He writes about the myriad wars and large-scale crimes perpetrated in the name of God, from the Israel-Palestine conflict to the September 11 attacks to the Lord’s Resistance Army, a fundamentalist Christian group in Uganda that kidnaps children and turns them into soldiers. Hitchens posits that religion is a destructive force in the world. As science and philosophy have evolved, Hitchens believes that worldwide skepticism has grown, and that those who stand to benefit from the continuation of religion have gone to greater and greater lengths to convince their followers to retain beliefs.

He believes many people know deep down that religion is fabricated, even if they hold religious beliefs. Throughout history, Hitchens believes that there have been many atheists who arrived at their views through careful consideration of science and philosophy, not as a reaction to religious teachings. Instead, he presents atheism as a natural state for humankind. Hitchens explains that anti-religious views are not always the result of a specific trauma, and that atheists are rarely “brainwashed” by a specific anti-religious speaker or author. He became a skeptic at an early age after questioning a series of religious teachers. The book begins with a personal history of Hitchens’s journey to atheism. This guide avoids reproducing the vivid details within the book’s accounts of these acts, but they are mentioned repeatedly. These topics include child sex abuse, genital mutilation, rape, mental and physical trauma, and violence on both small and large scales.

Potentially upsetting content can be found in nearly every chapter of God Is Not Great.

The citations in this guide refer to the original 2007 United States edition of the book, published by Hachette Book Group.Ĭontent Warning: This guide and the corresponding book cover a number of traumatic and violent acts. Published first in the United Kingdom as god is not Great: The Case Against Religion and in the United States as god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, it was republished in 2017 with no subtitle and with the pointed non-capitalization of “god” removed. It was a finalist in the non-fiction category for the 2007 National Book Award in the United States. God Is Not Great reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list by its third week of publication, outpacing the extremely popular final Harry Potter novel.

God is not great book