From Hitch’s book, God Is Not Great:

1. •The person who is certain and who claims to find warrant for his certainty belongs now to the infancy of our species.
   

1. •One must state it plainly: religion comes from the period of human pre-history that nobody - not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter came from atoms - had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge, as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs.
   

Basically I agree with Hitchens but I didn’t get through his book. He is too clever for me. God Is Not Great is essentially a history book written around an argument against the existence of God. There is too much history in it for my taste. If I was doing study or research then fine but I’m only looking for recreational reads these days so it was too much to wade through. The historical detail is obscure and specific and assumes some prior initiation. He also jumps about a lot. Within a paragraph there can be several allusions to historical epochs centuries apart.

Another thing I find annoying about Hitchens’ writing is that it is full of long wads of information in dashes which constantly interrupt the flow. He is not satisfied with making a point but has to step outside the point to provide background and sometimes takes several paragraphs to come back by which time I have lost the thread. He even interrupts the interruption with more sub-divided background and the effect is dizzying. There might be something of the macho-academic in him showing off his knowledge prowess. He wants you to know that he knows. This does not necessarily add to the essence of the book. Academics do this. The writing comes to be as much about their own erudition and worthiness as professionals than about developing an idea. So considering Hitchens, as well as Dawkins and John Gray, I’m on their side but just wish they articulated in a way I didn’t find so off-putting. Maybe I will find a celebrated contemporary writer yet who does that.

To make my own comment about the God debate, I think that those who argue against the Deity are more coherent than those who argue for. Arguing from faith is always going to be extra difficult by default. Belief doesn’t need evidence, knowledge does and having it gives it the stronger case. But I notice that neither side of this debate seems to embrace the fact that the human is an emotional animal. Perhaps this is because they feel their case would be diminished by such an admission. The emotional is seen to be weaker than the rational. For the believers it would be as if to concede that religion is mainly about comfort, that it is about alleviating the uneasy aspects of life. For non-believers it might make them seem too sympathetic to those who seek such comforts and thereby maybe even helping to justify it. For them that wouldn’t do either.

So as is often the case I am stuck unable to find a shared position. Karen Armstrong with her logos/mythos distinction might be one. I’m sure there will be plenty others out there who make my case but I don’t find them being somewhat outside the loop confined to my own thoughts. Obviously these thoughts will not be original. And anyway it’s quite interesting working out one’s own apparently unique position in isolation ignorant of who else might be thinking the same thing. There may be nothing new under the sun but this might be as original as originality gets.