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Book Review: The Portable Atheist by Christopher Hitchens

I would not call myself an atheist, but a some of what is collected in this book rings true to me. However, like most atheist philosophy there is much to be desired. Much of the counter-points favoring the non-existence of god(s) can be boiled down into:

1) God does not exist because there is no evidence. 2) God does not exist because there is evil in the world. 3) God does not exist because bad people have embellished on the myths. 4) God does not exist because there are too many gods both past and present.

I’m sure that I am over-simplifying, but that is essentially the crux of it as far as I can see. All of these thoughts ring a bit hollow to me, but they all touch on a larger understanding that I have yet to figure out myself. If I had to guess, the existence (or non) of the truth of god lies in the analysis of Dawkins’ Spaghetti Monster (which does not make much of an appearance here).

Oh well. The quest continues.

The worst part of this book lies in the fact that it seems to be a money-grab by Hitchens. It seems that he is trying to cash in on his recent fame by collecting some publicly available texts, writing one or two sentences about each, and then adding a couple lackluster “never before released” essays by a couple friends. As a side note, this book is far from portable.

-m