So you see, children, how powerful and generous God is. He has made all the trees and grass to be green, which is exactly the color that is most restful to our eyes. Imagine if instead, the vegetation was all purple, or orange, how awful that would be."
With those words dear Mrs Watts, nature instructor and Bible teacher to her pupil Christopher Hitchens, overreached herself because he simply knew that she'd managed to get everything wrong in just two sentences. The eyes were adjusted to nature, and not the other way about.
This epiphany turned Christopher Hitchens into an antitheist, a term he tried to get into circulation for someone who is relieved that there's no evidence for the assertion that God exists. Henceforth, the dictum "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence" became known as Hitchens's razor.
I had my very own epiphany when more than sixty years ago at the "Voksschule" in Germany I heard of the Spanish Inquisition which lasted over 350 years and killed an estimated 30,000 to 300,000 people (some historians are convinced that millions died). I was given the mark "sehr gut" in history lessons (but only a mere "gut" in religious instructions), and ever since then have agreed with Christopher Hitchens that "God is not great" and that religion poisons everything and everyone.
Thank God for Christopher Hitchens whose book "God is not great - How religion poisons everything" pretty much confirms everything I've felt since those early years at school, namely, that all religions are man-made, sexually repressive and distort the very origin of the cosmos. Above all, the concept of an omniscient God has profoundly damaged humanity, and the world would be a great deal better off without 'him'.
Join me in another hour of an erudite and well-reasoned discussion by Christopher Hitchens with the equivalent of a human sleeping pill:
Of course, everybody needs to believe in something. Right now, after all that talk and given today's heat, I believe I need another beer. Cheers!
P.S. The five "must-read" by Christopher Hitchens are: "God is not Great", "The Portable Atheist", "Mortality", Arguably", and "Letters to a Young Contrarian". Most are expensive but thriftbooks.com sells some second-hand copies at reasonable prices (and free of postage within USA but, unfortunately, not to Australia which almost doubles the price). Some can also be "borrowed" - i.e. read online - at archive.org.
"Arguably"
"Mortality"
"Hitch 22"
"Thomas Jefferson"
"Hitchens vs. Blair"
"Why Orwell Matters"
"The Missionary Position"
"Thomas Paine's Rights of Man"
"A Long Short War"
"Orwell's Victory"
"No One Left To Lie"
"Letters to a Young Contrarian"
"The Trial of Henry Kissinger"
"Unacknowledged Legislation"
"Blood, Class, and Nostalgia"
"Cyprus"
"Unhitched : the Trial of Christopher Hitchens"
"Blaming the Victims"
