Christopher Hitchens on Religion and societal harm
Hitchens argued that religion poisons everything — not occasionally, but systematically, by design.
The subtitle of God Is Not Great says it all: 'How Religion Poisons Everything.' Hitchens did not argue that religion is merely false, or merely unnecessary — he argued that it is actively harmful, and that the harm is not incidental but structural. Religion demands faith over evidence, obedience over conscience, and submission over autonomy.
Hitchens catalogued religion's harms with the breadth of a foreign correspondent and the precision of a prosecutor: the sexual abuse of children by clergy, the subjugation of women, the persecution of homosexuals, the suppression of scientific inquiry, the justification of slavery, the fuelling of sectarian violence. He argued these were not aberrations but predictable consequences of a system that teaches people to surrender their moral judgment to an unchallengeable authority.
His challenge to believers was consistent: show me a good deed done or a moral statement made by a religious person that could not equally be made by a secular person. Then consider whether there is any evil deed done specifically because of religious conviction — and the list is long. The asymmetry, Hitchens argued, is the case in a nutshell.
“Religion poisons everything. It is violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children.”
“Name me a moral action taken or a moral statement made by a believer that could not have been made or taken by a nonbeliever. I have yet to find anyone who can answer that question.”