Article content

“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”

― Baruch Spinoza

As we approach the fourth anniversary of his death, I felt that I ought to pay tribute to the great thinker and writer, Christopher Hitchens. I like many had been an admirer of his writing since stumbling across The Trial of Henry Kissinger in 2001, but it was only after Hitchens died, on Dec. 15, 2011, that I started to focus much more closely on his legacy. His thoughts on death in the posthumously published Mortality are very stirring. On religion, he was incendiary.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Opinion: Christopher Hitchens taught us to think freely about religion Back to video

Hitchens devoted much of his time to analyzing all of the world’s major religions and the ways in which they are often deluded, malevolent or downright immoral. To listen to him systematically destroy almost every teaching of the three major monotheisms is at once awe inspiring and alarming, as well as sometimes very funny. In God Is Not Great, he says: