god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens. 

3/5 rating. 

Book #117 of 2019. Read October 9, 2019.

This book is great for anyone who has ever had any questions about the efficacy or reach of religion. Hitchens, a strident (though usually more respectful of people’s views than they of his) atheist, discusses the issues with a plethora of religions and why in today’s climate, society is ready to move past Bronze-age beliefs. If this sounds at all like something you would enjoy, definitely start reading. I read this book in college and it forever changed my life!

Quotes:

“There is no need for us to gather every day, or every seven days, or on any high and auspicious day, to proclaim our rectitude or to grovel and wallow in our unworthiness.”

“Religious faith is, precisely because (ital) we are still-evolving creatures, ineradicable. It will never die out, or at least not until we get over our fear of death, and of the dark, and of the unknown, and of each other.”

“To such heights of evil are men driven by religion.” – Lucretius

“But the human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.”

“‘Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor.’ – Sigmund Freud”

“‘Make me one with everything.’ So goes the Buddhist’s humble request to the hot-dog vendor. But when the Buddhist hands over a twenty-dollar bill to the vendor, in return for his slathered bun, he waits a long time for his change. Finally asking for it, he is informed that ‘change comes only from within.’ All such rhetoric is almost too easy to parody, as is that of missionary Christianity.”

IG Link.