Oh my god (pun...intended?)

I have the most delicious book. "god is not great: how religion poisons everything" by Christopher Hitchens. I have been laughing hysterically at points. Of course, that could also be the very excellent wine I have been drinking. I seem to have consumed more than half a bottle of wine on my own whilst reading.

*cackles*

Meanwhile, my mother is at my (38 y.o.) brother's confirmation. Hurrah, another one joins the sheepish fold. "Are you going to your brother's confirmation?" she asks me as I step out of the shower. I look at her, clutching my towel to my 38C bosom, and laugh. "And how much of a mockery would THAT be?"

"Well, he is your brother, regardless of your beliefs!"

"Tell him 'congratulations'!"

Bwha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

Oh, Christopher Hutchins, I think I love you. He has managed to encapsulate what I feel on so many levels, but have been unable to express.

To wit:

"I would be quite content to go tot heir children's bar mitzvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to 'respect' their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclusively in Arabic, to an illiterate merchant, or to interest myself in Wicca and Hindu and Jain consolations. And as it happens, I will continue to do this without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition - which is that they in turn leave me alone. But this, religion is ultimately incapable of doing. 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 [the "rapture" anyone? -DB]. Religion poisons everything." (p13)

"The brilliant Schiller was wrong in his 'Joan of Arc' when he said that 'against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.' It is actually by means of the gods that we make our stupidity and gullibility into something ineffable." (p77)




Edit: Okay, maybe I don't love-love CH. I read his wiki-bio and he has some regretable rightist-tendancies (supporting the war in Iraq? WTF?). How, I don't know, as he is an atheist!