passing....much more angry than sad.  I am 5+ years older than Steve and for the entire time I knew him he was in much better shape, ate healthier, worked out more, and was generally more physically active that I ever was.  I smoked, he didn't. I was 30 pounds overweight, he wasn't.  I sat on my backside all day and then ran though airports.  His craft required physical stamina and incredible lung capacity.  He's dead and I am not.  I know life isn't fair, but quite frankly, God has some real explaining to do on this one and the lack of answers or logic makes me furious.  But - pause for thought -- I was brought up knowing that life is not fair so what was the source of this anger?   I have thought about this for some days and think I have the answer.

When my sister died some 40 years ago, we made a family pact - on two issues.  First, we were never to say goodbye to each other without certain knowledge that we were all "current" -- that we had said everything that needed to be said -- that if anything were to happen that not one of us would look back and say, "if only I had told them or if only I had said..."  Second, we were never to let communication lapse for any reason - not for conflict or disagreement or geography or job or kids or whatever.  For 40 years, we have done a reasonably good job of keeping that commitment. 

Only thing I did not do was to extend that commitment to the few true friends I had -- and Steve was one of those friends.  I let communication lapse, I did not pursue and continue, I did not say everything that needed to be said.  Maybe I am the unusual and unique guy, but when I look around, I don't see many guys my age with tons of close guy friends...a few at most.  Lots of casual acquaintances, but not many hard and fast friends.  Steve was one of those friends and I let it go, did not work hard enough to maintain contact, made the wrong efforts.

So, in addition to being sad, I am indeed angry ... at myself.  In addition to being a great guy and good friend, Steve has, in his passing, also served as a teacher.  He has re-taught me the lesson of 40 years ago.  Family and close friends are few, rare, and very much worth working very hard to ensure not to lose contact. 

Thanks, Steve, for one last act of friendship.

The Death of a Pet: Reflections

Almost 3 years ago, my youngest daughter and I went off the the pet store to buy an aquarium and some fish and came back with a baby ferret and a ferret condo for it to live in.  Don't ask, it just happened that way.  My spouse was both aghast and unhappy with my judgment -- as in, "what in your 17 years of marriage to me would allow you to think that I might want a ferret in my house?"  My daughter, always on the lookout for a potential furry, cuddly pet was delighted as my allergies (both to animal fur and pet maintenance activities) had so far prevented any in-house pets other than the random turtle.

Funny thing happened, though -- over time, my wife and I fell in love with this 2 pound pea-brained animal who was always happy and glad to see us (read: be let out of its cage) and was so dumb that everything was new each time she was let out -- explored the same places, took and ferreted away the same stuff my wife and I had retrieved and put back last time she was out.  Not really dumb, though..just amazingly persistent.  My daughter named her Julie because we bought her in July.  We let her play in our TV room when we were watching TV or took her into a bedroom and let her run around.  She was expert in getting into drawers (from the back), stealing anything small off the bedside table and exploring anything that she could climb up on or in to.  Behind the love seat in our bedroom corner was her treasure trove -- consisting of a half dozen knotted up plastic shirt-bags, all of my wife's hand creams, pens, pencils, paper trash from the trash basket, anything in a plastic bag, and my loafers.  Take the stuff away and put it back where it belonged -- it was back in the corner the next time Julie got to play.

In January Julie was diagnosed with cancer -- we brought her in after she had lost 40% of her already meager body weight. We actually paid for intestinal surgery to remove a tumor, but later found out that it was in her lymph nodes.  We brought her home and she gained some weight back and continued to be her normal life playful, curious, and cute.  She then started to lose weight again, and a week or so ago began to get the shakes and fall asleep on the floor when we let her out.  Last night we took her to the vet who told us the shivering was a signal of inexorable decline and perhaps pain.  We decided to spare this little creature any more pain and had her gently and quietly euthanized. The whole family was there -- holding her, saying goodbye.  The family left after she was sedated and I stayed behind with the vet for the euthanizing shot.

It is my reaction that has me baffled. I know that admitting this will put my He-Man club membership in jeopardy, but I left the vet's office and walked home in tears -- all this little dumb animal ever did was give us joy and laughter and now she was gone.  I cried again before going to sleep...I am going to miss Julie.

I know that the loss of a pet is a momentary sadness -- particularly compared with the loss of a friend (which also happened to me earlier this week -- see my other posting on this date).  However, I don't remember losing a pet and feeling this way.  I never felt close to the dogs we had growing up, and our cats lived so long that I was away from home when they died.  The corny old adage of "walk a mile in someone's moccasins" comes to mind -- I can assure you that I will have a lot more empathy for my friends' stories about losing a pet from this point forward.