That's not how it looks to me so the 'Everyone else' part is untrue.

I am not part of this "Everyone else" group as described. I am not saying that zumby is incorrect or annoyed because he allegedly looks bad. I'm saying I don't care enough about this issue to look into it but I am prepared to take it on face value.

Not really. Words have meaning. There is no reasonable sense of the words "religion poisons everything" that is true.

Religion doesn't poison road signs. Check mate.

True, but that's reading it overly literally.

But certainly if you say "religion poisons everything", any reasonable reading WOULD include religious charity.

By the way, charity's the easiest example, but there are others. For instance, how many substance abusers have been saved by 12 step programs that include a religious component?

But that isn't saying religion hasn't poisoned charity any more than pointing out good parts in the Bible absolves it of the bad parts. The good doesn't wash out the bad. Which was one of the points Hitchens was making.

Personally I liked the title not because it was brash or it was abrasive, but because it tied in the various topics Hitchens covered and it made the conversation progress naturally as people asked him "what about this?" leading to his ultimate thesis of God has an authoritarian dictator.

Hitchens was kind of a troll, so I don't pay that much attention to most of what he said. That being said, the actual content of his book wasn't that bad--although pretty one-sided. I don't see what point there is in trying to defend him on the statement, "Religion poisons everything." The man was a provocateur, so you should expect him to make outrageous statements that taken literally are obviously false.

Again, not a counter example to the sense in which Hitchen's means it (and clearly says it if you read beyond the three word byline). The parts of the program that deal with substance abuse are great just as are secular substance abuse problems. What is poisoned here is the adding of the religious proselytizing and the like to the mix. They should just to the substance abuse programs without all the religious nonsense in AA and the like.

That's still not true, however. If an alcoholic quits drinking in a 12 step program, religion has not poisoned it. Indeed, it may have facilitated it. And if it did, the statement that religion "poisoned" it is nonsensical.

Again, just hold religion to the same standard he holds it to on bad religious acts. If religion is to blame for 9/11, as Hitchens says, then it gets credit for the good stuff. Hitchens doesn't say "religion isn't to blame for 9/11 because secular mass murderers can commit similar acts" even though the second part of that sentence is clearly true.

Except for the nonsensical religious proselytizing that occurred throughout it, which means it HAS been poisoned compared to the guy who goes through a secular program and quits drinking without all the religious baggage. AA replaces an addiction to alcohol with spiritual mumbo jumbo which - and this is Hitchens' point - distinctly detracts from the accomplishment.

Look, you can think the sense in which Hitchens' means this statement is itself wrong. But you don't seem to have internalized what his point actually is and keep making entirely irrelevant objections.

Unless faith itself is the key. In Mary Karr's memoir Lit, a hardboiled atheist is desperate to stop drinking. It does not work until she manages to convince herself there's a higher power she can turn her fate over to. The "higher power" business is central to AA. Worked for her. Baggage isn't so bad if it's a parachute.

My best friend from high school had a nervous collapse. He rebuilt a functioning mind by finding God. I can't stand to listen to him, but he's alive.

See how extreme Hitchens is. I've been an atheist since preteen and he's got me defending religion.

I wonder if God is angry that we're (christians) not militant.

Like, if Earth is a reform school for the criminally insane (booted from heaven), what is our biggest problem that got us sent here.

Is it that we're such huge d-bags, liars, thieves etc, or is it really that we're huge sissys? I'm kinda leaning toward the latter.

(I'm mean yea...Bush, Catholics... terror...yada yada..but they're really all on the same elite team imo. Direct this more to real people)

Lol. Honestly I don't think anyone can say much about what Hitchens says about the poisoning of psychotherapy by religion because as far as I know he never talked about it.

Too bad lawdude didn't attend a meeting with Hitch to go over all this because Hitchens is the one put the assertion out there almost self evidently to spark discussion with people like lawdude which he did more so than any other atheist or theist speaker.

Great. Doesn't detract from his point. Even if religion was demonstrated to exclusively cause the most amazingly wonderful thing that we all agreed was objectively beneficial, the part of it that was religious would be in and of itself bad. Thankfully, all these wonderful things like charity and stopping drinking and the like is entirely possible completely within a secular context. But it should be made completely clear - and hitchens emphasizes this over and over - that he is not trying to imply in any way that religious people can do good things ostensibly "because" of their religion so things like "but i knew this guy who got better because of his religion" is simply not a counterexample.

Absolutely not, at least the drinking part. Counseling, personal change, has to be very specific to the individual. And if what works in their world view is religion, then that's what it takes to get them clean.

Bad? Bad? How so? Aesthetically? You're turned off by the inner thought process of someone who accomplished objectively beneficial things? That seems rather puritanical.

Rationalists engage in so much jive, trutherism, conspiracy theories, it seems haughty to focus on the "bad" thinking behind, say, a Quaker orphanage.

Theism and atheism can both get you to all the bad places or the good places.

As far as I know there is only one place where atheism has an advantage over theism: in a late night tavern conversation about ultimate origins. One side says God did it. The other side knows there's no evidence.

But I think I've figured out why we two atheists have such different feelings toward religion. You see something superior about rationalists. I see Henry Kissinger (I suspect he's an atheist) pouring napalm on a nursing baby.

Congrats Bill you had a breakthrough.

That's stupid. Alcoholism causes disease, sometimes needless deaths, poverty, bankruptcy, crime, domestic violence, and a plethora of illnesses. The connection between alcoholism and these maladies is demonstrated by conclusive statistical evidence.

In contrast, religious beliefs are, in my opinion and yours, a false idea. There's just no comparison between the two and any rational alcoholic would make that tradeoff. There's no "poisoning" kicking the bottle.

Yeah. It's like the old economists' joke about going to the center where an enormously successful anti-poverty welfare-to-work program is being conducted, with amazing results, and the center director telling the economist "see how well our program works in practice" and the economist turning up his nose and replying "yes, but does it work in THEORY????".

It doesn't matter that someone shakes one of the great monkeys off their back, something that destroys so many lives-- this amazing accomplishment is still "poisoned" because that person might end up privately believing in a nonexistent God. That's preposterous.

None of this, of course, was Hitchens contention. I mean, what does anyone think Hitchens problem would be with religious or 'spiritual' psychotherapy? Uhh I don't know. Hitchens' contention with charity wasn't that religious people did charity, so it kind of beleaguers the mind that Hitchens problem would be so obvious. He didn't always take the most straight forward route. Besides Hitchens already explained what the essence of this 'religion poisons everything' was, and it wasn't to paint religion as monocausally bad or so people could keep trying to think of random things religion or apparently now mere 'faith in a superior power' could be beneficial for. Hitchens specifically mentions religious people do good things.

I don't know why anyone would want to identify with a New Atheist when he could be exploring the Lost Tribes and learning his real identity and about his real family. Noah had 70 descendants. Why risk losing your identity by identifying with Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris or Dennett?

Isn't being family even better than being tolerant? There's a lot more acceptance in family or at least there should be...If sin hasn't upset one with a lot of family/sibling rivalries, etc.

Yeah, this belongs here. WTF splendour, I thought you were being facetious when you said you had to say everything that pops in your head, but I guess not.

Think about it.

Who identifies with a "Johnny come lately" (upstart) atheist when he can identify with God the Father?

Why care about animal origins but not human genealogy?

Why settle for a stunted spiritual sense if you can develop a fuller one?

Something or someone is deceiving you. Of course, people never kid themselves or do they?

I find it ironic that you make statements like this last one and then worry about harris and hitchens being hyperbolic. Just the same way you blame them for being monocausal yet seem to consistently be monocausal yourself - just with chomsky's cause not theirs.

Now I should be clear, I don't see something superior about rationalists. I see something superior about rationalism. Big difference. Of course, it is not a panacea and doesn't solve all problems. Once one disgards religion, it doesn't make them morally pure or anything like this. So obviously there will be horrific people who are atheists and perhaps henry kissinger was one of them. But it is pretty damned rare that they are doing their horrible acts ostensibly because of, and in the name of, atheism.


Come now, religion is tremendously important in influencing peoples opinions on any number of topics. It is not just this totally private thing irrelevant to the rest of the world outside of bar conversations. It determines how people live and act in the world. For instance, there is a big group of religious people who think that their bible requires homophobic discrimination and this group is preventing marriage equality. It is disgusting. Yes they have no evidence for their God, but the buck doesn't stop there.

Now this is important for this thread because it shows the irony of your thinking. You blamed the atheists for being monocausal. I agree, to an extent. Religion is but a single relevant factor. You, however, have just tried to imply it is NOT a factor at all and has more or less no significance.

You are (finally) getting close to what his actual position is. I have said all along that if you want to disagree with Hitchens' actual meaning then great go ahead and do that, my argument with you was that you were enforcing your own meaning on his words and arguing against that. Here, however, you have internalized the idea that the religious part of AA can at least be thought of separately and are simply arguing that no comparison can be made from the huge benefits of ending alcoholism and the problems from instilling religion in its place. Now obviously that one thing outweighs another doesn't imply the less weighted thing has "no poisoning" but at least you are working in the correct framework which was my point and goal.

Of course let us not forget that secular alcoholism programs exist and are successful so you can get these kinds of successes without having all the nonsensical religious baggage attached.

Yes, aesthetically. Or at least, as I pointed out earlier, this is one of the two sort of ways. He will also argue that there are detrimental effects very often where, say, the no condom policy makes for a worse efficacy of the charities. But he certainly also has an aesthetic argument here, as I wrote about some time ago here: