Christopher Hitchens vs. God: And the Winner Is…

God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens’s latest iconoclastic offering, champions what longtime Hitchens fans should recognize as the Vanity Fair provocateur’s favorite causes: atheism and religious discontent. Having already issued a takedown of Mother Teresa with 1995’s The Missionary Position, and still defending his support of the invasion of Iraq, Hitchens doesn’t have many controversies left to debate, but can his latest book transcend simple contrarianism?

“God should be flattered: unlike most of those clamoring for his attention, Hitchens treats him like an adult.” —Michael Kinsley, The New
York Times Book Review

“‘Religion Kills,’ Hitchens titles a chapter with typical bravado, as though science doesn’t. The history of scientific inquiry is filled with examples of incompetence, chicanery and outright torture and homicide undertaken in the name of “reason” and “progress.” Yet Hitchens continues to imply that evil is the prefecture of religion rather than a resident of both secular and spiritual worlds.” —Dennis Covington, Paste