starting at Chapter 5
starting at Chapter 8
starting at Chapter 11
starting at Chapter 14
starting at Chapter 18
I have Christopher Hitchens' book "God Is Not Great - How religion poisons everything" in my library, but when I found this audio-book on YouTube, there was no way I was not listening; firstly, because his is the most beautiful voice I've ever heard reading a book, and, secondly, because his intellect and words are like a sword, beautiful, sharp and cutting. RIP Christopher Hitchens.
I dispensed with Christianity at the age of fourteen when I refused to do the expected thing and be confirmed into the German Lutheran church.
Since my childhood I have had only one more in-your-face encounter with religion, and that was with Islam during my years in Saudi Arabia, and so I cut right to the chase and started at the book's Chapter Nine, "The Koran Is Borrowed From Both Jewish and Christian Myth":
Continue by reading it online at archive.org, going straight to page 123.
What little I knew about Islam before I went to live and work in Saudi Arabia in 1982, I had learned from Peter O'Toole in the movie "Lawrence of Arabia". Nothing much seemed to have changed during the two years I lived there, although I have heard that since I left, women have been allowed to drive cars, as long as they - the cars - are properly covered.
Please don't bother to comment or send me any other sort of hate mail, as this blog entry is entirely for my own benefit. As I wrote, Christopher Hitchens' voice is the most beautiful I've ever heard reading a book.
P.S. You may prefer to listen to the whole audiobook in one recording and use the timestamps to navigate between the nineteen chapters:
Chapter 1 - Putting It Mildly: 0:01
Chapter 2 - Religion Kills: 24:55
Chapter 3 - A Short Digression on the Pig; or, Why Heaven Hates Ham: 1:11:18
Chapter 4 - A Note on Health, to Which Religion Can Be Hazardous: 1:15:26
Chapter 5 - The Metaphysical Claims of Religion Are False: 1:55:39
Chapter 6 - Arguments from Design: 2:14:35
Chapter 7 - Revelation: The Nightmare of the "Old Testament": 2:59:32
Chapter 8 - The "New Testament" Exceeds the Evil of the "Old" One: 3:19:01
Chapter 9 - The Koran Is Borrowed from Both Jewish and Christian Myths: 3:45:29
Chapter 10 - The Tawdriness of the Miraculous and the Decline of Hell: 4:15:18
Chapter 11 - "The Lowly Stamp of Their Origin": Religion's Corrrupt Beginnings: 4:43:51
Chapter 12 - A Coda: How Religions End: 5:11:33
Chapter 13 - Does Religion Make People Behave Better?: 5:18:59
Chapter 14 - There Is No "Eastern" Solution: 5:57:45
Chapter 15 - Religion as an Original Sin: 6:14:40
Chapter 16 - Is Religion Child Abuse?: 6:35:15
Chapter 17 - On Objection Anticipated: The Last-Ditch "Case" Against Secularism: 6:57:49
Chapter 18 - A Finer Tradition: The Resistance of the Rational: 7:44:42
Chapter 19 - In Conclusion: The Need for a New Enlightenment: 8:26:24
P.P.S. If you can spare two hours to listen to a debate, click here.
