I have always been an athiest. My mother was an atheist, my Grandmother was an atheist before her. I will qualify that somewhat, my mother does believe in a sort of Gaia engine where the evil that people do to our world and to each other comes back to them as a spiritual “portrait of Dorian Gray”.
I went through most of my life unaware of the minority status of my un-belief. I was concious of family members and bystanders who held different views but I felt protected by my mothers overt hostility to “god botherers” and “bell ringers” and never questioned the truth of the what I unbelieved.
It wasn’t until I came to North America and witnessed first hand the power and ambition of the medieval biblio-fascists that I felt some need to learn more about the philosophical and factual basis of atheism. In order to arm myself against the patronising ignorance and infuriating meddling of religious fools and their imaginary friends I have started reading more from the heavy weight thinkers and speakers of atheism, men like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.
This book was my second one on the subject. Hitchens has a different style from Dawkins, blunter, less intellectual and less caring for the injured feelings of the object of his derision, the religious. It’s a light book, short chapters, doesn’t strain the brain too much. He just makes his points quickly and boldly, working his way through the throat and out the arse of every mainstream and most alternative sects. Brilliant and frightening at the same time. The scary part of it all is the simple example that the fastest growing religion on the planet is based on the fraudulent imaginings of a 19th Century charletan who received his vision through looking into a hat.
