I don’t know why I feel the nagging need to clarify something before we even get started.



I am an atheist myself, however new to the group I might be. Indeed, until a very recent time, I spent a big period of my life believing I’m an agnostic. How do I put this mildly? Agnosticism is the safe route, it’s the one in between the dirty street filled with drug dealers and that very safe boulevard. It’s the one you’d take if your mom told you to take the shortest route home and you decided to be a bit

I don’t know why I feel the nagging need to clarify something before we even get started.



I am an atheist myself, however new to the group I might be. Indeed, until a very recent time, I spent a big period of my life believing I’m an agnostic. How do I put this mildly? Agnosticism is the safe route, it’s the one in between the dirty street filled with drug dealers and that very safe boulevard. It’s the one you’d take if your mom told you to take the shortest route home and you decided to be a bit of a rebel. But just a bit, mind you, not a lot. Because the basic concept of agnosticism, in relation to God, is that “we don’t know”. We don’t know, we can’t know, therefore we can’t make suppositions based on thin air. But, what agnosticism offers in return is the acceptance that there is actually something out there, luring in the divine space, waiting for us to recognize it to its true form and power. Basically, you get the “safety-belt” package that allows you to say, if you ever find yourself blamed in front of said divinity, that you couldn’t be sure. Which is, I used to believe, much more acceptable than…



Than atheism, really. Than flat-out acknowledging and believing and living up to this belief that there is no God. If death is not final and you find yourself face to face with the supreme Judge… you’re fucked. I guess I didn’t want to be a little rebel anymore and blossomed into a full blown hooligan.



I have never in my life been a believer. Not a single moment have I said: “I believe in God.” I have been raised with only one rule as guidance: “think for yourself”. As a kid, my family took me to a vast number of churches, not only of my religion, even if predominantly confined by it; big churches, small churches, some covered in gold, some built of wood, some carved in rock; some with a lot of fervent followers, others with just a lonely, old priest watching over the precincts… I have visited other countries and entered their churches, seen their shrines, watched their processions. I have had a fair amount of religious visiting done – but never in the name of God. Not once, in my entire life, have I gone to a church/religious space with the purpose of praying or bowing to the maker. If there was a reason, I guess it was to witness art, beauty in religious architecture, in believer’s paintings, in faith based sacred images. It was to see human-made wonders, ironically. I have shared meals with priests and slept with nuns in their rooms, in the mountains; I have experienced the simplicity that religion can instill into the lives of men and women, who devote their entire beings towards a better existence at the end of their current one. I have also seen the gold-adorned lives some religious people dwell in because of this foolish and completely idiotic belief that a creator would need to be worshipped with precious stones; How, did the creator not also create the poor?.. Or maybe he had an eye for sparkle.



I guess my point is, the concept of God in itself was useless to my formation, to my life. I have not had any advantage from being baptized into the Orthodox Church, no real need fulfilled by my affiliation to a certain religious cult. Knowing the Ten Commandments hasn’t overthrown my innate sense of right and wrong. The Genesis hasn’t impaired my ability to understand and believe in the Darwinist model. I have a moral code and fairly tough ethics without having followed God’s rules a single day. My life has been much more impacted upon by the fact that I was born into a white, middle-class, fairly well-off European family and that I have been given the proper education during each stage of my life in order to propel me to my current position and allow me to pursue my (apparently) fucked-up dreams.



But, at some point in my intellectual journey, I realized I had to know more about religion. I simply had to. There was no way around it, I had too many questions that hadn’t received answers. What also prompted me to analyze the matter more profoundly was the attitude of religious people in my vicinity when confronted with a non-believer. I have had confrontations (mainly in a scholarly environment, but just as meaningful ones outside of it) with people who had blamed me for my decisions and professed harsh consequences upon my doings, supported by their faith, when all I had done was ask questions.



I do have opinions, mind you. I do think religion has become a political/economical tool and that humans have, in their majority, lost the true meaning of it (which is achieving spirituality). Also, on my bitter road filled with deception in becoming an atheist, I found myself more and more disgusted with religious people and faith preachers and church goers, all because of their sense of superiority over me, their smug characters, thinking they have the divinity watching over their backs, that a divinity cares for them, repudiating reason and thinking and skepticism and empirical evidence to the dungeons of hell and their inhabitants to even worse tortures… I’m sure you could say atheists become atheists because of people more than because of God. I am not one of those who will talk against the concept of God; however, against the fantasies that the Bible (or any other scripture) professes as historically true, I will; against stupidity and racism and extremist followers and the banishment of science, I will; against mindless, spineless and remorseless individuals who coerce their children into fear and revulsion, perpetuating this tradition of imbecility over generations, I will. Against all of that and many more, I will speak up.



After all this ranting, I want you to take this away: I understand the need for religion. I understand why we turned to it in the first place and why we still cling to it now. I am not an “anti-theist”. I do not speak against God. I question him, his existence, his preaching, his absurd needs and his megalomaniac commands. I judge him, yes, and his followers, as they also judge me in return. You could call it mutual distrust, really.



But, if it’s true, if God exists, then I’m content with my atheist position. I believe I have the right to burn in Hell, or in all versions of it that exist. If you are a religious person reading this, please pray to your God that I may suffer. Please, bring the flames on, an eternity of torture for this pitiful apostate that I am! I beg of you, prove me wrong. I’ll be the happiest for that – indeed, I, in a very sadomasochistic way, look forward to it.

I fully intend to burn in Hell if that is the punishment for critical thinking and freedom of opinion.



Make crackling strips out of my skin! Scrambled brains out of the contents of my skull!



And never grant me forgiveness for wanting to understand the world by the power of my own mind. I don’t need to be excused for my own egocentric nature. Not by someone who is content in giving up his identity to a whimsical being of a far-away land.



In any case, if death is not final, I’ll still be going to hell even without being an atheist. I’m a sinner by birth, supposedly. Being an atheist just makes me a conscious one.



DONE! Now, let’s move on to an apologetic review that is supposed to be worth reading the whole rant that you just went through… Oh, well, I doubt it.

What I promise I will not talk about: how awesome Christopher Hitchens is.

What I will talk about: how awesome Christopher Hitchens’ work is.



“God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” is one in a long series of published papers that Hitchens has dawned upon us readers, that concern the matter of a divine being’s existence. Now, Hitchens is, as Woody Allen so humorously puts it, “the loyal opposition”. He is an atheist and a very articulate one indeed. When reading his work, you must be aware of the position he is taking: he is against blind faith and all for finding proof. As always, as in his speeches and his essays, he doesn’t cut off the path to discussion; rather he wants to open one. He questions everything, tries to shed light on the scriptures and the relationship between human and divine and all in all succeeds in making a very serious and solid case for his motion.



I have read some commentaries that he just mindlessly gives examples about how different people do different bad things in the name of their religion, and the readers who said that were arguing that these are useless extracts. I believe not. Of course he is going to point out what individuals do in the name of religion, that is the exact purpose of it all, how far humans will go and to what extent they will cause suffering and ignite wars and deny the most basic needs to others because of what their God (read: whimsical being of a far-away land with a very serious ego problem) has said.



Now, Hitchens doesn’t differentiate between Gods. If one is false, all are. The God’s importance doesn’t reside in the number of his followers, for this author. He talks the same about the three big monotheist religions, as well as about the remote cults of distant lands. The reason why so much of his work is concentrated around the Judaic, Muslim, and Christian preaching is that these three have had a massive effect on our society, as we experience it today. He speaks against them not with the purpose of defiling the “fantasy” itself, but in need to show how ridiculous and irrelevant they are for humanity today. They were very useful in the dawn of time, when volcanoes erupting at every corner and people found dead in the morning could not receive a proper explanation. After all, religion is a very early and very primitive attempt at science! Hitchens doesn’t deny that, and never once attacks the spiritual need of humans to unite and find solace – what he offers, instead, is solace through knowledge.



For all it’s worth it, I need to address the writing. You can see that this man has loved reading since he was a kid. You can see he knows literature in a very intimate way; his choice of words, his rhythm, the subtle irony underlining the entire work, everything points out to a wonderfully complex and cultured mind behind those pages. And cultured he had to be, given the enormity of the subjects he chose to tackle in his entire career. This is, in my opinion, a very good piece of non-fiction writing. It shows through a very thorough research, even if it is centered on finding the right facts to support his claims. I can throw away my subjective, atheist self, look at this work with my objective, detail-obsessed reader’s eye and find only minor twerks in this study.



I, for one, love the way Hitchens writes, because I feel he’s having a conversation with me. And, in the end, that is every writer’s dream – the extension of one’s thoughts into another’s mind without the two actually being in each other’s presence.



Atheists … you know you liked it. Even if it was the sort of: "oh wow he said it much better than I could have" like, you enjoyed it.



Believers … you know you can’t deny its truth. Even if you're backed up by all your faith, don't Hitchens' arguments pick at your reason?



All the rest … pick a side. Does Hitchens ask for too much?



Just pick a damn side.

