Chris Hitchens on The Hour

The CBC's The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos had Chris Hitchens on to discuss God Is Not Great. The video is here. They had Richard Dawkins on the show a month ago but I think Hitchens did a better job overall of being provocative. They both have a low-key British-esque way of speaking that is rare in North America and if you don't pay attention to the words it'll put you to sleep, but once Hitchens gets going he's really quite amusing.

Another thing: The biggest argument against Hitchens might be that if he really believed there was no afterlife he wouldn't be drinking and smoking himself to an early grave. That said, my grandfather wasn't much better and he lasted well into his 80s.

Behe's Book in Chapters

I was at a Chapters store over the weekend, and to my dismay, they were heavily promoting Michael Behe's new book The Edge of Evolution. (PZ's been dismantling the book over at Pharyngula) There were dozens of copies on display not only in the New Releases section right when you enter the store, but also in the science section as well (spits). The good news is that absolutly no one was looking at them (except me, of course). The bad news is that no one was looking at any of the atheist books that were also being promoted, such as Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great, and only one other person was in the science section of the store at all. And he wasn't even really looking for books - he was scouting to find any youngish people in the section so he could ask them a) if they had a science educational background, b) if so, which university would they recommend for his cousin's son, and c) are they interesting in doing some part time technical work for his company.

I chatted a while, answered his questions ( a) yes, engineering and also did a little biology, b) listed some of the bigger name universities that I trusted, and c) no. ), then left without buying anything. I can't afford to spend $20-30 on a book right now and the discount science section is a single poorly-stocked shelf. One freakin' shelf. The religion and woo discount sections have a large bookshelf each, each with 4 or 5 shelves. That speaks volumes about the scientific literacy of our society.

One thing I did notice was that a large portion of the science books actually dealt with religion. Of course there's the Dawkins et al. stuff, but there were also many books about the biological basis for belief, many books from apologists trying to use science to prove God, and some books that really didn't talk about religion at all but just used God in the title to try to sell more copies. The intersection of science and religion really is a hot topic right now.

Excerpts of God is not Great

Via BigHeathenMike and OneGoodMove, here are excerpts of Chris Hitchens's new book God is not Great in Slate. I heard about this book before but never actually learned about what's in it. From a review on Amazon,

In the genre of athiest criticism of religion, Hitchens' book fills a niche. Where, for example, Bertrand Russel approaches religion with a philosophical mind, and Richard Dawkins approaches religion with a scientific mind, Hitchens approaches religion with a literary mind....And in this sense Hitchens has hit upon an angle to come at religion that is not usually trodden: popular religion, unlike great literature, resists the tragic, the ambiguous, and the particular. Thus if you love literature, and identify with frail humanity via literature, you will resist the easy platitudes of religion.

I'm not really one of a literary mind (I only grudgingly took the madatory English credits in high school), so getting the Dawkins book is higher on my priorities list, but it looks interesting.

One other thing, the subtitle of this book is How Religion Poisons Everything. Some have pointed out that this is unnecessarily sweeping, much like Dawkins's documentary The Root of All Evil. Maybe. It sure poisons many things. One thing is for certain: the cover of this book is poisoned. Seriously, gaudy orange background and tacky fonts? What were they thinking?