Hitchens - "The Subtle, Lethal Poison of Religion"

This blog entry by Christopher Hitchens - "The Subtle, Lethal Poison of Religion" -

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2007/09/hitchens_1.html

@ Washington Post has generated more than unsolicited 600 comments and peer commentary by 21 panelists -

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/2007/09/hitchens_on_religion/all.html

Most of the commentary is simply pre-posterist! In general, the remarks tend to be exhibits of typical intellectualist & political habit of putting the propositional cart before the conceptual horse/s.

A non-essentialist & non-reductivist but nonetheless historically informative definition of 'religion' would have been helpful - - -

X is a religion if X has at least a majority of the following characteristics: . . . . . . . . .

Otherwise claims about the vices or virtues of religion-as-such or a particular religion are worthless and only invite self-serving defensiveness from the so-called "faithful" of all "faiths", religious & non-religious, naturalist & non-naturalist, humanist & non-humanist, X & non-X!

As it was once well put, all of us live by "the substance of things unseen, the evidence of things hoped for", that is, that part of each person's web of beliefs in which we each, respectively, put our ultimate trust, only to be vindicated or not by living by those beliefs.