好評如潮，惡評如山！銷售逼近500,000冊，售出23國版權！ 宗教早就不是對人類的祝福，而是一種縈繞不去的永恆詛咒！宗教退散！ 蘇珊‧桑塔格、愛德華．薩伊德極為推崇的叛逆型知識分子；當代最聰慧的新聞人「克里斯多福．希鈞斯」最大膽的一部作品 被譽為「當代最聰慧的新聞人之一」的克里斯多福．希鈞斯，以本書重新定義有關宗教在公眾生活中的爭論。作者以獨特的博學與機智談到當代最迫切的議題：世界宗教中的邪惡力量。在他與信徒的滔滔雄辯中，希鈞斯靠著對主要宗教經典廣泛且徹底的閱讀，揮出了對宗教（以及對於生命更世俗的一種態度）的終極一擊。 希鈞斯敘述了自己與宗教危險遭遇的種種故事，並且描述他如何以科學及理性為基礎，終而獲得對生命現世觀點的知性之旅，其中天堂被哈伯望遠鏡裡令人敬畏的宇宙景觀取代，而摩西和燃燒的荊棘叢則讓位給美麗及對稱的雙螺旋體。「上帝並未創造我們，」他寫到，「我們創造了上帝。」他解釋，宗教是對我們的起源、本質及宇宙的一種扭曲；宗教是人類發展過程中應該切割掉的盲腸！我們向孩童灌輸宗教思想，不但傷害了他們，更傷害了這個世界。 不論你是一路走來始終如一的信徒、虔誠的無神論者，或是對於宗教在我們生活中所扮演的角色依然無法確定的人，你都會想要思考及參與本書中的辯論。

In the tradition of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris's recent bestseller, The End of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope's awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix.

"All first-rate criticism first defines what we are confronting," the late, great jazz critic Whitney Balliett once wrote. By that measure, the essays of Christopher Hitchens are in the first tier. For nearly four decades, Hitchens has been telling us, in pitch-perfect prose, what we confront when we grapple with first principles-the principles of reason and tolerance and scepticism that define and inform the foundations of our civilization-principles that, to endure, must be defended anew by every generation. "A short list of the greatest living conversationalists in English," said The Economist , "would probably have to include Christopher Hitchens, Sir Patrick Leigh-Fermor, and Sir Tom Stoppard. Great brilliance, fantastic powers of recall, and quick wit are clearly valuable in sustaining conversation at these cosmic levels. Charm may be helpful, too." Hitchens – who staunchly declines all offers of knighthood-hereby invites you to take a seat at a democratic conversation, to be engaged, and to be reasoned with. His knowledge is formidable, an encyclopedic treasure, and yet one has the feeling, reading him, of hearing a person thinking out loud, following the inexorable logic of his thought, wherever it might lead, unafraid to expose fraudulence, denounce injustice, and excoriate hypocrisy. Legions of readers, admirers and detractors alike, have learned to read Hitchens with something approaching awe at his felicity of language, the oxygen in every sentence, the enviable wit and his readiness, even eagerness, to fight a foe or mount the ramparts. Here, he supplies fresh perceptions of such figures as varied as Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, Rebecca West, George Orwell, J.G. Ballard, and Philip Larkin are matched in brilliance by his pungent discussions and intrepid observations, gathered from a lifetime of travelling and reporting from such destinations as Iran, China, and Pakistan. Hitchens's directness, elegance, lightly carried erudition, critical and psychological insight, humour, and sympathy-applied as they are here to a dazzling variety of subjects-all set a standard for the essayist that has rarely been matched in our time. What emerges from this indispensable volume is an intellectual self-portrait of a writer with an exemplary steadiness of purpose and a love affair with the delights and seductions of the English language, a man anchored in a profound and humane vision of the human longing for reason and justice.