- The concept of totalitarianism is based on the notion of total surveillance and control.
- God sees and controls everything.
- Therefore, a theistic world is a totalitarian system.
When debunking the existence of a theistic God and the ill logic that sustains his existence, famous polemicist Christopher Hitchens developed his argument along four main points.
The first was about the leap one makes from being
a Deist i.e. accepting the existence of an underlying supreme force) to being
a Theist i.e. believing that God minds on a daily basis what you eat, what you drink, what people you sleep with and what body parts you mutilate in his name; what thoughts and impulses you have, what prayers you make, which He addresses or ignores at will, depending on what He demands of you, because He has a clear interest in what you do at all times.
Having established how ridiculous the Theist premise is, Hitchens moves on to liken organized religion to North Korea, asserting that
‘It is the most revolting, and utter, and absolute, and heartless tyranny the human species has ever evolved… but at least you can fucking die and leave North Korea.’
Having pointed out the eternal claim made by Theism on people’s lives, he moves on to a related third point: insult. Theism is an insult to intelligence. It vicariously assumes that we can know no truth and arrive to no meaningful conclusion about the world without help or command from above.
This leads to the fourth and most common-sensical point in Hitchens’ argumentation: development. Organized religion is our oldest, crudest and most dated model of the universe. It was of great use back in the day when our knowledge was limited and our explanations of the physical world ignorant, but now it’s antiquated and no longer relevant.
Yet, despite the evidence against it, despite the fact that the alternatives we’ve developed over the centuries are far more miraculous and captivating than our religious fables, some people choose to cling on to Theism/dogmatic religion, to the peril of the rest of us.
Beyond Ignorance
In pointing out the beauty of an informed and evolving world, Hitchens points out how much lovelier Einstein and Darwin are, alluding to the elegance and harmoniousness behind the natural world and the efforts we have made to attain these glorious insights. His words are a stark reminder that when choosing science over religion we’re not doing away with the miraculousness of life. We’re merely going a step further, entering something even more extraordinary and fantastic.
Sadly, many people are unable to free themselves from the manacles of religion. They’re born slaves, and as slaves they live and die, their shackles biting deep into their souls and minds, forever keeping them captive to a system of eternal servitude.
Meanwhile the rest of us conjure up a new reality where men and women embrace life according to the data and insights we’ve gradually amassed over the centuries, creating a fitter, lovelier, more engrossing, more ingenious world.
From your unmitigated Spin Doctor,
Eyes open, mind sharp.