God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

The phrase “god-worship” is used throughout God Is Not Great. Hitchens uses this phrase to refer to any form of deity-worship or faith in a higher supernatural power. He particularly favors this phrase over more common synonyms when dismantling common Christian religious practices, intending the term as a rhetorical tool to portray religious belief as esoteric.

Hitchens takes issue with all religious belief, but is particularly concerned with extreme fundamentalist religious systems. Fundamentalism is a term usually applied to religious denominations that maintain strict rules about behavior and belief amongst their followers. Hitchens believes that fundamentalist sects, particularly in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, influence the religions as a whole toward oppressive, anti-scientific views. Examples include fundamentalist Muslims who have protested against depictions of pigs in children’s literature, Evangelical Christians who teach creationism as if it is scientifically valid, and Orthodox Jewish influence on Israeli political history.

Hitchens accuses modern society of leaning too heavily on the concept of multiculturalism, which he defines as unquestioning acceptance of all ways of life and beliefs within a single society. This topic comes up most often in relation to Islam. Hitchens believes that radical Muslims are a threat to modern secular society, and if non-Muslims readily agree to, for example, never produce images of Mohammed for fear of offending fundamentalist Muslims, then the most radical branches of the faith will continue to gain power.