The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith

"He has bricked himself up high in his atheist tower, with silts instead of windows from which to shoot arrows at the faithful, and he would find it rather hard to climb down out of it. But I have the more modest hope that he might one day arrive at some sort of acceptance that belief in God is not necessarily a character fault-and that religion does not poison everything. Beyond that, I can only say that those who choose to argue in prose, even if it is very good prose, are unlikely to be receptive to a case that is most effectively couched in poetry."So wrote English intellectual and journalist Peter Hitchens of his (late) big brother Christopher, who passed away last year. Though brothers, the two men are nothing short of polar opposites.Christopher was a devout atheist. Peter is a devout Christian of the traditional Anglican persuasion. Politically, Christopher developed neoconservative views on foreign policy issues like the War in Iraq, being a strong supporter of the conflict. Politically, Peter is a paleoconservative--perhaps the American equivalent of a Ron Paul or a Pat Buchanan--who holds strong anti-war views on Iraq and who is a fervent critic of American and English foreign policy in the region. Christopher has written a famous book criticizing belief in God and religion. Peter, on the other hand, has written a book defending belief in God and faith.They are different men in many ways. Beyond the perpetually sensitive issues of religion and politics, Peter admits that they've never gotten along as children either--eventually growing up as two men divided, siblings but living separate lives. Interestingly, at one point in their lives they had more in common on the theological level.Peter Hitchens begins "The Rage Against God"--which, in addition to being an eloquent apologetic of faith, also constitutes his spiritual memoir--with a significant event in his life wherein, as a fifteen year-old boy in boarding school, he set fire to his Bible on a playing field in Cambridge. "It would be many years before I would feel a slight shiver of unease about my act of desecration," Peter reflects. "Did I then have any idea of the forces I was trifling with?"No. He didn't.Peter spent much of his adolescence as an angry atheist embracing socialistic, Trotskyist politics and rejecting the old Anglican traditions of what used to be English Christianity. Yet, he writes poignantly about the Old England of years passed that has been slowly eradicating in light of growing secularism, materialism, and a relativismthat sees no higher Truth to life and reality.At one point he quotes a powerful passage from the John Buchan story "Fullcircle," wherein a character living in a seventeenth-century manor muses mystically about the spiritual and aesthetical prowess that used to make up Old England:"In this kind of house you have the mystery of the elder England. What was Raleigh's phrase? `High thoughts and divine contemplations.' The people who built this sort of thing lived closer to another world, and thought bravely of death. It doesn't matter who they were - Crusaders or Elizabethans or Puritans - they all had poetry in them and the heroic and a great unworldliness. They had marvelous spirits, and plenty of joys and triumphs; but they also had their hours of black gloom. Their lives were like our weather - storm and sun. One thing they never feared - death. He walked too near them all their days to be a bogey."The passage is very artful and poetic, resonating into a deeper spiritual sense of meaning, one that embraces the inevitable and eternal reality of death. Peter has said that in order for his brother Christopher-and likeminded atheists-to accept people of faith they need to step outside of their comfort zone, outside of prose, and enter into the realm of poetry - a realm that requires deeper comprehension of mystery and beauty, transcending the dry rationalism that encompasses much of modern atheism. Here he was alluding to an ancient truth, one recognized by early Greek philosophers like Socrates as well as twentieth century theologians like Hans Urs von Balthasar, that true beauty, true poetry, true art, has a spiritual dimension: it is divinely inspired, not manmade. For true art has the spiritual power to uplift a man's soul beyond his material reality, beyond what he is comfortable with.Art played a powerful role in Peter's own return to the faith: in his spiritual reversion. He once had a meaningful experience with Rogier van der Weyden's fifteenth century polyptych, "The Last Judgment." Interestingly, being in a museum and staring at van der Weyden's painting, which depicts the damned and the saved, Peter felt mortal fear. "I had absolutely no doubt that I was among the damned, if there were any damned...No doubt I should be ashamed to confess that fear played a part in my return to religion. I could easily make up some other, more creditable story. But I should be even more ashamed to pretend that fear did not. I have felt proper fear, not very often but enough to know that it is an important gift that helps us to think clearly at moments of danger."Peter Hitchens has a history of experiencing close, life-threatening encounters that spell danger given his work as a foreign correspondent, a job that has led him from some of the most dangerous, war-infected regions of Africa to that towering milieu of intimidation, the Soviet Union. For many years, as a journalist, he worked as a correspondent in the Soviet Union. Here he writes about the power of feeling fear and the possibility of death poignantly."I have felt it when Soviet soldiers fired on a crowd rather near me, and so I lay flat on my back in the filthy snow, quite untroubled by my ridiculous position because I had concluded, wisely, that being wounded would be much worse than being embarrassed. But the most important time [when he felt fear] was when I stood in front of Rogier van der Weyden's great altarpiece and trembled for the things of which my conscience was afraid (and is afraid). Fear is good for us and helps us to escape from great dangers. Those who do not feel it are in permanent peril because they cannot see the risks that lie at their feet."It was spending many years in the Soviet Union, and internalizing the dark and dry reality of that impoverished society, which led Peter to the realization of how detrimental ideological atheism can be. He eventually abandoned the Trotskyist socialist-atheist views of his youth, after seeing the horror that Trotsky's and Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution led to for human life in Russian society, after witnessing the misery firsthand.One of the strongest aspects of Hitchens' book is his vivid depictions of Soviet society, a tragedy he personally witnessed on a daily basis - though, as a westerner, his own accommodations in Moscow were much more comfortable than those of Russian citizens. One powerful aspect that Hitchens' captures, among others, is how many in Soviet society had succumbed to alcohol-as a refuge from the emptiness that the atheistic life led to (deprived of any deeper, inner and spiritual realities). Hitchens explains:"While tourists and distinguished visitors were taken to the ballet, ordinary male Muscovites (women wouldn't have dared go there) patronized beer-bars so horrible that I could only wonder at the home life of those who used them. You took your own glass-usually a rinsed-out pickle jar-and a handful of brass coins worth a few pennies, along with some dried fish wrapped in old newspaper. You fed your coins into a vending machine, and pale, acid beer dribbled intermittently out of a slimy pipe into your jar. You then went to a high table, slurped your beer (which tasted roughly the way old locomotives smell), and crunched your fish, spitting the bones onto the floor. There was no conversation."Hitchens continues to describe the gloomy misery, the depressing reality of the society:"I visited one of the special police stations that handled the drunks, and they showed me a dismal museum of the things Russians drank when they could not get vodka. Cheap Soviet after-shave, apparently, was bearable and intoxicating if drunk through cotton waste. A sandwich of black bread and toothpaste was mildly alcoholic if nothing else could be found. A popular and bitter jest told the story of a conversation in a drinker's home after the state announced a rise in the price of vodka. `Daddy,' asks the child with hope in its heart, `will this mean you will drink less?' `No,' replies the head of the household, `It means that you will eat less.'"In realizing the brutality that much of Soviet society was encapsulated with, including the ideological components that led to the ugliness, Peter Hitchens makes sure to eradicate the myths about Soviet society that "New Atheists"-like his brother-have promulgated. "My brother Christopher suggests that Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union was in fact a religious state. The specifically anti-religious character of the Soviet system under Stalin makes such a claim nonsensical."The anti-religious character of Stalin's Soviet Union is, of course, nowadays well known. Peter Hitchens also stresses the brutal anti-religiosity that started the Soviet Union, emphasizing that during Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution not only were Orthodox church's looted (a state-sponsored campaign) but, tragically and disgustingly, in 1922 alone "2,691 priests, 1,962 monks, and 3,447 nuns were killed."Hitchens reflects on the words of William Henry Chamberlin, who for twelve years was a correspondent in Moscow, witnessing the results of the Bolshevik Revolution. Chamberlin wrote of the deeper reality he witnessed: "There have been many instances in history when one religion cruelly persecuted all others; but in Russia the world is witnessing the first effort to destroy completely any belief in supernatural interpretation of life."Peter Hitchens is an intellectual for Americans, especially, to discover. While most Americans are well-acquainted with his older brother, Peter has a lesser following on this side of the Atlantic than over in the U.K. Yet, he represents a Christian that receives rare attention in our modern media portrayal of Christianity. In America, our press loves to reduce mainstream Christianity to the neoconservative, Christian Right community that supports saving unborn children from abortion while openly supporting the killing of Iraqi children through war in the name of "democracy" and "freedom." Peter Hitchens, however, as a paleoconservative, a form of conservatism much kinder than the hawkish neoconservatism dominating much of American foreign policy, knows that true Christianity and unjust war constitute polar opposites that have nothing in common and should have nothing to do with one another.Christopher Hitchens, while seeing atheism as a benevolent force over religion, has supported such inhumane campaigns as the Iraq War-which have reportedly been responsible for the deaths of over a million innocent civilians, countless number of women and children slaughtered in the process. Peter Hitchens has opposed such senseless cruelties, giving greater credibility to his words. However, Peter is not naïve to the fact that many so-called "Christians" have supported such violent conflicts while they completely defeat the purpose of Christianity and Christ's teachings. Peter sees war, and many of the churches who supported wars throughout the twentieth century, as the biggest detriment to western Christianity - as the biggest reason that many, especially disenchanted youth, have abandoned Christianity in Europe and America. Hitchens argues that the World War I and II did much to destroy Christianity in his homeland.""Civilized countries become less civilized when they go to war...I would add that, by all but destroying British Christianity, these wars may come to destroy the spirit of the country. Those who fought so hard to defend Britain against its material enemies did so at a terrible spiritual cost. The memory of the great slaughter of 1914-18 was carried back into their daily lives by millions who had set out from quiet homes as gentle, innocent, and kind and returned cynical, brutalized, and used to cruelty."At times, Hitchens's poignant words reflect the musings of the great Christian Renaissance thinker Erasmus, who, in memory of a student that lost his life in war, wrote a short but powerful poem, explaining:"Tell me, what had you to do with Mars, the stupidest of all the poet's gods, you who were consecrated to the Muses, nay to Christ? Your youth, your beauty, your gentle nature, your honest mind -- what had they to do with the flourishing of the trumpets, the bombards, the swords?"Peter Hitchens is an important voice for the American public to get acquainted with for he constitutes that rare breed of an intellectual who not only criticizes the "New Atheists" for their erroneous positions about faith but also has no sympathy for those political leaders who speak in the name of Christianity while completely abusing and neglecting Christian principles in their policies. He appropriately calls them leaders who "abuse Christian piety for non-Christian ends." Hitchens especially sees the damage that such leaders have done to the Christian faith and its churches."We might cite the Presidency of George W. Bush," Hitchens explains,"which combined noisy religiosity with ruthlessness...Something similar could be said about Britain's Prime Minister Anthony Blair, who was ostentatiously pious while conniving with his intelligence services to manufacture pretexts for aggressive war. Such governments are repellent. The conscription to God into unjust wars does grave harm to the faith. But these leaders were - as they found out - limited in their actions by the very Christianity they exploited. Both Mr. Blair's New Labour Party and George W. Bush's Republicans were gravely injured by their blasphemous attempt to enlist heaven in aggressive war. Mr. Bush also undoubtedly hurt Christianity in America by allying it to his war and his administration. The ultimate effects of this error on the part of many church leaders may take years to emerge, just as the European churches' support for the First World War took decades to devastate those churches. But among younger people especially, I believe great damage has been done."Let's tip our hats to that rare breed of western intellectual, like Peter Hitchens, who tries to live up to his Christian principles, instead of misusing or exploiting them for political gain--like so many influential figures, regrettably, have done on issues of war and peace.

I found “The Rage Against God” to be an engaging argument against the errors of atheism. After all, Peter Hitchens is a talented journalist and has a sophisticated command of the English language, as well as Western culture. I did not, however, find the book to make any truly persuasive case against atheism. Although I am a devout theist, myself, my conversion from agnosticism to theism was fueled principally by my personal and ongoing encounters with the Divine. I do not, for example, think that Hitchens’ book would at all effectively overrule the arguments for agnosticism as found in a book I’m currently reading, “Divinity of Doubt”, by Vincent Bugliosi -- a famous attorney and prosecutor for some widely publicized trials such as that of O.J. Simpson.I will quote from Hitchens’ book (page 115): “Western Christianity has undergone several separate reverses and defeats in the modern era. It was permanently divided by the Reformation; it was weakened by the enlightenment and the bold claims of modern science; it did itself huge damage during modern wars by allowing itself to be recruited to opposing sides….”I don’t doubt the validity of Hitchens’ claims, but I fear that Christianity labors under the weight of more serious and insurmountable weaknesses. I refer mainly to that religion’s reliance upon theological convictions that are repeatedly proven to be extraordinarily dubious from the perspective of modern scientific and scholarly research. First of all, it needs to be understood that Christianity was largely founded by the Apostle Paul. And Paul’s theology relies heavily on his conviction that Adam and Eve were the first human beings, and that it was through their disobedience to God that sin entered the world. Once the world of humanity was tarnished by being tainted with the sins of Adam and Eve, the solution to this tragedy was to have Jesus in perfect righteousness die for human sins, thereby making reconciliation between God and human beings possible.The problem with this theology, apart from the absurdity of having guilt passed to offspring who played no role in generating the guilt, is the fact that Adam and Eve cannot credibly be regarded as ever having lived as the first two human beings. The evidence for biological evolution overwhelmingly vitiates the claim that human beings were created in one day some six to ten thousand years ago. In addition to the difficulties faced in trying to support Paul’s theology, one is also confronted with the awesome amount of scrutiny of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life that contain fairly numerous inconsistencies, if not outright contradictions.In addition to such woes that beset modern Christianity, one also can see, with proper perspicacious observation, that Paul’s arguments in favor of faith being the means through which salvation is achieved open wide the door to the conviction that good works are no longer required for salvation, which, in turn, means that one is fairly much free to live (including living in sexual licentiousness) how one desires, just so long as one ACCEPTS Jesus as Savior. Onto those dilemmas is added yet the set of contradictory claims by Paul, namely that one is responsible for one’s salvation or lack thereof, but that at the same time, God is the absolute sovereign Ruler over all reality, and that He predestines exactly who will be saved and who will be damned. Entire books could be written about the unthinkable horrors of a god who would produce a creation of robots, most of which he would condemn to eternal (yes, UNCEASING) torments. If predestination held true, our Creator would be accused of being such an indescribably cruel sadist.In short, Peter Hitchens’ mention of modern weaknesses in Christianity scratch only the surface of deep and pervasive logical problems inherent in some of the founding principles of that religion. Having said all this, let me mention that I regard Christianity as, generally, the greatest religion (NOT the ONE TRUE religion – with all others being false) humanity has yet been privileged to witness. Nevertheless, religion needs to learn from the growth of human knowledge, including scientific and scholarly knowledge. Religion is NOT transferred directly from the Creator God to humanity in a perfected state. Religions get their impetus from the inspiration of the Divine, but the religions are still human achievements, limited by human understanding of reality, and bound to contain any number of errors, false teachings, and deficiencies. Religion ought to grow toward maturity somewhat as science grows through its system of self-correction. Religion differs dramatically from science with respect to the fact that science is strictly limited to human understanding of the physical universe, whereas religion gets tremendous amounts of inspiration, insight, and even revelation from the Infinite Divine.With respect to the book being reviewed, a potential reader of it should not expect any really good arguments in favor of God’s existence, because, as I see it, the book does not even set out to effectively argue for the merits of theism versus atheism. I’ve not read any of Christopher Hitchens’ books, but as the infamous atheist brother of Peter Hitchens, I would expect his writing skills to be impressive. I will conclude this review by quoting Peter in the discussion of his “argument” with his brother, Christopher (page 10):“But since it is obvious that this book arises out of my attempt to debate religion with him [Christopher], it would be absurd to pretend that much of what I say here is not intended to counter or undermine arguments he has presented in his own book on this subject….”This is an extremely well-written book, but not persuasive in such a sense as offering any viable theodicy or even an effective set of arguments in favor of belief in God. My trust in the Creator is based upon realities that are much more personal to me and much more persuasive than anything Hitchens has to say.

The Rage Against God Peter Hitchens explains how someone can be born into a God believing country that has just been ravaged by years of war and and how doubt and new forces of change can quickly take over if the present culture is unsure of itself as happened to Great Britain after 2 damaging and empire destroying wars.Having been an Atheist most of my life and although being brought up with Christian assembles and songs at my school, I did not really look into or even think about my own country's religion until having read most of Peter's books.Peter explains about how anti-God beliefs took hold of him in his teen years despite Bible lessons at his school and how the cultural revolution of the 1960's pushed hard and fast against the Christian beliefs of past generations and how these Atheist beliefs continue to push hard to this very day.Having seen and understood what the Soviet Union regime had done to a once strongly Christian Russian for 70 years after 1917 and Peter's eventual and slow 180 degree turn back to his Christian religion to only find that the faith his country once so strongly believed in had been basically reduced in size and kicked to the curb by Atheist beliefs and I feel there are still attempts to wipe out a strong Christian belief by describing Great Britain as Multi-faith / Multicultural country.Having read Peter's first book (The Abolition of Britain) and now this book, I am in the middle of doing my own research into my Christian religion and heritage and now feel that without Christianity that the Western nations having been built on Christian beliefs, that these nations will not survive culturally and that the Multicultural and Secular Atheist belief system will destroy Christian built civilization if we do not protect and understand what our forefathers passed down to us like they had been before belief destroying events and fast change happened. The Rage Against God

A man living in the shadow of such an outspoken brother (Christopher) has an obvious problem defining his own position.Can such a man be entirely sure of himself?The book was written whilst Christopher was still with us. It has one eye on their future debates. “Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God.” (Luther)I, like Peter, wish to be on the side of the Angels. He has a long way to go to plumb the cupidity of man.God bless you Peter. I look forward to following your quest to the centre of things!

Very interesting read as Peter was a journalist in Russia at its worst points just before communism collapsed. He believes the uk is heading in the same direction and is very pessimistic about its future with its increasing loss of freedom of speach amongst other things. He goes into detail why communism is a bad idea having been one himself and seen it at first hand. He describes how soogisticated educated countries can very easily collapse due to moral decay at every level. He believes our decay is now irreversible. Depressing reading if you're British

This really is a great book providing compelling insights into Peter Hitchen’s journey from Christianity, to rebellious atheism, and back to Christianity once again. Those who would have seen the Hitchens vs. Hitchens debate of April 2008 (you can find it on YouTube) will appreciate why this book is so important and, I hope, will be grateful for it to have been written.I found it rather interesting that the subject of God, Christianity and faith in general did not fill most of the pages. This made the book all the better for me because it was not wholly focused on the end of Peter’s journey, but rather the powerful observations and experiences that influenced it.As a man who had, for no particular reason, turned his back on his Christian roots; only to return with all the more vigour years later, I can relate. I feel that this book does a great service to the Christian faith. In a world where our faith fades and retreats under what feels like a constant threat from many directions, I am grateful to Peter for having the courage to write this book; which I fully recommend.

A fascinating book -- a kind of autobiography of ideas, which is unflinching in casting a cold eye on the author's beliefs in his younger years; and on the way it manages to unpack all kinds of falsities that have captured and enslaved modern European society (Britain no less than other countries, and sometimes more). It is especially striking that Hitchens sees this enslavement as being based primarily not on materialism (a common accusation), but on false gods; this is exactly the accusation laid at post-war Britain's door by the great theologian Lesslie Newbiggin. As the blurb to the book points out, the false gods include social democracy (which elevates social conscience above individual conscience), and utopianism, which lurks beneath the surface of so many aspects of the EU's grand project. The most compelling part of the book is where he sets out the failed arguments of "the militant godless" and shows their implications for a society that accepts their arguments. (That is, most western societies.) It is also interesting that he tackles head-on arguments presented by his now-deceased brother Christopher. It's well-written, erudite in its range of historical knowledge, insightful about the spiritual issues that lie behind material constructs.