Customer Reviews

God Is. How Christianity Explains Everything

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_God Is._ constitutes a brief (~100 pages) critique by Douglas Wilson of Christopher Hitchens' book, _God Is Not Great_. In my estimation, the slim length of the book is just about right given the inanity of Hitchens' grievances against Christianity in particular and religion in general.

I've been telling people for a couple of years now that Hitchens is not that bright when it comes to matters of philosophy (epistemology, metaphysics, etc.). Write? Few can match Hitchens. Out-think Christianity or other non-naturalistic worldviews? Few can be found in print who have been a more abject failure than Hitchens. All Hitchens has to offer is what Wilson refers to as AIBM, "the Argument for Infidelity from the Bon Mot" (p. 29).

So poorly put together are Hitchens' arguments that I would as a common courtesy insist to anyone planning a critique of atheism that they leave _God Is Not Great_ out of the mix. It does for atheism what Pamela Anderson does for PETA - very little in the way of substance and intellectual fortitude, and that's being polite about it.

Wilson not only dismantles Hitchens arguments, he does so in the same way Hitchens attempts to dismantle religion - using liberal doses of wit and humor. Here are some samples:

- "Religion poisons everything. 'So? Does this offend anyone whose opinion should matter to me? Is there some kind of rule against poisoning everything? Who made that rule? And who died and left that particular busybody king? Get your moralism outta my face, Hitchens.'" (p. 5)

- "I am perfectly willing to loan him a fixed scriptural standard so that he might enjoy the pleasure of disapproving of hysterical believers who go off like bottle rockets whenever an atheist is naughty in public. Because that is the only way he is able to enjoy such spectacles - with borrowed standards." (pp. 8-9)

- "When you compare abominable theistic societies and abominable atheistic societies, the variables are probably not the thing you want to appeal to in order to account for the constant, horrific result. We need to look for the constant. What might that be? People. People poison everything. The Scriptures give us the reason for this, which is that people are sinners." (p. 12)

- "I am glad he chose this argument--since religion poisons everything, let's talk about DDT and malaria. Let's talk about which religious group it was that succeeded in banning a substance that would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Was it the Vatican, or Muslim imams, or....No, it was secularists who in one of their periodic and recurring enviro-panics decided to consign countless thousands in the Third World to misery and death. Was this a religious bonehead move? No? Can we still count it, or does it have to go into another book?" (pp. 19-20)

- "After the publication of my Sam Harris book, I had occasion to drop in at Richard Dawkins' blog site and say a few things. This involved reading some of the other posts, and it occurred to me that just because the famous atheist is an Oxford don doesn't prevent his rank and file follower from being the kind of audience that Aquinas would not exactly envy. If careful and informed thought were a rich hard wood, we are talking oak veneer for the mobile home bathroom." (p. 28)

- "The assumption he makes here is his application of Ockham's razor, which states 'the simplest explanation is most likely.' Hitchens assumes that the elimination of God from the creation of all things is a simplifying move. It may have simplified Hitchens' personal life, but it most emphatically does not simplify our explanations of how spiders figured out web engineering. The fact that a story can be told without appeal to the divine purposes is a simplistic move, but that is not the same thing as a simplifying move." (p. 43)

- "...the French may have used the same reasoning method as Hitchens: 'Find a sample size of one, and render general by induction.' In other words, pin the image of one extremist onto the whole religion." (p. 68)

- "That is the issue. It is not whether Hitchens is Stalin. Of course he is not. The issue is whether Hitchens has anything whatever to say when Stalin is being Stalin. And he does not." (p. 76)

- "...I agree with Hitchens' assessment of why many Westerners have gone the guru route. It appears to be the same motive that persuades a foolish woman to try to clean her living room by rearranging the furniture, or a foolish student to try to improve his grades by buying additional notebook dividers. It promises change without actually delivering it." (pp. 76-77)

This is just a small sampling of the zingers that Wilson puts forward in this book. Who knew dismantling Hitchens' arguments could be this much fun?

Perhaps the best summary of Wilson's critique is when he says, "As I have noted before, Hitchens is a gifted writer. He has a boatload of vivid adjectives and nouns at his fingertips. But, a boatload of vivid adjectives and nouns does not make up a coherent moral system." (p. 97)

Christian readers will surely find this a pleasurable read. Atheists readers might even concede after a read-through that Hitchens hasn't done his homework.

This book is so well written on so many levels. Stylistically, he shows you can still be brilliant without bombarding a reader with every obscure word from the thesaurus(hemhem, Hitchens) and even (gasp!) be personable and humorous. Content wise, his main argument - "So?" - is simply and wisely stated. Many points are made which absolutley require a coherent answer from Hitchens should he want his work to hold water.
This book masterfully shows atheism for what it is - every bit as faith based as any religion. An atheists best argument AGAINSTS god's existence is, ironically, the best argument FOR god's existence... neither is something you can solidly PROVE.
Here in lies my personal problem. While both books were highly enlightening in various ways, they never address people like me who are in the "I don't know" category. I have read much good material by many camps of "belief" that excellently disprove the other camp. But even so, they never quite fully defend their own. I would like that. I would like to ask Hitchens, "Why are we innately soulful/moral/spiritual-seeking people? If religion is untrustworthy merely because it's ancient, why are many scientific studies still upheld from long ago that have never been able to be duplicated? If religion merely was an explanation for the less informed, why is it still alive and well in this age of the "well-informed"?" And many, MANY more.
I would like to ask Wilson, "Why is god bound to a blood sacrifice? Why would such a good god create people obviously so prone to sin and unbelief? And what is heaven - the taking away of our will so we won't sin or the full knowledge of god so we won't sin... and either way, why didn't he do this in the first place to avoid sending anyone to hell?" And many, MANY more.
Again, I walk away from both books with a lot of new and helpful thoughts, but still no solid answers on the purpose of this life.

This is an excellent response to Christopher Hitchens. Wilson is witty and lucid as usual. And he takes Hitchens to task in a serious way.

Since this is a response to another book, I'd obviously recommend that you read "God Is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchens before reading this (if you are able to stomach it). If you haven't read "God is Not Great", you will get some great tidbits, but of course its never very good to read a critique without reading what it is critiquing.

Kudos to Wilson for taking on Hitchens!

Pastor and apologist Douglas Wilson makes even the basic elements of life and thought look designed and enthralling in this brief apologetic response to Christopher Hitchens atheistic polemics.

"God Is" is a breezy, nonetheless erudite, exposition of the author's rundown of the underlying entities and rational a priori truths that require Christian theism. Deny CT and one fails to account for the changeless universals all men take for granted and must utilize: even the New Atheists!

The subtitle is "How Christianity Explains Everything; A Reply to Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." That subtitle is a grand claim, nevertheless Wilson demonstrates, with great wit and apologetic ingenuity, the truth of his assertion.

Wilson is quite nimble in his epistemic application as he establishes the ultimate resiliency of CT in explaining all of reality forasmuch as it alone can be the ground and fount for rational and moral necessities.

This little volume is a solid, insightful, risible, and penetrating page-turner. Wilson's presentation can be employed to refute not only Hitchens, but the whole axis of the new atheism.
The Kindle makes it very useful.
Letter to an Atheist Nation: Presupositional Apologetics Responds To: Letter to a Christian

I do try to keep an open mind and to understand where other people are coming from with their points of view, but a "book" whose main response to a detailed criticism of the author's religion is essentially "So what?" is a waste of time and money. There's nothing even new here, just reheated, rehashed standard religious fare.

This is from the "nyah-nyah-nya-nyaah-nyaah" school of fundamentalist journalistic responses. You don't need a Kindle to read and understand this, you just need a brick wall and some crayons.

It's kind of sad to see this kind of verbal mayhem seriously presented as a reasoned response to the reasoned arguments in the original book. Sad, but not unexpected! At least the fundies are nothing if not consistent in the way they like to respond to fair criticism and reasoned argument (whether you believe the arguments or not) : that is, with personal attacks and lots of spittle, but not much in the way of truly thoughtful argument.

There's certainly no argument in "So what?" that can be countered by reason. That whole mindset may have been adopted for the purposes of this book alone, but even so, it devalues the worth of Mr Wilson's other books. Pandering to the lowest common denominator is a great way to sell books and make money, but not so hot for responding to questions raised pretty fairly by Chris Hitchens. Whether or not you agree with his arguments, the least you can do is respond to them, not just raise old issues over again.

The "book" (let's call it what it actually is, which is a "pamphlet") could have been subtitled "Knee Jerks and Non Sequiturs!!!" At least then I'd know exactly what I was paying for. You'll find better and clearer arguments elsewhere, minus the frothing. Unless you like the frothing. I'm not into frothing, life's too short as it is.

I gave this book one star because it didn't take very long to read and it certainly didn't over-exercise my brain, so there was no harm done! Small words, no coherence, excellent to read while you're on hold on the phone waiting for someone to yell at without reason. It won't last the length of any bus trip or train trip though.

This book disproves none of Hitchen's arguments. Let's look a few examples:

Page 5. "Get your moralism out of my face." Atheists are constantly being told that they don't have morals. Which is, of course, ridiculous. Atheists don't need morals supplied by a vicious, self-serving, arrogant, jealous, imaginary being whose followers change the rules as they go.

Page 19-20. Secularists banned DDT? Since when? Actually, there was a huge public outcry in 1972 in the United States against DDT and the majority of those protesters were Christians and Jews and members of other religions because that was the religious makeup of the U.S. at that time.

Page 43. A good course on evolution would be handy here. But of course, religious writers don't want to hear about evolution. They would rather close their eyes and believe that the universe could not be created out of nothing but had to be created by a god who was, logicaly, created out of nothing. See a problem with that way of thinking?

Page 97. Is Christianity a coherent moral system? The Bible tells followers to kill people who work on Sunday and kill children who don't obey. It also give many, many examples of god slaughtering non-believers. I can do without that can of moral system thank you.

As for the rest of the book? Poor arguments and a poor sense of humour.