Christopher Hitchens on the Unalterable Celestial Dictatorship of God

I’m no fan of Christopher Hitchens. Actually, I find him an almost entirely disagreeable figure. But I have to give him points for creativity. Interviewed last week (MP3 - iTunes - Feed), Hitchens, the author of the recent bestseller God Is Not Great, gave his spiel on atheism and offered a unique argument against God. Not against God’s existence. But against God itself.

For Hitchens, if there existed a God who answered prayers and intervened in human affairs, “we would be living under an unalterable celestial dictatorship that could read our thoughts while we were asleep and convict us of thought crime and pursue us after we after are dead, and in the name of which priesthoods and other oligarchies and hierarchies would be set up to enforce God’s law.” Essentially, we’d be living in a supernatural Orwellian world.

In a quick couple sentences, the theoretical virtues of an all-knowing God get turned into a vice. It’s a creative and provocative remark, just the kind that sells books in America. Many, many books, in fact.

This bit appears about 41 minutes into his interview. During the rest of the conversation, Hitchens continues justifying his support for the Iraq war and offers his thoughts on who killed Benazir Bhutto. If you want more Hitchens, and if you want to hear Hitchens behaving particularly badly, you can always listen to this other interview from last year.

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