Table of Contents

1: Putting It Mildly 2: Religion Kills 3: A Short Digression on the Pig; or, Why Heaven Hates Ham 4: A Note on Health, to Which Religion Can Be Hazardous 5: The Metaphysical Claims of Religion Are False 6: Arguments from Design 7: Revelation: The Nightmare of the "Old" Testament 8: The "New" Testament Exceeds the Evil of the "Old" One 9: The Koran Is Borrowed from Both Jewish and Christian Myths 10: The Tawdriness of the Miraculous and the Decline of Hell 11: "The Lowly Stamp of Their Origin": Religion's Corrupt Beginnings 12: A Coda: How Religions End 13: Does Religion Make People Behave Better? 14: There Is No "Eastern" Solution 15: Religion as an Original Sin 16: Is Religion Child Abuse? 17: An Objection Anticipated: The Last-Ditch "Case" Against Secularism 18: A Finer Tradition: The Resistance of the Rational 19: In Conclusion: The Need for a New Enlightenment

About the Author

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and Visiting Professor in liberal studies at the New School in New York. He was the author of numerous books, including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, George Orwell, Mother Theresa, Henry Kissinger and Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as the international bestseller and National Book Award nominee, god Is Not Great.

Reviews

[An] impressive and enjoyable attack on everything so many people hold dear... Hitchens has outfoxed the Hitchens watchers by writing a serious and deeply felt book, totally consistent with his beliefs of a lifetime. And God should be flattered: unlike most of those clamoring for his attention, Hitchens treats him like an adult.
*New York Times Book Review*

[Hitchens] has somehow turned out an atheist book that, whatever one's stance on divine providence, is thoroughly enjoyable...in its profane interrogation of the sacred, [it] achieves a kind of joyous impudence...His narrative leans briskly and unrelentingly forward, subverting an unsettling all kinds of complacencies, religious and otherwise.
*Joseph Rago, Wall Street Journal*