People are fed up with theocratic bullying. Christopher Hitchens, Q TV interview 2009
It’s not ‘in the name of’; it’s in the word of God Himself. There are commandments and instructions. These are warrants for genocide, rape, slavery, infant mutilation and worse. ibid.
If it were to be true, one would be living under a permanent surveillance, a round-the-clock celestial dictatorship that watched you while you slept; and could convict you of thought crime, could indict you for things you thought in the privacy of your own skull, and sentence you to quite a long stretch, namely an eternity of punishment for that. Or dangle not to me very attractive reward of life of eternal praise and grovelling and sprawling and singing the praises of someone who you are ordered to love; someone whom you must both love and fear ... Compulsory love – how fascinating. Christopher Hitchens, interview Divine Impulses
As well as being man-made, it’s fear-made ... At its worse it’s the undeveloped part of the psyche that leads to totalitarianism that wants to worship, that wants a boss. That wants a celestial dictatorship. Christopher Hitchens v Rabbi David Wolpe, Boston 2010
It’s some plan, isn’t it? With mass destruction, pitiless extermination, annihilation going on all the time. And all of this set in motion on a scale that’s absolutely beyond our imagination, in order that the Pope can tell people not to jerk off. ibid.
The tremendous wastefulness of it. The tremendous cruelty of it. The tremendous caprice of it. The tremendous tinkering and incompetence of it. Never mind. At least we’re here. Christopher Hitchens
Once you assume a creator and a plan it makes us objects in a cruel experiment whereby we are created sick and commanded to be well ... And over us to supervise this is installed a celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea. Christopher Hitchens v Tony Blair: Is Religion a Force for Good in the World? 2010
Is it good for the world to appeal to our credulity and not to our scepticism? Is it good for the world to worship a deity that takes sides in wars and human affairs? ibid.
This is our God: this is the God who has made a covenant with our tribe. ibid.
I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim – so modestly and so humbly – to possess. It is time to withdraw our ‘respect’ from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world. Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough – and even miraculous enough if you insist – I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about?
Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don’t believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart’s content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others – while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity – so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called ‘meaningless’ except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one’s everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities … but there, there. Enough. Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
The greatest obligation you have is to keep an open mind. Christopher Hitchens v Dinesh D’Souza: The God Debate
The only respectable intellectual position is one of doubt, scepticism, reservation and free – I stress free – and unfettered enquiry. ibid.
The endless human wish to believe that we have parents who want to look out for us. ibid.
You might think that, by now, people would have become accustomed to the idea of natural catastrophes. We live on a planet that is still cooling and which has fissures and faults in its crust; this much is accepted even by those who think that the globe is only six thousand years old, as well as by those who believe that the earth was ‘designed’ to be this way. Even in such a case, it is to be expected that earthquakes will occur and that, if they occur under the seabed, tidal waves will occur also. Yet two sorts of error are still absolutely commonplace. The first of these is the idiotic belief that seismic events are somehow ‘timed’ to express the will of God. Thus, reasoning back from the effect, people will seriously attempt to guess what sin or which profanity led to the verdict of the tectonic plates. The second error, common even among humanists, is to borrow the same fallacy for satirical purposes and to employ it to disprove a benign deity. Christopher Hitchens
What if it was true nonetheless ... that we all part of a grand divine design? What would that actually mean if it were to be true? Well it would mean a regime of permanent supervision and surveillance over our lives and our personalities ... Why do you want such a thing to be true? Christopher Hitchens, lecture The Moral Necessity of Atheism
I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually true ... There may be people who wish to live their lives under cradle-to-grave divine supervision, a permanent surveillance and monitoring. But I cannot imagine anything more horrible or grotesque. Christopher Hitchens
Why, if God was the creator of all things, were we supposed to ‘praise’ him so incessantly for doing what came to him naturally? Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great p3
Why do people keep saying, ‘God is in the details’? He isn’t in ours, unless his yokel creationist fans wish to take credit for his clumsiness, failure and incompetence. ibid. p85
It’s a wish to be loved more than you probably deserve. Christopher Hichens
You have to imagine that all this mass extinction and death and randomness is the will of a being … and all of this should happen so that one very imperfect race of evolved primates should have the opportunity to become Christians … that all of that was done with us in view – it’s a curious kind of solipsism; it’s a curious kind of self-centredness … there’s a certain arrogance to this assumption … the tremendous wastefulness of it, the tremendous cruelty of it, the tremendous caprice of it, the tremendous tinkering and incompetence of it – never mind, at least we’re here and we can be people of faith. Christopher Hitchens
And if we’re all made in God’s image then how come there are so many sociopaths? Christopher Hitchens
The theist says when I tell you what to do, Christopher, I have God on my side … and since God doesn’t ever directly appear and say do it this way, it’s done for him – this is really convenient – by human representatives who claim to act in his name … real power in the only world that actually exists which is the material world of you over me: and you wonder why I’m not keen. Christopher Hitchens
Presuppositionist v Evidentialist … A very charming distinction … Progress of a kind. Christopher Hitchens v William Lane Craig, ‘Does God Exist?’ debate Biola University 2009
Retrospective evidentialism: Everything can in due time, if you have enough faith, be made to fit. ibid.
The tremendous wastefulness of it, the tremendous cruelty of it, the tremendous caprice of it, the tremendous tinkering and incompetence of it – never mind, at least we’re here. ibid.
Hundreds and hundreds of years of people proudly earning their keep by lying to children and terrifying them. Christopher Hitchens v Frank Turek, ‘Does God Exist?’, debate Virginia Commonwealth University 9th September 2008
This belief in a supreme and unalterable tyranny is the oldest enemy of our species, our oldest enemy of our intellectual freedom and our moral autonomy. ibid.
Of the many hundreds if not thousands of gods and religions humanity has invented in its time, we have three … alternatives when considering them … All of them are true … All of them are false … Only one of them is true. Christopher Hitchens vs John Lennox, ‘Is God Great?’ debate Samford Socratic Club, Youtube 1.53.25
There’s always an infinite replenishment of the infinitely renewable resource of faith. ibid.
Cruel and capricious and bungling and incompetent. ibid.
The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive. Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
90% of Americans believe in a personal God. Sam Harris, lecture New York Society for Ethical Culture 2005
God is not a moderate. ibid.