God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything book club questions

1. 1.

   Hitchens argues that religion has been on balance harmful to humanity. Is that a falsifiable claim, and how would you assess the evidence for and against it?

2. 2.

   He distinguishes his own secular humanism — with its genuine appreciation of art, ceremony, and cultural inheritance — from simple materialism. Does that distinction hold up?

3. 3.

   The book focuses heavily on Islam in a post-9/11 context. Does that context affect the fairness of the analysis?

4. 4.

   Hitchens says morality does not require religion. Do you think secular humanism provides an adequate foundation for moral commitment, or does it depend on inherited religious capital?

5. 5.

   His argument that religion harms children through guilt and shame is among his most personal. Do you think that harm is inherent in religious education or only in certain forms of it?

6. 6.

   Hitchens was a polemicist, not an academic philosopher. Does the rhetorical form serve or undermine his argument?

7. 7.

   The book groups together very different traditions — Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism — under a single indictment. Is that lumping intellectually defensible?

8. 8.

   He argues that the best in religious culture — the music, the architecture, the literature — was created despite religion rather than because of it. Is that a sustainable claim?

9. 9.

   God Is Not Great was enormously popular. What cultural moment made a book with this argument a bestseller in 2007?

10. 10.

    Hitchens spent the last years of his life dying of esophageal cancer and writing about the experience. Did that context change how the religious community responded to him, or vice versa?

11. 11.

    What does Hitchens' atheism share with, and how does it differ from, the atheism of Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett?

How to run the discussion

• Pick six to eight, not all of them. An hour of real discussion covers fewer questions than anyone expects, and racing the list is what makes a book club feel like homework.
• Open with what people noticed, not what they concluded. Asking for a verdict first hardens opinions before anyone has heard each other.
• Let the disagreement run. The questions below that split a room are the ones worth the time; the ones everyone answers the same way can be skipped.
• Ask the quiet person a specific question. A direct, narrow question is far easier to answer than an open invitation to contribute.