Friday, June 01, 2007
Religion Poisons Everything
(2)
god is not Great arrived wednesday. I have finished chapter one so far. My first impression was that Hitchens is less readable than either Harris or Dawkins because he sometimes writes in a sort of stilted 'British' style reminiscent of John Stuart Mill (for example). That is to say that the text can be alternatively clear and cloudy, depending on how 'american' you are. Even so, I know I'm gonna like this book. By the way, reading up on Hitchens I noticed that he and I share a liking for booze (him more than I) and for much the same reasons: being high makes other people more interesting. The same article pointed out that H sometimes likes to write more or less drunk (another shared trait) which fact may explain my impression of a somewhat uneven first chapter. Nevertheless I liked the way he ended chapter one:
'As I write these words, and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments that I have touched upon. Religion poisons everything.'
god is not Great arrived wednesday. I have finished chapter one so far. My first impression was that Hitchens is less readable than either Harris or Dawkins because he sometimes writes in a sort of stilted 'British' style reminiscent of John Stuart Mill (for example). That is to say that the text can be alternatively clear and cloudy, depending on how 'american' you are. Even so, I know I'm gonna like this book. By the way, reading up on Hitchens I noticed that he and I share a liking for booze (him more than I) and for much the same reasons: being high makes other people more interesting. The same article pointed out that H sometimes likes to write more or less drunk (another shared trait) which fact may explain my impression of a somewhat uneven first chapter. Nevertheless I liked the way he ended chapter one:
'As I write these words, and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments that I have touched upon. Religion poisons everything.'
