God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

 “I simply knew, almost as if I had privileged access to a higher authority, that my teacher had managed to get everything wrong in just two sentences.”

In this passage, Hitchens is referring to his first taste of skepticism as a young boy, after his teacher told him that God created green grass to be restful to human eyes. He uses the ironic, quasi-religious reference to having “privileged access to a higher authority” to highlight the gravity of the moment, and to strengthen his argument that atheism is no less natural a belief system than religion.

“Religion poisons everything.”

This phrase is used repeatedly throughout the book, as well as being its subtitle, and serves as Hitchens’s thesis statement. With this statement, Hitchens hopes to convey that religion has corrupted every aspect of human life, from a societal and cultural level down to the most intimate aspects of an individual’s life.

“In this respect, religion is not unlike racism.”

Like racism, Hitchens believes that fundamentalism within one religion inspires the same in other faiths, especially when the faithful feel they are competing against each other. Like race, religion is a human construct that inspires tribal loyalty and prejudice, and divides human populations unnecessarily.