A short, condensed summary of the first part of:

An introduction by Christopher Hitchens to the book: The Portable Atheist.

The pre-history of our species is hag-ridden with episodes of nightmarish episodes of ignorance and calamity, for which religion used to identify, not just the wrong explanation but the wrong culprit. Human sacrifices were made preeminently in times of epidemics, useless prayers were uttered, bogus “miracles” attested to , and scapegoats, like Jews or heretics or witches – hunted down and burned. The few men of science and reason and medicine had all they could do to keep their libraries and labs intact, or their very lives safe from harm. Of course, when the evil had “passed over”, there were equally idiotic ceremonies of hysterical thanksgiving, propitiating whatever local deities may be.

One is usually told, as an unbeliever that it is old fashioned to rail against the primitive stupidities and cruelties of religion because after all, in the enlightened times the old superstitions have died away. Nine times out of ten in debate with a cleric, one will be told not of some dogma or religious certitude but of some instance of charitable or humanitarian work undertaken by a religious person. Our response is to issue a challenge: name an ethical statement made or action performed by a believer that could not have been made a non believer.

Against the insane eschatology with its death wish and its deep contempt for the life of the mind, atheists have always argued that this world is all we have, and that our DUTY is to one another to make the very best of it all. Theism cannot coexist with this unexceptional conclusion.

To be charitable, one may admit that the religion often seem unaware of how insulting their main preposition actually is. Exchange views with a believer even for a short time, and let us make the assumption that this is a mild and decent believer who does not open the bidding by telling you that your unbelief will endanger your soul and condemn you to hell. It will not be long before you are politely asked how you can possibly know right from wrong.

The working assumption is that we have no moral compass if we do don’t somehow in thrall to an unalterable and unchallengeable celestial dictatorship.

Religion was the human race’s first and worst attempt to make sense of reality. It was the best the species could do at a time when we had no concept of physics, chemistry, biology or medicine.

We did not know we lived on a round planet, that the said planet was in orbit in a minor and obscure solar system, which as at the edge of an unimaginably vast cosmos that was exploding away from it’s original source of energy.

We did not know that micro-organisms were so powerful and lived in our digestive systems in order to enable us to live, as well as mounting lethal attacks on us as parasites.

We did not know of our close kinship with other animals. We believed that sprites, imps, demons and djinns were hovering in the air about us.

It has taken us a long time to shake off the heavy blanket of ignorance and fear, and every time we do, there are self-interested forces who want to compel us to cower under it again.

Religion was our first attempt at philosophy, alchemy was our first attempt at chemistry and astrology our first attempt to make sense of the movements of the heavens.

All of these things cater to our inborn stupidity, and our willingness to be persuaded against all evidence that we are indeed the center of the universe and that everything is arranges and created with us with us in mind.

Let us grant the assumption that some “thing” was indeed present at creation and gave the order to let matter explode to let th evolutionary process begin here on the far away little blue planet.

On what authority can he hope to show that the original flying part of matter was set in motion with the object of influencing life on a minute speck of a planet , billions of years later, at the very margins of the whirling nebulae and amid the extinction of innumerable other worlds?

Isn’t id odd that religion, which continually enjoins an almost masochistic modesty upon us in the face of god, should encourage such an extreme and impossible form of self-centerdness and self-regard?

What kind of creator is so wasteful and capricious and approximate? What kind of creator is so cruel and indifferent?

And- most of all: what kind of designer or creator only chooses to reveal himself to semi-stupefied peasants in a remote desert reason?

Not even highly intelligent believers understand the “mind of god”.

The religious person claims to KNOW that this creative force is an intervening one who cares for our human affairs and is interested in what we eat and with whom and how we have sexual relations, as well as in the outcomes pf battles and wars. (Not to mention sporting games).

To be continued.

Cross posted from The Atheist Toolbox.