God Is Not Great - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Theologian David Bentley Hart wrote in First Things that " God Is Not Great shows no sign whatsoever that he ever intended anything other than a rollicking burlesque, without so much as a pretense of logical order or scholarly rigor. His sporadic forays into philosophical argument suggest not only that he has sailed into unfamiliar waters, but also that he is simply not very interested in any of it." Moreover, Hart stated, "On matters of simple historical and textual fact... Hitchens’ book is so extraordinarily crowded with errors that one soon gives up counting them."

Critic Michael Kinsley, in the New York Times Book Review, lauded Hitchens' "... logical flourishes and conundrums, many of them entertaining to the nonbeliever." He concluded that "Hitchens has outfoxed the Hitchens watchers by writing a serious and deeply felt book, totally consistent with his beliefs of a lifetime."

Jason Cowley in the Financial Times called the book "elegant but derivative".

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, in the Claremont Review of Books, stated, "Every talented writer is entitled to be a bore on at least one subject, but where religion is concerned Christopher Hitchens abuses the privilege." Of God is not Great, Douthat wrote, "It might be argued that the brevity of the book and the amount of ground it covers should excuse the less-than-rigorous fashion in which it advances its more controversial arguments. But the demands of brevity should clarify and hone, whereas Hitchens manages to be both short and sloppy."

Mary Riddell wrote in The Observer that: "Hitchens's book will be manna to the converted, but his explicit aim is to win believers to his cause. I doubt that he will reclaim a single soul."

Bruce DeSilva of the Associated Press wrote,

This time he's outdone himself A spate of atheist screeds has arrived in the bookstores lately, but Hitchens' may be the best since Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian (1927), laying out the essential arguments with force and precision He makes his case in the elegant yet biting prose we have come to expect from him Hitchens is the reincarnation of H. L. Mencken, the penultimate social critic of the first half of the 20th century, who used words like gunshots and considered most Americans 'boobs'.

DeSilva goes on to opine that "Hitchens has nothing new to say, although it must be acknowledged that he says it exceptionally well."

Responding to Hitchens's claim that "all attempts to reconcile faith with science and reason are consigned to failure and ridicule", Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution (with which Hitchens had an official affiliation) quotes a paleontologist that Hitchens himself commended—Stephen Jay Gould. Referencing a number of scientists with religious faith, Gould wrote, "Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs—and equally compatible with atheism." For his part, Ross Douthat remarked that "Hitchens's argument proceeds principally by anecdote, and at his best he is as convincing as that particular style allows, which is to say not terribly."

In a lengthy critique of the book's treatment of the Bible and Gospels, William J. Hamblin, a professor of history at Brigham Young University, concluded:

It is quite clear that Hitchens's understanding of biblical studies is flawed at best. He consistently misrepresents what the Bible has to say, fails to contextualize biblical narratives in their original historical settings, implies unanimity among biblical scholars on quite controversial positions, and fails to provide any evidence for alternative scholarly positions, or even to acknowledge that such positions exist at all.... Hitchens's understanding of the Bible is at the level of a confused undergraduate. His musings on such matters should not be taken seriously, and should certainly not be seen as reasonable grounds for rejecting belief in God.

Daniel C. Peterson, a professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at BYU, attacked the accuracy of Hitchens' claims in a lengthy essay, concluding, "The book...is crammed to the bursting point with errors, and the striking thing about this is that the errors are always, always, in Hitchens's favor.... There is not a disputed fact or a fact that struck me as questionable that I've checked in Hitchens's book where it has not turned out that he's wrong. Every single time."

The religious critic Frank Brennan described the book as an affirmation of Hitchens' Marxist origins in contrast to his labeling by some critics as a neoconservative:

For all of the claims that Christopher Hitchens has abandoned his earlier Leftist proclivities, there is at least one point at which he remains an orthodox Marxist. Some would argue that his book is a straightforward reiteration of Marx’s own critique of religion, albeit in a more bombastic fashion.

Reviewing the book in the online periodical Taki's Magazine, Tom Piatek wrote, "Although Hitchens’ book is lively and well written, it is fatally marred by its many rhetorical evasions and falsehoods."