Excerpts from Christopher Hitchens’ book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything are available on Slate. I haven’t read it yet, but the excerpts indicate that Hitchens is less loopy than Richard Dawkins while being similarly unapologetic about atheism and equally irreverent towards faith. I especially like his nuanced answer to the argument that atheism is itself a type of religion:
Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.
