I’m getting tired of hearing from Christopher Hitchens in the media, and his fervid and all-too-familiar religion-bashing. I happen to like the guy, and also very much appreciate such diverse opinions–he is brilliant, after all, and has some valid points, which is why I bother to read him–-but overall he goes way too far and keeps grinding the same ax ad nauseum.

1. What About The Spiritual Life?
I’m getting tired of hearing
from Christopher Hitchens in
the media, and his fervid and
all-too-familiar religion-
bashing. I happen to like the
guy, and also very much
appreciate such diverse
opinions–he is brilliant, after
all, and has some valid points,
which is why I bother to read
him–-but overall he goes way
too far and keeps grinding the
same ax ad nauseum.

2. God Is Not Great is a fine book title but a weak thesis. Rest assured that I myself
have plenty of similar criticism about religions, including my own; but doesn’t he
know that there are hundreds of millions (and have been billions) of very spiritual
people, as well as intensely religious ones, who need little or no deity in order to
pursue a spiritual path and live and embody a beautiful, wise and loving spiritual
life, both within and outside the formal traditional religious denominations?
Moreover, there are plenty of theists who have a much more subtle and
sophisticated understanding of the divine, of prayer, and of reality than that which
he lumps all deists together with.
There is a difference that can be made between religion (organized, for the most
part) and spirituality itself, which is the heart of it all; and moreover, spirituality has
no Crusades, Inquisitions, book burnings, isms and schisms, and so forth. Hitchens,
Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and their skeptical post-modern atheist ilk seem far
too extreme to convert true believers or even to sway the moderate middle; their
dogmatic arguments are more often than not one-sided monologues lacking in
balance. Although their points of view and critical analyses and reflections are
certainly not without merit, and deserving of serious consideration, one might also
notice that scientific-minded ultra-rationalists are not without their
presuppositions, blind spots, superstitions and beliefs, not unlike those very people
of faith whom they roundly criticize.

3. Hitchens himself seems to evince little or no expertise on the subject of Eastern
spirituality and practice, although he did live in Rashneeshвs ashram for a little while–in
order to write about it–an extreme example of a place to study in India, if there ever was
one. I have read things about the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere from Hitchens that I
personally know to be inaccurate.
I have been reading the new biography, Einstein by Walter Isaacson, and thinking about
the need for us to reconcile science and religion in our postmodern technological
information age. Einstein was a deeply spiritual man whose personal beliefs went far
beyond any old fashioned patriarchal creator-God, and was one who evinced genuine
mystical insight and spent his last decades searching for a true Unified Field Theory. He
believed that “Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a
cosmic religion of the future. It transcends a personal God, avoids dogma and theology; it
covers both the natural and the spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from
the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity.” The Dalai Lama of
Tibet himself is involved regularly in scientific research, especially regarding neuroscience
and the effects of meditation, and has said repeatedly that if science proves certain
beliefs of Buddhism as erroneous Buddhism will have to adapt to that new knowledge.
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