The Hitch Takes on God, Mr. Corcoran Takes on Steven Harper and Sheryl Crow in Wrestlemania 2007!

The Hitch is having a good week. First it was taking on the sloppy sentimentality of the reactions to the Virginia Tech shootings, and now it's taking on religion. His new book, 'God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything' is out and Slate is publishing excerpts from it. You should drag your mouse over there and read it.

This paragraph took my the top of my head off this morning:

"The argument with faith is the foundation and origin of all arguments, because it is the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city. Religious faith is, precisely because we are still-evolving creatures, ineradicable. It will never die out, or at least not until we get over our fear of death, and of the dark, and of the unknown, and of each other. For this reason, I would not prohibit it even if I thought I could. Very generous of me, you may say. But will the religious grant me the same indulgence? I ask because there is a real and serious difference between me and my religious friends, and the real and serious friends are sufficiently honest to admit it. I would be quite content to go to their children's bar mitzvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to "respect" their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclusively in Arabic, to an illiterate merchant, or to interest myself in Wicca and Hindu and Jain consolations. And as it happens, I will continue to do this without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition—which is that they in turn leave me alone. But this, religion is ultimately incapable of doing. As I write these words, and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments that I have touched upon. Religion poisons everything."

I haven't met any atheist, agnostic or apathetic that tried to bring me over the dark side, but I've met far too many religious people who try to get me to sign up. The Hitch is writing a call to arms here for those of use who refuse to believe.

Speaking of those who refuse to believe, Mr. Corcoran is arming the battlements against Canada matching Kyoto standards. First the Tories go back on the Income Trust promise and now they are sounding more green than a solar-powered hemp-farmer. You know you are in trouble when Mr. Corcoran starts his column with:

"We have seen the Torygreen future for Canadians: Locked in a bathroom lit by a compact fluorescent bulb using one sheet of toilet paper and doing our business into a biodegradable plastic bag while a government inspector waits to come in to test the indoor air for pollutants."

No matter where you stand on global warming (something that I've always thought was a hard sell in Canada -- 'Wait, temperatures go up? In summer and in the winter? So does the water-level? And we lose Newfoundland and Vancouver Island... hmm... that's bad... but it's warmer, right?' you have to admit that the Tories are handling like like a junior high school student council.