Read The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever Online

Authors: Christopher Hitchens

Tags: #Agnosticism & atheism, #Anthologies (non-poetry), #Religion: general, #Social Science, #Philosophy, #Religion: Comparative; General & Reference, #General, #Atheism, #Religion, #Sociology, #Religion - World Religions, #Literary essays

The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

BOOK: The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
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the
Portable Atheist
ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

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Letters to a Young Contrarian

The Trial of Henry Kissinger

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Pamphlets

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The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq

Collected Essays

Prepared for the Worst: Essays and Minority Reports

For the Sake of Argument

Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere

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Collaborations

James Callaghan: The Road to Number Ten
(with Peter Kellner)

Blaming the Victims
(edited with Edward Said)

When the Borders Bleed: The Struggle of the Kurds
(photographs by Ed Kashi)

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(photographs by Adam Bartos)

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(with Graydon Carter and David Friend)

the
Portable Atheist

ESSENTIAL READINGS FOR THE NONBELIEVER

selected and with introductions by

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

DA CAPO PRESS

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

List of credits/permissions can be found on back matter.

Every effort has been made to contact or trace all copyright holders. The publisher will be glad to make good any errors or omissions brought to our attention in future additions.

Introductions copyright © 2007 by Christopher Hitchens

Published in the United States by Da Capo Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group, http://www.dacapopress.com.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.

Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN: 978-0-306-81608-6

Dedicated to the memory of Primo Levi (1919–1987) who had the moral fortitude to refuse false consolation even while enduring the “selection” process in Auschwitz:

“Silence slowly prevails and then, from my bunk on the top row, I see and hear old Kuhn praying aloud, with his beret on his head, swaying backwards and forwards violently. Kuhn is thanking God because he has not been chosen.

Kuhn is out of his senses. Does he not see Beppo the Greek in the bunk next to him, Beppo who is twenty years old and is going to the gas-chamber the day after tomorrow and knows it and lies there looking fixedly at the light without saying anything and without even thinking anymore? Can Kuhn fail to realize that next time it will be his turn? Does Kuhn not understand that what has happened today is an abomination, which no propitiatory prayer, no pardon, no expiation by the guilty, which nothing at all in the power of man can ever clean again?

If I was God, I would spit at Kuhn’s prayer.”

—F
ROM
P
RIMO
L
EVI
:
I
F
T
HIS
I
S
A M
AN
(1959)

“I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day. Actually, the experience of the Lager with its frightful iniquity confirmed me in my nonbelief. It has prevented me, and still prevents me, from conceiving of any form of providence or transcendent justice…I must nevertheless admit that I experienced (and again only once) the temptation to yield, to seek refuge in prayer. This happened in October 1944, in the one moment in which I lucidly perceived the imminence of death…naked and compressed among my naked companions with my personal index card in hand, I was waiting to file past the ‘commission’ that with one glance would decide whether I should go immediately into the gas chamber or was instead strong enough to go on working. For one instance I felt the need to ask for help and asylum; then, despite my anguish, equanimity prevailed: one does not change the rules of the game at the end of the match, nor when you are losing. A prayer under these conditions would have been not only absurd (what rights could I claim? and from whom?) but blasphemous, obscene, laden with the greatest impiety of which a nonbeliever is capable. I rejected the temptation: I knew that otherwise were I to survive, I would have to be ashamed of it.”

—F
ROM
P
RIMO
L
EVI
:
T
HE
D
ROWNED AND THE
S
AVED
(1986)

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BOOK: The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
6.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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