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Anti may refer to:

• Anti (mythology), the ferryman who carried Isis to Set's island in Egyptian mythology
• Anti, or Campa, a tribe of South American Indians
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• ANTI-, an American independent record label
• Antiparticle, a particle with the same mass but opposite charges in particle physics
• Anti addition in organic chemistry
• Anti EP, an EP by Autechre
• Anti conformation in alkane stereochemistry

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Symbols representing some world religions, from left to right:
row 1: Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism
row 2: Islam, Buddhism, Shinto
row 3: Sikhism, Bahá'í Faith, Jainism

Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values.^[1] Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to explain the origin of life or the universe. They tend to derive morality, ethics, religious laws or a preferred lifestyle from their ideas about the cosmos and human nature.

The word religion is sometimes used interchangeably with faith or belief system, but religion differs from private belief in that it has a public aspect^{[citation needed]}. Many religions have organized behaviors, clergy, a definition of what constitutes adherence or membership, congregations of laity, regular meetings or services for the purposes of veneration of a deity or for prayer, holy places (either natural or architectural), and/or scriptures. The practice of a religion may also include sermons, commemoration of the activities of a god or gods, sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trance, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture. However, there are examples of religions for which some or many of these aspects of structure, belief, or practices are absent.

The development of religion has taken different forms in different cultures. Some religions place an emphasis on belief, while others emphasize practice. Some religions focus on the subjective experience of the religious individual, while others consider the activities of the religious community to be most important. Some religions claim to be universal, believing their laws and cosmology to be binding for everyone, while others are intended to be practiced only by a closely defined or localized group. In many places religion has been associated with public institutions such as education, hospitals, the family, government, and political hierarchies. Anthropologists John Monoghan and Peter Just state that, "it seems apparent that one thing religion or belief helps us do is deal with problems of human life that are significant, persistent, and intolerable. One important way in which religious beliefs accomplish this is by providing a set of ideas about how and why the world is put together that allows people to accommodate anxieties and deal with misfortune."^[2]

Some academics studying the subject have divided religions into three broad categories: world religions, a term which refers to transcultural, international faiths; indigenous religions, which refers to smaller, culture-specific or nation-specific religious groups; and new religious movements, which refers to recently developed faiths.^[3] One modern academic theory of religion, social constructionism, says that religion is a modern concept that suggests all spiritual practice and worship follows a model similar to the Abrahamic religions as an orientation system that helps to interpret reality and define human beings,^[4] and thus religion, as a concept, has been applied inappropriately to non-Western cultures that are not based upon such systems, or in which these systems are a substantially simpler construct.

Etymology[link]

Religion (from O.Fr. religion "religious community," from L. religionem (nom. religio) "respect for what is sacred, reverence for the gods,"^[5] "obligation, the bond between man and the gods"^[6]) is derived from the Latin religiō, the ultimate origins of which are obscure. One possibility is derivation from a reduplicated *le-ligare, an interpretation traced to Cicero connecting lego "read", i.e. re (again) + lego in the sense of "choose", "go over again" or "consider carefully". Modern scholars such as Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell favor the derivation from ligare "bind, connect", probably from a prefixed re-ligare, i.e. re (again) + ligare or "to reconnect," which was made prominent by St. Augustine, following the interpretation of Lactantius.^[7][8] The medieval usage alternates with order in designating bonded communities like those of monastic orders: "we hear of the 'religion' of the Golden Fleece, of a knight 'of the religion of Avys'".^[9]

According to the philologist Max Müller, the root of the English word "religion", the Latin religio, was originally used to mean only "reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, piety" (which Cicero further derived to mean "diligence").^[10][11] Max Müller characterized many other cultures around the world, including Egypt, Persia, and India, as having a similar power structure at this point in history. What is called ancient religion today, they would have only called "law".^[12]

Many languages have words that can be translated as "religion", but they may use them in a very different way, and some have no word for religion at all. For example, the Sanskrit word dharma, sometimes translated as "religion", also means law. Throughout classical South Asia, the study of law consisted of concepts such as penance through piety and ceremonial as well as practical traditions. Medieval Japan at first had a similar union between "imperial law" and universal or "Buddha law", but these later became independent sources of power.^[13][14]

There is no precise equivalent of "religion" in Hebrew, and Judaism does not distinguish clearly between religious, national, racial, or ethnic identities.^[15] One of its central concepts is "halakha", sometimes translated as "law"", which guides religious practice and belief and many aspects of daily life.

The use of other terms, such as obedience to God or Islam are likewise grounded in particular histories and vocabularies.^[16]

Major denominations and religions of the world

Origins[link]

There are a number of theories regarding the origins of religion. Greg M. Epstein, a Humanist chaplain at Harvard University, states that "essentially all the world's major religions were founded on the principle that divine beings or forces can promise a level of justice in a supernatural realm that cannot be perceived in this natural one."^[17] According to anthropologists John Monaghan and Peter Just,

Many of the great world religions appear to have begun as revitalization movements of some sort, as the vision of a charismatic prophet fires the imaginations of people seeking a more comprehensive answer to their problems than they feel is provided by everyday beliefs. Charismatic individuals have emerged at many times and places in the world. It seems that the key to long-term success – and many movements come and go with little long-term effect – has relatively little to do with the prophets, who appear with surprising regularity, but more to do with the development of a group of supporters who are able to institutionalize the movement.^[18]

Religious movements[link]

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the academic practice of comparative religion divided religious belief into philosophically defined categories called "world religions." However, some recent scholarship has argued that not all types of religion are necessarily separated by mutually exclusive philosophies, and furthermore that the utility of ascribing a practice to a certain philosophy, or even calling a given practice religious, rather than cultural, political, or social in nature, is limited.^[19][20][21] The current state of psychological study about the nature of religiousness suggests that it is better to refer to religion as a largely invariant phenomenon that should be distinguished from cultural norms (i.e. "religions").^[22] The list of religious movements given here is therefore an attempt to summarize the most important regional and philosophical influences on local communities, but it is by no means a complete description of every religious community, nor does it explain the most important elements of individual religiousness.

The four largest religious groups by population, estimated to account for between 5 and 7 billion people, are Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism (with the relative numbers for Buddhism and Hinduism dependent on the extent of syncretism).

The patriarch Abraham (by József Molnár)

• Abrahamic religions are monotheistic religions which believe they descend from Abraham.

• Judaism is the oldest Abrahamic religion, originating in the people of ancient Israel and Judea. Judaism is based primarily on the Torah, a text which some Jews believe was handed down to the people of Israel through the prophet Moses. This along with the rest of the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud are the central texts of Judaism. The Jewish people were scattered after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. Today there are about 13 million Jews, about 40 per cent living in Israel and 40 per cent in the United States.^[26]
• Christianity is based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth (1st century) as presented in the New Testament. The Christian faith is essentially faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, and as Savior and Lord. Almost all Christians believe in the Trinity, which teaches the unity of Father, Son (Jesus Christ), and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead. Most Christians can describe their faith with the Nicene Creed. As the religion of Byzantine Empire in the first millennium and of Western Europe during the time of colonization, Christianity has been propagated throughout the world. The main divisions of Christianity are, according to the number of adherents:
  • Catholic Church, headed by the Pope in Rome, is a communion of the Western church and 22 Eastern Catholic churches.
  • Protestantism, separated from the Catholic Church in the 16th-century Reformation and split in many denominations,
  • Eastern Christianity which include Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy and the Church of the East.

There are other smaller groups, such as Jehovah's Witnesses and the Latter Day Saint movement, whose inclusion in Christianity is sometimes disputed.

Muslims praying around Kaaba, the most sacred site in Islam

• Islam refers to the religion taught by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, a major political and religious figure of the 7th century CE. Islam is the dominant religion of northern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. As with Christianity, there is no single orthodoxy in Islam but a multitude of traditions which are generally categorized as Sunni and Shia, although there are other minor groups as well. Wahhabi is the dominant Muslim schools of thought in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There are also several Islamic republics, including Iran, which is run by a Shia Supreme Leader.
• The Bahá'í Faith was founded in the 19th century in Iran and since then has spread worldwide. It teaches unity of all religious philosophies and accepts all of the prophets of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as additional prophets including its founder Bahá'u'lláh.
• Smaller regional Abrahamic groups, including Samaritanism (primarily in Israel and the West Bank), the Rastafari movement (primarily in Jamaica), and Druze (primarily in Syria and Lebanon).

Hindu statue of Rama in Kalaram Temple (India)

• Indian religions are practiced or were founded in the Indian subcontinent.
  • Hinduism is a synecdoche describing the similar philosophies of Vaishnavism, Shaivism, and related groups practiced or founded in the Indian subcontinent. Concepts most of them share in common include karma, caste, reincarnation, mantras, yantras, and darśana.^[27] Hinduism is the most ancient of still-active religions,^[28][29] with origins perhaps as far back as prehistoric times.^[30] Hinduism is not a monolithic religion but a religious category containing dozens of separate philosophies amalgamated as Sanātana Dharma, which is the name with whom Hinduism has been known throughout history by its followers.
  • Jainism, taught primarily by Parsva (9th century BCE) and Mahavira (6th century BCE), is an ancient Indian religion that prescribes a path of non-violence for all forms of living beings in this world. Jains are found mostly in India.
  • Buddhism was founded by Siddhattha Gotama in the 6th century BCE. Buddhists generally agree that Gotama aimed to help sentient beings end their suffering (dukkha) by understanding the true nature of phenomena, thereby escaping the cycle of suffering and rebirth (saṃsāra), that is, achieving Nirvana.
    • Theravada Buddhism, which is practiced mainly in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia alongside folk religion, shares some characteristics of Indian religions. It is based in a large collection of texts called the Pali Canon.
    • Under the heading of Mahayana (the "Great Vehicle") fall a multitude of doctrines which began their development in China and are still relevant in Vietnam, in Korea, in Japan, and to a lesser extent in Europe and the United States. Mahayana Buddhism includes such disparate teachings as Zen, Pure Land, and Soka Gakkai.
    • Vajrayana Buddhism, sometimes considered a form of Mahayana, was developed in Tibet and is still most prominent there and in surrounding regions.
    • Two notable new Buddhist sects are Hòa Hảo and the Dalit Buddhist movement, which were developed separately in the 20th century.
  • Sikhism is a monotheistic religion founded on the teachings of Guru Nanak and ten successive Sikh Gurus in 15th century Punjab. Sikhs are found mostly in India.
  • There are dozens of new religious movements within Indian religions and Hindu reform movements, such as Ayyavazhi, Swaminarayan Faith and Ananda Marga.

Zoroastrian Fire Temple

• Iranian religions are ancient religions whose roots predate the Islamization of Greater Iran. Nowadays these religions are practiced only by minorities.
  • Zoroastrianism is a religion and philosophy based on the teachings of prophet Zoroaster in the 6th century BC. The Zoroastrians worship the Creator Ahura Mazda. In Zoroastrianism good and evil have distinct sources, with evil trying to destroy the creation of Mazda, and good trying to sustain it.
  • Mandaeism is a monotheistic religion with a strongly dualistic worldview. Mandaeans are sometime labeled as the "Last Gnostics".
  • Kurdish religions include the traditional beliefs of the Yazidi, Alevi, and Ahl-e Haqq. Sometimes these are labeled Yazdânism.

Incense burner in China

• Folk religion is a term applied loosely and vaguely to less-organized local practices. It is also called paganism, shamanism, animism, ancestor worship, matriarchal religion, or totemism, although not all of these elements are necessarily present in local belief systems. The category of "folk religion" can generally include anything that is not part of an organization. Modern neopagan movement draws on folk religion for inspiration to varying degrees.
  • African traditional religion is a category including any type of religion practiced in Africa before the arrival of Islam and Christianity, such as Yoruba religion or San religion. There are many varieties of religions developed by Africans in the Americas derived from African beliefs, including Santería, Candomblé, Umbanda, Vodou, and Oyotunji.
  • Folk religions of the Americas include Aztec religion, Inca religion, Maya religion, and modern Catholic beliefs such as the Virgin of Guadalupe. Native American religion is practiced across the continent of North America.
  • Australian Aboriginal culture contains a mythology and sacred practices characteristic of folk religion.
  • Chinese folk religion, practiced by Chinese people around the world, is a primarily social practice including popular elements of Confucianism and Taoism, with some remnants of Mahayana Buddhism. Most Chinese do not identify as religious due to the strong Maoist influence on the country in recent history, but adherence to religious ceremonies remains common. New religious movements include Falun Gong and I-Kuan Tao.
  • Traditional Korean religion is a syncretic mixture of Mahayana Buddhism and Korean shamanism. Unlike Japanese Shinto, Korean shamanism was never codified and Buddhism was never made a social necessity. In some areas these traditions remain prevalent, but Korean-influenced Christianity is also influential in society and politics in South Korea.
  • Traditional Japanese religion is a mixture of Mahayana Buddhism and ancient indigenous practices which were codified as Shinto in the 19th century. Japanese people retain nominal attachment to both Buddhism and Shinto through social ceremonies, but irreligion is common.

A Modern-style Unitarian Universalist sanctuary

• A variety of new religious movements still practiced today have been founded in many other countries besides Japan and the United States, including:
  • Shinshūkyō is a general category for a wide variety of religious movements founded in Japan since the 19th century. These movements share almost nothing in common except the place of their founding. The largest religious movements centered in Japan include Soka Gakkai, Tenrikyo, and Seicho-No-Ie among hundreds of smaller groups.
  • Cao Đài is a syncretistic, monotheistic religion, established in Vietnam in 1926.
  • Unitarian Universalism is a religion characterized by support for a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning," and has no accepted creed or theology.
  • Scientology teaches that people are immortal beings who have forgotten their true nature. Its method of spiritual rehabilitation is a type of counseling known as auditing, in which practitioners aim to consciously re-experience painful or traumatic events in their past in order to free themselves of their limiting effects.
  • Eckankar is a religion with the purpose of making God an everyday reality in one's life.

Sociological classifications of religious movements suggest that within any given religious group, a community can resemble various types of structures, including "churches", "denominations", "sects", "cults", and "institutions".

The Hindu population of South Asia comprises about 2,000 castes.^[31] According to some Hindu literature, there are 330 million (including local and regional) Hindu deities.^[32]

Types of religion[link]

Some scholars classify religions as either universal religions that seek worldwide acceptance and actively look for new converts, or ethnic religions that are identified with a particular ethnic group and do not seek converts.^[33] Others reject the distinction, pointing out that all religious practices, whatever their philosophical origin, are ethnic because they come from a particular culture.^[34][35][36]

Issues in religion[link]

Interfaith cooperation[link]

Because religion continues to be recognized in Western thought as a universal impulse, many religious practitioners have aimed to band together in interfaith dialogue, cooperation, and religious peacebuilding. The first major dialogue was the Parliament of the World's Religions at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, which remains notable even today both in affirming "universal values" and recognition of the diversity of practices among different cultures. The 20th century has been especially fruitful in use of interfaith dialogue as a means of solving ethnic, political, or even religious conflict, with Christian-Jewish reconciliation representing a complete reverse in the attitudes of many Christian communities towards Jews.

Recent interfaith initiatives include "A Common Word", launched in 2007 and focused on bringing Muslim and Christian leaders together,^[37] the "C1 World Dialogue",^[38] the "Common Ground" initiative between Islam and Buddhism,^[39] and a United Nations sponsored "World Interfaith Harmony Week".^[40][41]

Secularism and irreligion[link]

The terms "atheist" (lack of belief in any gods) and "agnostic" (belief in the unknowability of the existence of gods), though specifically contrary to theistic (e.g. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim) religious teachings, do not by definition mean the opposite of "religious". There are religions (including Buddhism and Taoism), in fact, that classify some of their followers as agnostic, atheistic, or nontheistic. The true opposite of "religious" is the word "irreligious". Irreligion describes an absence of any religion; antireligion describes an active opposition or aversion toward religions in general.

Critics of religion consider it to be to be outdated, harmful to the individual (e.g. brainwashing of children, faith healing, circumcision), harmful to society (e.g. holy wars, terrorism, wasteful distribution of resources), to impede the progress of science, and to encourage immoral acts (e.g. blood sacrifice, discrimination against homosexuals and women). A major criticism of many religions is that they require beliefs that are irrational, unscientific, or unreasonable, because religious beliefs and traditions lack scientific or rational foundations.

As religion became a more personal matter in Western culture, discussions of society found a new focus on political and scientific meaning, and religious attitudes (dominantly Christian) were increasingly seen as irrelevant for the needs of the European world. On the political side, Ludwig Feuerbach recast Christian beliefs in light of humanism, paving the way for Karl Marx's famous characterization of religion as "the opium of the people". Meanwhile, in the scientific community, T.H. Huxley in 1869 coined the term "agnostic," a term—subsequently adopted by such figures as Robert Ingersoll—that, while directly conflicting with and novel to Christian tradition, is accepted and even embraced in some other religions. Later, Bertrand Russell told the world Why I Am Not a Christian, which influenced several later authors to discuss their breakaway from their own religious uprbringings from Islam to Hinduism.

Some modern-day critics, such as Bryan Caplan, hold that religion lacks utility in human society; they may regard religion as irrational.^[42] Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi has spoken out against undemocratic Islamic countries justifying "oppressive acts" in the name of Islam.^[43]

Related forms of thought[link]

Religion and superstition[link]

Superstition has been described as "the incorrect establishment of cause and effect" or a false conception of causation.^[44] Religion is more complex and includes social institutions and morality. But religions may include superstitions or make use of magical thinking. Adherents of one religion sometimes think of other religions as superstition.^[45][46] Some atheists, deists, and skeptics regard religious belief as superstition.

Greek and Roman pagans, who saw their relations with the gods in political and social terms, scorned the man who constantly trembled with fear at the thought of the gods (deisidaimonia), as a slave might fear a cruel and capricious master. The Romans called such fear of the gods superstitio.^[47] Early Christianity was outlawed as a superstitio Iudaica, a "Jewish superstition", by Domitian in the 80s AD. In AD 425, when Rome had become Christian, Theodosius II outlawed pagan traditions as superstitious.

The Roman Catholic Church considers superstition to be sinful in the sense that it denotes a lack of trust in the divine providence of God and, as such, is a violation of the first of the Ten Commandments. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that superstition "in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion" (para. #2110). "Superstition," it says, "is a deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand is to fall into superstition. Cf. Matthew 23:16-22" (para. #2111)

Myth[link]

The word myth has several meanings.

1. A traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon;
2. A person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence; or
3. A metaphor for the spiritual potentiality in the human being.^[48]

Urarina shaman, 1988

Ancient polytheistic religions, such as those of Greece, Rome, and Scandinavia, are usually categorized under the heading of mythology. Religions of pre-industrial peoples, or cultures in development, are similarly called "myths" in the anthropology of religion. The term "myth" can be used pejoratively by both religious and non-religious people. By defining another person's religious stories and beliefs as mythology, one implies that they are less real or true than one's own religious stories and beliefs. Joseph Campbell remarked, "Mythology is often thought of as other people's religions, and religion can be defined as mis-interpreted mythology."^[49]

In sociology, however, the term myth has a non-pejorative meaning. There, myth is defined as a story that is important for the group whether or not it is objectively or provably true. Examples include the death and resurrection of Jesus, which, to Christians, explains the means by which they are freed from sin and is also ostensibly a historical event. But from a mythological outlook, whether or not the event actually occurred is unimportant. Instead, the symbolism of the death of an old "life" and the start of a new "life" is what is most significant. Religious believers may or may not accept such symbolic interpretations.

Religion and health[link]

Mayo Clinic researchers examined the association between religious involvement and spirituality, and physical health, mental health, health-related quality of life, and other health outcomes. The authors reported that: "Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide."^[50]

Religion and violence[link]

The Crusades were a series of a military campaigns fought mainly between Christian Europe and Muslims. Shown here is a battle scene from the First Crusade. They were inspired at the jihad of the Islam civilization.

Charles Selengut characterizes the phrase "religion and violence" as "jarring", asserting that "religion is thought to be opposed to violence and a force for peace and reconciliation. He acknowledges, however, that "the history and scriptures of the world's religions tell stories of violence and war as they speak of peace and love."^[51]

Hector Avalos argues that, because religions claim divine favor for themselves, over and against other groups, this sense of righteousness leads to violence because conflicting claims to superiority, based on unverifiable appeals to God, cannot be adjudicated objectively.^[52]

Critics of religion Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins go further and argue that religions do tremendous harm to society by using violence to promote their goals, in ways that are endorsed and exploited by their leaders.^{[53][page needed][54][page needed]}

Regina Schwartz argues that all monotheistic religions are inherently violent because of an exclusivism that inevitably fosters violence against those that are considered outsiders.^[55] Lawrence Wechsler asserts that Schwartz isn't just arguing that Abrahamic religions have a violent legacy, but that the legacy is actually genocidal in nature.^[56]

Byron Bland asserts that one of the most prominent reasons for the "rise of the secular in Western thought" was the reaction against the religious violence of the 16th and 17th centuries. He asserts that "(t)he secular was a way of living with the religious differences that had produced so much horror. Under secularity, political entities have a warrant to make decisions independent from the need to enforce particular versions of religious orthodoxy. Indeed, they may run counter to certain strongly held beliefs if made in the interest of common welfare. Thus, one of the important goals of the secular is to limit violence."^[57]

Nonetheless, believers have used similar arguments when responding to atheists in these discussions, pointing to the widespread imprisonment and mass murder of individuals under atheist states in the twentieth century:^[58][59][60]

In response to such a line of argument, however, author Sam Harris writes:

"The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable."^[61]

Richard Dawkins has stated that Stalin's atrocities were influenced not by atheism but by dogmatic Marxism,^[62] and concludes that while Stalin and Mao happened to be atheists, they did not do their deeds in the name of atheism.^[63] On other occasions, Dawkins has replied to the argument that Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin were antireligious with the response that Hitler and Stalin also grew moustaches, in an effort to show the argument as fallacious.^[64] Instead, Dawkins argues in The God Delusion that "What matters is not whether Hitler and Stalin were atheists, but whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that it does."^[65] D'Souza responds that an individual need not explicitly invoke atheism in committing atrocities if it is already implied in his worldview, as is the case in Marxism.^[66]

Religion and the law[link]

This section requires expansion.

There are laws and statutes that make reference to religion.^[67] This has led scholar Winnifred Sullivan to claims that religious freedom is impossible.^[68] Others argue that the Western legal principle of separation of church and state tends to engender a new, more inclusive civil religion.^[69]

Religion and science[link]

Religious knowledge, according to religious practitioners, may be gained from religious leaders, sacred texts, scriptures, or personal revelation. Some religions view such knowledge as unlimited in scope and suitable to answer any question; others see religious knowledge as playing a more restricted role, often as a complement to knowledge gained through physical observation. Adherents to various religious faiths often maintain that religious knowledge obtained via sacred texts or revelation is absolute and infallible and thereby creates an accompanying religious cosmology, although the proof for such is often tautological and generally limited to the religious texts and revelations that form the foundation of their belief.

In contrast, the scientific method gains knowledge by testing hypotheses to develop theories through elucidation of facts or evaluation by experiments and thus only answers cosmological questions about the universe that can be observed and measured. It develops theories of the world which best fit physically observed evidence. All scientific knowledge is subject to later refinement, or even outright rejection, in the face of additional evidence. Scientific theories that have an overwhelming preponderance of favorable evidence are often treated as de facto verities in general parlance, such as the theories of general relativity and natural selection to explain respectively the mechanisms of gravity and evolution.

Religion as a Christian concept[link]

The social constructionists[link]

In recent years, some academic writers have described religion according to the theory of social constructionism, which considers how ideas and social phenomena develop in a social context. Among the main proponents of this theory of religion are Timothy Fitzgerald, Daniel Dubuisson and Talal Asad. The social constructionists argue that religion is a modern concept that developed from Christianity and was then applied inappropriately to non-Western cultures.

Dubuisson, a French anthropologist, says that the idea of religion has changed a lot over time and that one cannot fully understand its development by relying on etymology, which "tends to minimize or cancel out the role of history".^[70] "What the West and the history of religions in its wake have objectified under the name 'religion'", he says, " is ... something quite unique, which could be appropriate only to itself and its own history."^[70] He notes that St. Augustine's definition of religio differed from the way we used the modern word "religion".^[70] Dubuisson prefers the term "cosmographic formation" to religion. Dubuisson says that, with the emergence of religion as a category separate from culture and society, there arose religious studies. The initial purpose of religious studies was to demonstrate the superiority of the "living" or "universal" European world view to the "dead" or "ethnic" religions scattered throughout the rest of the world, expanding the teleological project of Schleiermacher and Tiele to a worldwide ideal religiousness.^[71] Due to shifting theological currents, this was eventually supplanted by a liberal-ecumenical interest in searching for Western-style universal truths in every cultural tradition.^[72] Clifford Geertz's definition of religion as a "cultural system" was proposed in the 20th century and continues to be widely accepted today.

According to Fitzgerald, the history of other cultures' interaction with the religious category is not about a universal constant,^{[clarification needed]} but rather concerns a particular idea that first developed in Europe under the influence of Christianity.^[73] Fitzgerald argues that from about the 4th century CE Western Europe and the rest of the world diverged. As Christianity became commonplace, the charismatic authority identified by Augustine, a quality we might today call "religiousness", exerted a commanding influence at the local level. This system persisted in the eastern Byzantine Empire following the East-West Schism, but Western Europe regulated unpredictable expressions of charisma through the Roman Catholic Church. As the Church lost its dominance during the Protestant Reformation and Christianity became closely tied to political structures, religion was recast as the basis of national sovereignty, and religious identity gradually became a less universal sense of spirituality and more divisive, locally defined, and tied to nationality.^[74] It was at this point that "religion" was dissociated with universal beliefs and moved closer to dogma in both meaning and practice. However there was not yet the idea of dogma as personal choice, only of established churches. With the Enlightenment religion lost its attachment to nationality, says Fitzgerald, but rather than becoming a universal social attitude, it now became a personal feeling or emotion.^[75] Friedrich Schleiermacher in the late 18th century defined religion as das schlechthinnige Abhängigkeitsgefühl, commonly translated as "a feeling of absolute dependence".^[76] His contemporary Hegel disagreed thoroughly, defining religion as "the Divine Spirit becoming conscious of Himself through the finite spirit."^[77]

Asad argues that before the word "religion" came into common usage, Christianity was a disciplina, a "rule" just like that of the Roman Empire. This idea can be found in the writings of St. Augustine (354–430). Christianity was then a power structure opposing and superseding human institutions, a literal Kingdom of Heaven. It was the discipline taught by one's family, school, church, and city authorities, rather than something calling one to self-discipline through symbols.^[78]

These ideas are developed by S. N. Balagangadhara. In the Age of Enlightenment, Balagangadhara says that the idea of Christianity as the purest expression of spirituality was supplanted by the concept of "religion" as a worldwide practice.^[79] This caused such ideas as religious freedom, a reexamination of classical philosophy as an alternative to Christian thought, and more radically Deism among intellectuals such as Voltaire. Much like Christianity, the idea of "religious freedom" was exported around the world as a civilizing technique, even to regions such as India that had never treated spirituality as a matter of political identity.^[19] In Japan, where Buddhism was still seen as a philosophy of natural law,^[80] the concept of "religion" and "religious freedom" as separate from other power structures was unnecessary until Christian missionaries demanded free access to conversion, and when Japanese Christians refused to engage in patriotic events.^[81]

Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism are one, a painting in the litang style portraying three men laughing by a river stream, 12th century, Song Dynasty

Other writers[link]

Similar views have been put forward by writers who are not social constructionists. George Lindbeck, a Lutheran and a postliberal theologian, says that religion does not refer to belief in "God" or a transcendent Absolute, but rather to "a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought ... it is similar to an idiom that makes possible the description of realities, the formulation of beliefs, and the experiencing of inner attitudes, feelings, and sentiments.”^[82] Nicholas de Lange, Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Cambridge University, says that "The comparative study of religions is an academic discipline which has been developed within Christian theology faculties, and it has a tendency to force widely differing phenomena into a kind of strait-jacket cut to a Christian pattern. The problem is not only that other 'religions' may have little or nothing to say about questions which are of burning importance for Christianity, but that they may not even see themselves as religions in precisely the same way in which Christianity sees itself as a religion."^[83]

Criticism[link]

Religious criticism has a long history, going back at least as far as the 5th century BCE in ancient Greece with Diagoras "the atheist" of Melos, and 1st century BCE in Rome with Titus Lucretius Carus's De Rerum Natura, and continuing to the present day with the advent of New Atheism, represented by such authors as Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Victor J. Stenger, and Christopher Hitchens.

Critics consider religion to be outdated, harmful to the individual (such as brainwashing of children, faith healing, circumcision), harmful to society (such as holy wars, terrorism, wasteful distribution of resources), to impede the progress of science, and to encourage immoral acts (such as blood sacrifice, discrimination against homosexuals and women).

See also[link]

	Religion portal
	Spirituality portal

References[link]

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Religion

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Religion

• Religion Statistics from UCB Libraries GovPubs
• Religion at the Open Directory Project
• Major Religions of the World Ranked by Number of Adherents by Adherents.com August 2005
• IACSR - International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion
• Studying Religion - Introduction to the methods and scholars of the academic study of religion
• A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right - Marx's original reference to religion as the opium of the people.
• The Complexity of Religion and the Definition of “Religion” in International Law Harvard Human Rights Journal article from the President and Fellows of Harvard College(2003)
• The Big Religion Chart detailed facts on major religions

Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens speaking in 2007
Born	Christopher Eric Hitchens (1949-04-13)13 April 1949 Portsmouth, England
Died	15 December 2011(2011-12-15) (aged 62) Houston, Texas
Occupation	Writer, journalist, public speaker
Nationality	English American
Citizenship	British and American
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Subjects	Politics, religion, history, biography, literature
Spouse(s)	Eleni Meleagrou (m. 1981-1989; divorced) Carol Blue (m. 1989-2011; his death)
Relative(s)	Peter Hitchens (brother)
Influences George Orwell,[1] Leszek Kolakowski, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Eliot, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, John Stuart Mill, Joseph Heller, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Edward Said, Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Llewellyn, Aldous Huxley, PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Richard Hofstadter, Paul Mark Scott, James Fenton, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Oscar Wilde, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Martin Amis, Kingsley Amis, Ian McEwan, Colm Tóibín, Bertrand Russell, Wilfred Owen, Israel Shahak,[2] Isaiah Berlin, Émile Zola, W. H. Auden, Susan Sontag[3]
Influenced Johann Hari,[4] Martin Amis,[5]
Signature

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American^[6][7] author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades.^[8] Hitchens, often referred to colloquially as "Hitch",^[9] was a columnist and literary critic for New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Mirror, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. He was an author of twelve books and five collections of essays. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, he was a prominent public intellectual, and his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, as well as for his excoriating critiques of various public figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Diana, Princess of Wales. Although he supported the Falklands War, his key split from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind", and his friend Ian McEwan describes him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.^[10][11]

A noted critic of religion and a self described "antitheist", he said that a person "could be an atheist and wish that belief in god were correct", but that "an antitheist, a term I'm trying to get into circulation, is someone who is relieved that there's no evidence for such an assertion."^[12] According to Hitchens, the concept of a god or a supreme being is a totalitarian belief that destroys individual freedom, and that free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of teaching ethics and defining human civilization. His 2007 book, God Is Not Great, sold over 500,000 copies.

On 15 December 2011, Hitchens died from pneumonia, a complication of his cancer, in the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. A popular figure, his death prompted tributes and eulogies from a range of public figures, including Tony Blair, Richard Dawkins, Martin Amis, James Fenton, Nick Clegg, Stephen Fry and Bill Maher.

Life and career[link]

Early life and education[link]

His mother, Yvonne Jean (née Hickman), and father, Eric Ernest Hitchens (1909–1987), met in Scotland while both were serving in the Royal Navy during World War II.^[13] Yvonne was at the time a "Wren" (a member of the Women's Royal Naval Service),^[14] and Eric a "purse-lipped and silent" commander, whose ship HMS Jamaica helped sink Nazi Germany's battleship Scharnhorst in the Battle of the North Cape.^[3] His father's naval career required the family to move a number of times from base to base throughout Britain and its dependencies, including in Malta, where Christopher's brother Peter was born in Sliema in 1951.

Hitchens's mother having argued that "if there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it,"^[15] he was sent off to Mount House School in Tavistock in Devon at the age of eight, followed by the independent Leys School in Cambridge, and then at Balliol College in Oxford, where he was tutored by Steven Lukes and read philosophy, politics, and economics. Hitchens was "bowled over" in his adolescence by Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley, Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, R. H. Tawney's critique on Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, and the works of George Orwell.^[14] In 1968, he took part in the TV quiz show University Challenge.^[16]

Hitchens has written of his homosexual experiences when in boarding school in his memoir, Hitch-22.^[17] These experiences continued in his college years, when he allegedly had relationships with two men who eventually became a part of the Thatcher government.^[18]

In the 1960s Hitchens joined the political left, drawn by his anger over the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons, racism, and "oligarchy", including that of "the unaccountable corporation". He would express affinity with the politically charged countercultural and protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s. However, he deplored the rife recreational drug use of the time, which he describes as hedonistic.^[19]

He joined the Labour Party in 1965, but along with the majority of the Labour students' organization was expelled in 1967, because of what Hitchens called "Prime Minister Harold Wilson's contemptible support for the war in Vietnam".^{[20][clarification needed]} Under the influence of Peter Sedgwick, who translated the writings of Russian revolutionary and Soviet dissident Victor Serge, Hitchens forged an ideological interest in Trotskyist and anti-Stalinist socialism.^[14] Shortly after he joined "a small but growing post-Trotskyist Luxemburgist sect".^[21]

Journalistic career (1970–1981)[link]

Hitchens began working as a correspondent for the magazine International Socialism,^[22] published by the International Socialists, the forerunners of today's British Socialist Workers Party. This group was broadly Trotskyist, but differed from more orthodox Trotskyist groups in its refusal to defend communist states as "workers' states". Their slogan was "Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism".

Hitchens left Oxford with a third class degree.^[23] In 1971 he went to work at the Times Higher Education Supplement where he served as a social science correspondent.^[24] Hitchens admitted that he hated the position, and was later fired; he recalled, "I sometimes think if I'd been any good at that job, I might still be doing it."^[25] He then went on to become a researcher for ITV's Weekend World.^[26] In 1973 he went on to work for the New Statesman, where he became friends with the authors Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, among others.^[26] At the New Statesman he acquired a reputation as a fierce left-winger, aggressively attacking targets such as Henry Kissinger, the Vietnam War, and the Roman Catholic Church.

In November 1973, Hitchens' mother committed suicide in Athens in a suicide pact with her lover, a former clergyman named Timothy Bryan.^[14] They overdosed on sleeping pills in adjoining hotel rooms, and Bryan slashed his wrists in the bathtub. Hitchens flew alone to Athens to recover his mother's body. Hitchens said he thought his mother was pressured into suicide by fear that her husband would learn of her infidelity, as their marriage had been strained and unhappy. Both her children were then independent adults. While in Greece, Hitchens reported on the constitutional crisis of the military junta. It became his first leading article for the New Statesman.^[27]

In 1977, unhappy at the New Statesman, Hitchens defected to the Daily Express where he became a foreign correspondent.^[26] He returned to the New Statesman in 1979 where he became foreign editor.^[26]

American career (1981–2011)[link]

After moving to the United States in 1981, Hitchens wrote for The Nation, where he penned vociferous critiques of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and American foreign policy in South and Central America.^{[28][29][30][31][32][33][34]} He became a contributing editor of Vanity Fair in 1992,^[35] writing ten columns a year. In 2002 Asteroid 57901 Hitchens was named after him.^[36] He left The Nation in 2002 after profoundly disagreeing with other contributors over the Iraq War. There is speculation that Hitchens was the inspiration for Tom Wolfe's character Peter Fallow in the 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities,^[30] but others — including Hitchens (or he indicated as such while alive) — believe it to be Spy Magazine's "Ironman Nightlife Decathlete" Anthony Haden-Guest.^[37][38] In 1987, his father died from cancer of the esophagus.^[39] He became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008.^[40]

Hitchens spent part of his early career in journalism as a foreign correspondent in Cyprus.^[41] Through his work there he met his first wife Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, with whom he had two children, Alexander and Sophia. His son, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, born in 1984, has worked as a researcher for London think tanks the Policy Exchange and the Centre for Social Cohesion. Hitchens continued writing essay-style correspondence pieces from a variety of locales, including Chad, Uganda^[42] and the Darfur region of Sudan.^[43] His work took him to over 60 countries.^[44] In 1991 he received a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.^[45]

Before Hitchens' political shift, the American author and polemicist Gore Vidal was apt to speak of Hitchens as his "Dauphin" or "heir".^[46][47][48] In 2010, Hitchens attacked Vidal in a Vanity Fair piece headlined "Vidal Loco," calling him a "crackpot" for his adoption of 9/11 conspiracy theories.^[49][50] Also, on the back of his book Hitch-22, among the praise from notable writers and figures, a Vidal quote endorsing Hitchens as his successor is crossed out with a red 'X' and a message saying "NO C.H." His strong advocacy of the war in Iraq had gained Hitchens a wider readership, and in September 2005 he was named one of the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines.^[51] An online poll ranked the 100 intellectuals, but the magazines noted that the rankings of Hitchens (5), Noam Chomsky (1), and Abdolkarim Soroush (15) were partly due to supporters publicising the vote.^[52]

In 2007 Hitchens' work for Vanity Fair won him the National Magazine Award in the category "Columns and Commentary".^[53] He was a finalist once more in the same category in 2008 for some of his columns in Slate but lost out to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone.^[54] He won the National Magazine Award for Columns about Cancer in 2011.^[55][56] Hitchens also served on the Advisory Board of Secular Coalition for America and offered advice to Coalition on the acceptance and inclusion of nontheism in American life.^[57]

Literature reviews[link]

Hitchens wrote a monthly essay on books in The Atlantic^[58] and contributed occasionally to other literary journals. One of his books, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, is a collection of such works, and Love, Poverty and War contains a section devoted to literary essays. In Why Orwell Matters, he defends Orwell's writings against modern critics as relevant today and progressive for his time. In the 2008 book Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left, many literary critiques are included of essays and other books of writers, such as David Horowitz and Edward Said.

During a three-hour interview by Book TV,^[3] he named authors who have had influence on his views, including Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, P. G. Wodehouse and Conor Cruise O'Brien.

Political views[link]

The San Francisco Chronicle referred to Hitchens as a "gadfly with gusto".^[60] In 2009, Hitchens was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the "25 most influential liberals in the U.S. media".^[61] However, the same article noted that he would "likely be aghast to find himself on this list", since it reduces his self-styled radicalism to mere liberalism. Hitchens' political perspective can be found in his wide ranging writings which include many of the political dialogues he published.

Socialism[link]

Hitchens became a socialist "largely [as] the outcome of a study of history, taking sides ... in the battles over industrialism and war and empire." In 2001, he told Rhys Southan of Reason magazine that he could no longer say "I am a socialist." Socialists, he claimed, had ceased to offer a positive alternative to the capitalist system. Capitalism had become the more revolutionary economic system, and he welcomed globalisation as "innovative and internationalist", but added, "I don't think that the contradictions, as we used to say, of the system, are by any means all resolved." He stated that he had a renewed interest in the freedom of the individual from the state, but that he still considered libertarianism "ahistorical" both on the world stage and in the work of creating a stable and functional society, adding that libertarians are "more worried about the over-mighty state than the unaccountable corporation" whereas "the present state of affairs ... combines the worst of bureaucracy with the worst of the insurance companies."^[62]

In 2006, in a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania debating the Jewish Tradition with Martin Amis, Hitchens commented on his political philosophy by stating, "I am no longer a socialist, but I still am a Marxist".^[63] In a June 2010 interview with The New York Times, he stated that "I still think like a Marxist in many ways. I think the materialist conception of history is valid. I consider myself a very conservative Marxist".^[64] In 2009, in an article for The Atlantic entitled "The Revenge of Karl Marx", Hitchens frames the late-2000s recession in terms of Marx's economic analysis and notes how much Marx admired the capitalist system he was calling for the end of, but says that Marx ultimately failed to grasp how revolutionary capitalist innovation was.^[65] Hitchens was an admirer of Che Guevara, commenting that "[Che's] death meant a lot to me and countless like me at the time, he was a role model, albeit an impossible one for us bourgeois romantics insofar as he went and did what revolutionaries were meant to do — fought and died for his beliefs."^[66] However, in an essay written in 1997, he distanced himself from Che, and referred to the mythos surrounding him as a "cult".^[67]

He continued to regard both Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky as great men,^[68][69] and the October Revolution as a necessary event in the modernization of Russia.^[21][30] In 2005, Hitchens praised Lenin's creation of "secular Russia" and his discrediting of the Russian Orthodox Church, describing it as "an absolute warren of backwardness and evil and superstition".^[21]

Iraq War and the war on terror[link]

In the years after the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie, Hitchens became increasingly critical of what he called "excuse making" on the left. At the same time, he was attracted to the foreign policy ideas of some on the Republican-right that promoted pro-liberalism intervention, especially the neoconservative group that included Paul Wolfowitz.^[70] Around this time, he befriended the Iraqi dissident and businessman Ahmed Chalabi.^[71] In 2004, Hitchens stated that neoconservative support for US intervention in Iraq convinced him that he was "on the same side as the neo-conservatives" when it came to contemporary foreign policy issues.^[72] Hitchens had also been known to refer to his association with "temporary neocon allies".^[73]

Following the September 11 attacks, Hitchens and Noam Chomsky debated the nature of radical Islam and the proper response to it. In October 2001, Hitchens wrote criticisms of Chomsky in The Nation.^[74][75] Chomsky responded^[76] and Hitchens issued a rebuttal to Chomsky^[77] to which Chomsky again responded.^[78] Approximately a year after the September 11 attacks and his exchanges with Chomsky, Hitchens left The Nation, claiming that its editors, readers and contributors considered John Ashcroft a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden,^[79] and that they were making excuses on behalf of Islamist terrorism; in the following months he wrote articles increasingly at odds with his colleagues.

Christopher Hitchens argued the case for the Iraq War in a 2003 collection of essays entitled A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq, and he held numerous public debates on the topic with George Galloway^[80] and Scott Ritter.^[81]

Criticism of George W. Bush[link]

Prior to September 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, Hitchens was highly critical of Bush's "non-interventionist" foreign policy. He also criticized Bush's support of intelligent design^[82] and capital punishment.^[83][83]

Although Hitchens defended Bush's post-September 11 foreign policy, he criticized the actions of U.S. troops in Abu Ghraib and Haditha, and the U.S. government's use of waterboarding, which he unhesitatingly deemed as torture after being invited by Vanity Fair to voluntarily undergo it.^[84][85] In January 2006, Hitchens joined with four other individuals and four organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Greenpeace, as plaintiffs in a lawsuit, ACLU v. NSA, challenging Bush's warrantless domestic spying program; the lawsuit was filed by the ACLU.^[86][87][88]

Presidential endorsements[link]

Hitchens would elaborate on his political views and ideological shift in a discussion with Eric Alterman on Bloggingheads.tv. In this discussion Hitchens revealed himself to be a supporter of Ralph Nader in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, who was disenchanted with the candidacy of both George W. Bush and Al Gore.^[89]

Hitchens speaking at a September 2000 third party protest at the headquarters of the Commission on Presidential Debates

Hitchens made a brief return to The Nation just before the 2004 U.S. presidential election and wrote that he was "slightly" for Bush; shortly afterwards, Slate polled its staff on their positions on the candidates and mistakenly printed Hitchens' vote as pro-John Kerry. Hitchens shifted his opinion to "neutral", saying: "It's absurd for liberals to talk as if Kristallnacht is impending with Bush, and it's unwise and indecent for Republicans to equate Kerry with capitulation. There's no one to whom he can surrender, is there? I think that the nature of the jihadist enemy will decide things in the end".^[90]

In the 2008 presidential election, Hitchens in an article for Slate stated, "I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that 'issue' I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity." He was critical of both main party candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain. Hitchens went on to support Obama, calling McCain "senile", and his choice of running mate Sarah Palin "absurd", calling Palin a "pathological liar" and a "national disgrace".^[91]

Blumenthal–Hitchens feud[link]

Hitchens and Carol Blue chose to submit an affidavit to the trial managers of the Republican Party in the trial of impeachment of Bill Clinton. In the affidavit, Blue and Hitchens swore that their then-friend, Sidney Blumenthal, had described Monica Lewinsky as a stalker. This allegation contradicted Blumenthal's own sworn deposition in the trial,^[92] and it resulted in a hostile exchange of opinion in the public sphere between Hitchens and Blumenthal. Following the publication of Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars, Hitchens wrote several pieces in which he accused Blumenthal of manipulating the facts.^[92][93]

Israel–Palestine[link]

Hitchens had said of himself, "I am an Anti-Zionist. I'm one of those people of Jewish descent who believes that Zionism would be a mistake even if there were no Palestinians."^[94]

A review of his autobiography Hitch-22 in the Jewish Daily Forward refers to Hitchens as "a prominent anti-Zionist" and says that he views Zionism "as an injustice against the Palestinians".^[95] Others have commented on his anti-Zionism as well^[96] suggesting that his memoir was "marred by the occasional eruption of [his] anti-Zionism".^[97] The Jewish Daily Forward quoted him saying of Israel's prospects for the future, "I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable."^[95]

In Slate, Hitchens pondered the notion that, instead of curing antisemitism through the creation of a Jewish state, "Zionism has only replaced and repositioned"^[98] it, saying: "there are three groups of 6 million Jews. The first 6 million live in what the Zionist movement used to call Palestine. The second 6 million live in the United States. The third 6 million are distributed mainly among Russia, France, Britain, and Argentina. Only the first group lives daily in range of missiles that can be (and are) launched by people who hate Jews." Hitchens argued that instead of supporting Zionism, Jews should help "secularize and reform their own societies", believing that unless one is religious, "what the hell are you doing in the greater Jerusalem area in the first place?" Indeed, Hitchens goes so far as to claim that the only justification for Zionism given by Jews is a religious one.^[99]

During a town hall function in Pennsylvania with Martin Amis, Hitchens stated that "one must not insult or degrade or humiliate people"^[100] and that he "would be opposed to this maltreatment of the Palestinians if it took place on a remote island with no geopolitical implications". Hitchens described Zionism as "an ethno-nationalist quasi-religious ideology" and stated his desire that if possible, he would "re-wind the tape [to] stop Hertzl from telling the initial demagogic lie (actually two lies) that a land without a people needs a people without a land".

He continued to say that Zionism "nonetheless has founded a sort of democratic state which isn't any worse in its practice than many others with equally dubious origins." He stated that settlement in order to achieve security for Israel is "doomed to fail in the worst possible way", and the cessation of this "appallingly racist and messianic delusion" would "confront the internal clerical and chauvinist forces which want to instate a theocracy for Jews". However, Hitchens contended that the "solution of withdrawal would not satisfy the jihadists" and wondered "What did they imagine would be the response of the followers of the Prophet [Muhammad]?" Hitchens bemoaned the transference into religious terrorism of Arab secularism as a means of democratization: "the most depressing and wretched spectacle of the past decade, for all those who care about democracy and secularism, has been the degeneration of Palestinian Arab nationalism into the theocratic and thanatocratic hell of Hamas and Islamic Jihad".^[98] He maintained that the Israel-Palestine conflict is a "trivial squabble" that has become "so dangerous to all of us" because of "the faith-based element."^[100]

Hitchens collaborated on this issue with prominent Palestinian advocate Edward Said, in 1988 publishing Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question.

Domestic policy[link]

Hitchens actively supported drug policy reform and called for the abolition of the "War on Drugs" which he described as an "authoritarian war" during a debate with William F. Buckley.^[19] He supported the legalization of cannabis for both medical and recreational purposes, citing it as a cure for glaucoma and as treatment for numerous side-effects induced by chemotherapy, including severe nausea, describing the prohibition of the drug as "sadistic".^[101] On the issue of abortion, Hitchens prioritized in affirming that he believed a fetus should be regarded as an "unborn child", but opposed the overturning of Roe v. Wade and supported the development of medical abortion techniques, and fundamentally believed in access to contraceptives and reproductive rights as "the only thing that is known to cure poverty", and in order to prevent surgical abortion altogether.^[102][103]

Other[link]

Other issues Hitchens wrote on the subjects of included his support for the reunification of Ireland,^[104][105] abolition of the British monarchy,^[106] and his condemnation of the war crimes of Slobodan Milošević^[107] and Franjo Tuđman^[108] in Yugoslavia, and the Bosnian War.^[109]

Critiques of specific individuals[link]

Hitchens was known for his scathing critiques of public figures. Three figures — Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and Mother Teresa — were the targets of three separate full length texts, No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, and The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. Hitchens also wrote book-length biographical essays about Thomas Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson: Author of America), George Orwell (Why Orwell Matters), and Thomas Paine (Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man": A Biography).

However, the majority of Hitchens's critiques took the form of short opinion pieces, some of the more notable being his critiques of: Jerry Falwell,^[110][111] George Galloway,^[112] Mel Gibson,^[113] Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama,^[114] Michael Moore,^[115] Daniel Pipes,^[116] Ronald Reagan,^[117] Jesse Helms,^[118] and Cindy Sheehan.^[21][119]When comedian Bob Hope died in 2003, Hitchens wrote an attack piece on him, calling Hope "a fool and nearly a clown, but he was never even remotely a comedian" and "Quick, then—what is your favorite Bob Hope gag? It wouldn't take you long if I challenged you on Milton Berle, or Woody Allen, or John Cleese, or even Lenny Bruce or Mort Sahl. By this time tomorrow, I bet you haven't come up with a real joke for which Hope could take credit." Critics however argued that Hitchens focused solely on Hope's declining years and ignored his heyday in the 1940s.^[120]

Views on religion[link]

Hitchens often spoke out against the Abrahamic religions, or what he called "the three great monotheisms" (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). He said: "The real axis of evil is Christianity, Judaism, and Islam".^{[cite this quote]} In his book, God Is Not Great, Hitchens expanded his criticism to include all religions, including those rarely criticized by Western secularists such as Hinduism and neo-paganism. His book had mixed reactions, from praise in The New York Times for his "logical flourishes and conundrums"^[121] to accusations of "intellectual and moral shabbiness" in the Financial Times.^[122] God Is Not Great was nominated for a National Book Award on 10 October 2007.^[123][124]

Hitchens contended that organized religion is "the main source of hatred in the world",^[125] "[v]iolent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children", and that accordingly it "ought to have a great deal on its conscience". In God Is Not Great, Hitchens contends that:

[A]bove all, we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment, which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man and woman [referencing Alexander Pope]. This Enlightenment will not need to depend, like its predecessors, on the heroic breakthroughs of a few gifted and exceptionally courageous people. It is within the compass of the average person. The study of literature and poetry, both for its own sake and for the eternal ethical questions with which it deals, can now easily depose the scrutiny of sacred texts that have been found to be corrupt and confected. The pursuit of unfettered scientific inquiry, and the availability of new findings to masses of people by electronic means, will revolutionize our concepts of research and development. Very importantly, the divorce between the sexual life and fear, and the sexual life and disease, and the sexual life and tyranny, can now at last be attempted, on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse. And all this and more is, for the first time in our history, within the reach if not the grasp of everyone.^[126]

Hitchens and John Lennox at an "Is God Great?" debate (Alabama, 2009)

His book rendered him one of the major advocates of the "New Atheism" movement, and he also was made an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society.^[127] Hitchens said he would accept an invitation from any religious leader who wished to debate with him. He also served on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America,^[128] a lobbying group for atheists and humanists in Washington, DC. In 2007, Hitchens began a series of written debates on the question "Is Christianity Good for the World?" with Christian theologian and pastor, Douglas Wilson, published in Christianity Today magazine.^[129] This exchange eventually became a book by the same title in 2008. During their book tour to promote the book, film producer Darren Doane sent a film crew to accompany them. Doane produced the film Collision: "Is Christianity GOOD for the World?" which was released on 27 October 2009.

On 26 November 2010 Hitchens appeared in Toronto, Canada at the Munk Debates, where he debated religion with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a convert to Roman Catholicism. Blair argued religion is a force for good, while Hitchens was against it. Preliminary results on the Munk website said 56 per cent of the votes backed the proposition (Hitchens' position) before hearing the debate, with 22 per cent against (Blair's position), and 21 per cent undecided, with the undecided voters leaning toward Hitchens, giving him a 68 per cent to 32 per cent victory over Blair, after the debate.^[130][131]

In February 2006, Hitchens helped organize a pro-Denmark rally outside the Danish Embassy in Washington, DC in response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.^[132]

Hitchens was accused by William A. Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Liberties of being particularly anti-Catholic. Hitchens responded "when religion is attacked in this country [...] the Catholic Church comes in for a little more than its fair share".^[133] Hitchens had also been accused of anti-Catholic bigotry by others, including Brent Bozell, Tom Piatak in The American Conservative, and UCLA Law Professor Stephen Bainbridge.^[134][135] In an interview with Radar in 2007, Hitchens said that if the Christian right's agenda were implemented in the United States "It wouldn't last very long and would, I hope, lead to civil war, which they will lose, but for which it would be a great pleasure to take part."^[136] When Joe Scarborough on 12 March 2004 asked Hitchens whether he was "consumed with hatred for conservative Catholics", Hitchens responded that he was not and that he just thinks that "all religious belief is sinister and infantile".^[137] Piatak claimed that "A straightforward description of all Hitchens's anti-Catholic outbursts would fill every page in this magazine", noting particularly Hitchens' assertion that U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts should not be confirmed because of his faith.^[135]