God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is a 2007 book by the author and journalist Christopher Hitchens criticising religion. It was published in the United Kingdom as God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion. In the book, Hitchens contends that organised religion is "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children" and sectarian, and that accordingly it "ought to have a great deal on its conscience." Hitchens supports his position with a mixture of... personal stories, documented historical anecdotes and critical analysis of religious texts. His commentary focuses mainly on the Abrahamic religions, although it also touches on other religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Hitchens writes that, at the age of nine, he began to question the teachings of his Bible instructor, and began to see critical flaws in apologetic arguments, most notably the argument from design. He goes on to discuss people who become atheists, saying that some are people who have never believed, whereas others are those who have separately discarded religious traditions.
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