God Is Not Great… part1

I don’t often follow the publishing industry with any interest, but the one development I have been looking forward to is the release of Christopher Hitchens’ new book, “God Is Not Great.” While I will no doubt disagree with many of Hitchen’s conclusions, I think that if read constructively, it can serve a good purpose in the Christian Community. It is rare that such an excellent communicator provides such a frank discussion of his personal beliefs about religion and I think that such an opportunity should not easily be dismissed.

One thing that surprised me about the book was hitchen’s research on the Mormon Church. It turns out that The Book of Mormon was quite clearly a sham. Joseph Smith supposedly had the book transcribed while he read from golden plates, except it turns out he was illiterate.?Ǭ† After a clever woman hid the first copy of the transcript, he was unable to duplicate the transcript in anywhere near its original form (in fact he refused to even try). I could provide a synopsis, but I might as well just let you read Hitchens own words…

….in the case of Smith it is likewise a simple if tedious task to discover that twenty-five thousand words of the Book of Mormon are taken directly from the Old Testament…. A further two thousand words of the Book of Mormon are taken from the New Testament. Of the three hundred and fifty “names” in the book, more than one hundred come straight from the Bible and a hundred more are as near stolen as makes no difference.

This is only a portion of the article… I suggest you read it in its entirety if you want to know more. In my next blog entry, which I will hopefully get around to next week, I hope to challenge Hitchen’s views on Christianity. Stay Tuned!