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Meaning
This reads as a sharply skeptical argument that religion survives because human beings remain anxious, vulnerable, and unfinished. It can be taken to mean that belief is less evidence of transcendence than of our fear of mortality and darkness, literal and otherwise. In a debate about faith, it lands as a provocation that treats religion as a human response to dread.
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Original Language & Translation
Originally said in English.
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About Christopher Hitchens
British and American author and journalist
Christopher Eric Hitchens was a British and American author and journalist. He was a public intellectual of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, known for his work as a columnist and speaker, and for his role among the so-called “Four Horsemen” of New Atheism. He became widely noticed for sharp, argumentative writing and for the principle often linked to him that claims without evidence need not be accepted. That idea, sometimes called Hitchens’s razor, is cited in philosophy and law, and it reflects the evidential style associated with his work.
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Books by Christopher Hitchens
God Is Not Great
2007
Thomas Jefferson
2005
Is Christianity good for the world?
2008
The Missionary Position
1995
Thomas Paine's Rights of man
2006