God is not Great

In comparison with Hitchens, I was cured by religion from an early age. I found at least of anthropological interest his wandering from various religions, as self-introducted in God is not Great: (:233) "...having in the course of my life been an Anglican, educated at a Methodist school, converted by marriage to Greek Orthodoxy, recognized as an incarnation by the followers of Sai Baba, and remarried by a rabbi...". But, in fact, those experiences are offering insights of the history and histories of religion. Even, even as an atheist observer, from outside or better said, from above, all the observations and considerations regarding religion could be valid as well.

For me, the essentials of the books are resumed in Chapter Fifteen - Religion as an Original Sin - as follows (:245):

"There are, indeed, several ways in which religion is not just amoral, but positively immoral. And these faults and crimes are not to be found in the behavior of its adherents (which can sometimes be exemplary) but in its original percepts. These include:

- Presenting a false picture of the world to the innocent and the credulous

- The doctrine of blood sacrifice

- The doctrine of atonement

- The doctrine of eternal reward and/or punishment

- The imposition of impossible tasks and rules"

And, setting a right balance while answering the detractors of atheism (:300):

"Humanism has many crimes for which to apologize. But it can apologize for them, and also correct them, in its own terms and without having to shake or challenge the basis of any unalterable system of belief. Totalitarian systems, whatever outward form they may take, are fundamentalist and, as we would now say, 'faith-based'".