God Is Not Great: Christopher Hitchens

Review: God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens The title of the book did not appeal to me but Hitchens' reputation had already filtered down to me long before the time I began to read his books. I found Hitchens' style of writing easy and relaxed and to the point especially on a topic that is normally heavy and dull. Hitchens soon showed why the God of Moses, the God of Jesus, the God of the Jews and Christians (and Islam) is not great although most Jews and Christians (and Muslims) consider that their God who created the Universe as well as man must be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent which is in accordance with the stories in the Torah, the Bible and the Quran. But with the benefit of modern science, freedom of expression, and liberated concepts, Hitchens slowly dismantles the pillars of faith in his book. The religious misrepresentation of the origins of man and the cosmos is still maintained by fundamentalists (of all three Abrahamic faiths) who manage to keep the maximum of solipsism grounded on wishful thinking or some other convoluted reinterpretation of words. Fundamentalists will not concede that when religion was first conceived in the dark ages, the only source of information was derived from the limited knowledge of the clergy of religion, but as the light of knowledge appeared it was foolish to still use such a blind man as guide. But faith will still use the familiar guides of old for fear of upsetting the memes he was groomed with from childhood. The Abrahamic faiths as organised religion has a doctrine, and history of violent, irrational, intolerant tribalism and bigotry invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children, has a lot to answer for. The reality that religion and churches, temples, and mosques were manufactured by man is totally ignored in order to mystify the gullible ignorant people to accept some mystical ethereal figure that there is some supernatural power who controls their destiny. This ethereal figure painted as some omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent spiritual figure who created and rules over us, but strangely is never present when you need him most when disaster strikes, led to challenges whether he is actually omnipotent, or simply unwilling, or even a malevolent in his intent. This has led to the next logical conclusion: "The absence of evidence is the evidence of absence." It is a Must read for those with and those without faith. ............................................................................................................................................. As a tribute to this great author I would like to quote this from his wife, Carol Blue: CAROL BLUE: Yes. Freedom of speech was everything to Christopher. He believed in an absolute First Amendment. His voice, both written and spoken, was everything to him and he writes in the article that you referred to - or in the snippet that appears in Mortality - about the - how the spoken word and the written word dovetail and are kind of synergetic. And so it was very odd for this man with the most perfect voice who could command the attention of anyone, any time, anywhere suddenly sitting at the dinner table surrounded by children and relatives trying to cut into the conversation. It was very odd. Luckily, it didn't last for very long. His voice popped back in just as he was filing that Vanity Fair piece that became part of the essay of Mortality.

Unfortunately I have only come to know of Hitchens after his death. But what an utterly insatiable and total demolition of the theory of god. Hitchens approaches religion from the perspective of the faithful followers of the cults and gradually dismembers each and every argument that the proponents of the main monotheisms use to defend their perverse and inexcusable destruction of humanity. The book arms the reader in preparation for those unavoidable confrontations when faced with a religious bigot and their twisted subjugation of all who fail to follow in their footsteps. He dismembers the theory that god is great and piece by piece diminishes even an hesitant sympathy for the main religions of the world. His assault is relentless, his breadth of knowledge is frankly astonishing and he appears to have read, retained and for the most part dissected entire libraries of books, writings and information including not only every philosopher you can think of but a good few the reader will most likely never have even heard of. Hitchens cannot be credited for transforming me into an atheist for that was my leaning from the tender age of 11 or 12. But I must credit him the most respect for managing to transform me from a passive aggressive atheist into an utter militant atheist. He reinforces the wonderful concept of atheism that cuts to brow of the god suckers, who demand 'respect' for beliefs. I and indeed Mr Hitchens cannot respect for a moment the utter contemptuous beliefs of religions which cannot afford my beliefs true respect and who each in their perverse manner damns me to an eternity of suffering. Thanks to Hitchens every conversation with a theist is now commenced with a realignment of the boundaries of debate, namely that I do not respect, for a blind moment, your utterly insane belief in a god so lets not start on the footing that you expect that, and for the record, before you start reciting passages of your holy book to me let us start from the basic evidential burden namely that you cannot, for a moment, produce evidence that your jesus ever lived, or that the old testament drenched in blood as it is, was even written within 5 generations of the fabled life of the theoretical man that you pander to. contempt for religion, as Hitchens rightly points out, should no longer be manifested respectfully or idly. those raising the sword of their gods and saviours must be challenged in the most demeaning and openly honest manner and that is what Hitchens does in this marvel of a book which I have read in a week since buying, then re-read and am now starting my third round. Everything is dragged out in this no limits expose of the god brigade, everything from the crusades, witch hunts, middle age wars, the highly doubtful lineage of Mohammed, the abject support if not encouragement of child sexual abuse in christianity and the continued encouragement of this practice in islam, the subjugation of women, whom Hitchens rights recognises as gods lesser creation for even the English word for History refers to a males dominated start. The manner in which the female has been cursed by the believers in god, female and male genital mutilation (as Hitchens states, if god is so perfect then why does humanity need to adjust these natural sexual organs of the human race?), mental abuse and the horrendous crimes committed in the name of religion and god right up until this very moment in time. He disseminates the religious argument which claims that some openly atheist dictatorships committed worse atrocities than those committed under the umbrella of gods and rips to shreds the Nazi's and Stalinists and Communism to show that at every human mutilating stage of their gory histories they each rode upon and relied upon the abject support of the Vatican and the perverse catholic church. Frankly, in my view, I would love to see a theist read the book and look me in the eye afterwards. It is a damnation of all that is marketed as god. Hitchens makes wonderful analogies and observations, like 'god certainly has never favoured Africans' given the treatment they received. And even better is the faith that the slave and the slave driver both had in the same god - what greater evidence that religion is man made than the mere fact that both pray to the same god whereas one of these groups is the oppressed and the other the oppressor, therefore where in this equation of twisted faith lies the forgiving god? Was the annihilation of the jews not a religious mandate? and what of the conduct of the jews ever since they occupied palestine? Three sects, each plagiarised to pblivion off one another, occupy a single hill in what is not occupied Palestine and all three scream and kill to the tune of their supposed chosen diety. It's a pathetic scene demonstrative of how humanity is stunted in the dark ages of superstition and black magic. The drawing of the blood routines that dominate all the main monotheisms, the masked tolerance of the church, the suppression of all forms of natural human emotion and feeling from love to devotion to masturbation and anal sex. In the illustrious words of Hitchens 'the most prolific masturbating homosexual in history has not managed to commit the atrocities of the clergy'! Even the apparently friendly monks don't escape a damning crtique of their abuse of humanity. But don't be fooled, Hitchens always gives credit where it is due. It is time that humanity woke up to the repulsive regressive retarded belief in a god or a life after death and hailed the new messiah Christopher Hitchens! and a final word to those who claim that he is biased. Yes he is biased, extremely biased too. But biased in the sense of a mother who knows that the milk being fed to her child is rancid and screams and protests to try and save the child from swallowing that rancid milk!

God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens, Warner (Hatchette), New York; Atlantic Books, London, 2007; 318 ff. A witty atheist viewpoint By Howard Jones Hitchens begins his tale with some personal reminiscences as to how and when he became disenchanted and disbelieving of the whole God story. His objections are some of those we meet often enough elsewhere - we don't need God to explain the existence, let alone the wonder of the natural world. If God is great and loving, why does such evil exist in the world, an evil to which religion itself has made such a huge contribution? Religion is `both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression'. Religion has no basis other than wish fulfilment. As for the `consolation' of religion, to Hitchens this is again fantasy and delusion. He presents the case that atheists are not necessarily the immoral, unfeeling, insensitive, evil people many believers make them out to be. He expresses no disrespect whatever for religion - simply unbelief. In Chapter two, Hitchens has no trouble at all gathering together a catalogue of atrocities that can be attributed to religion. This is followed, with only a short digression on the pig, by another discussion of the hazards to health caused by religious fervour. Then in the next chapters we move into the philosophy: why the metaphysical claims of religion are false, including the argument from design, and the vacuity of revelation. Hitchens makes the same point about the God of the Old Testament as Midgley and Dawkins - that the portrait painted of God is one of a terrible being, created no doubt to terrify the pagans and bring them into line but hardly a subject of piety and prayer for us today. It's only relatively recently that we have learned that the New Testament describing the life of Jesus was cobbled together some 60-100 years after the events it describes, and we've learnt that Paul, whose letters to Christians throughout the empire telling them of this wondrous new man and his works,. never in fact ever met the man himself. Paul's letters fill most of the N.T. The Koran, the target of the next chapter, has to be said and read in Arabic, so Muslims tell us. That is hardly conducive to inter-faith communion and understanding if no non-Muslims can ever read their holy book as it was intended. Furthermore, the Arabic does not represent `the words of God', via Gabriel or whoever, because the language only evolved into something resembling its present form in the centuries after the Prophet died. Hitchens is somewhat equivocal as to whether or not religion does any good at all; but he is equally as dismissive of eastern mystical faith as of western biblical religion. He clearly subscribes to the materialist view of western science - if I can't measure it, it doesn't exist. He pursues Richard Dawkins' theme of religious indoctrination of children as child abuse. To indoctrinate children with this religious world-view in place of the scientific one will not equip them to take their place in the world and it is clearly a monstrous evil in the hatred it generates. This is a very readable account of an atheistic approach to the world. It is packed with information and engagingly told. Regrettably, it is probably only atheists and agnostics who will read it: religious adherents would learn much. Dr Howard A. Jones is the author of The Thoughtful Guide to God (2006) and The Tao of Holism (2008), both published by O Books of Winchester, UK. Varieties of Unbelief: 9

This book has received extravagant praise from many quarters and comment of the opposite kind from others. It stands to reason, I suppose, that a pugnacious atheistic tract will divide opinion in just such a way. What does not stand to reason is the veracity or probability of even the most revered scriptures, and that much seems to be true of all religions. One obvious instance springs to mind, the Agony in the Garden, as recounted in St Matthew. The first and most obvious absurdity is that the supposed witnesses to these events were all asleep. However there is more to it than that, and in his splendid The Evolution of the Gospel’ Enoch Powell (yes, that Enoch Powell) finds the whole tale to be ‘transparent fiction’ without even relying on that particular detail. Back to what stands to reason, then. What surely stands to reason is that religious faith does not take its stand on reason. Nor is that any matter of fine shades of interpretation. ‘Beliefs’ that men (and women) will kill or die for are self-commending. Indeed, so strong is their persuasive power in some quarters that they can be required as a matter of religious law. Hitchens’ text does not delve deeply into the question ‘What is this thing called faith anyhow?’ To me for one the truth seems to be that only our actions can be subject to someone’s commands, or even to our own decisions; and holding a belief is not an action, it is a state of affairs, like having a headache. Continuing our lesson in truisms, people who think thoughts like these had better be careful how, when, where and in whose presence they give expression to them. Hitchens presents this matter vividly, calling on such mighty figures as David Hume in his support. Hume ca’ed canny and did not provoke dangerous reactions. So why did he need to? What is it about religious doctrines that they exert such control? Ordinary reason subverts them, and I wonder what exercises there are in the application of thought via Housman-style textual criticism of the texts that underlie them. Not, I suppose, that such instances as the miracles that abound require any Housman to refute them. Any one of us can do that, provided we want to. One very deep and thoughtful book that may be found of help in this connection is one that I was surprised not to find cited by Hitchens. The book is In the Shadow of Mount Sinai, and it is by Peter Sloterdijk. As the title suggests, Sloterdijk restricts himself to the Abrahamic religions. So does Hitchens for the most part, although he determinedly expands into Asiatic religions for a shortish stretch of the book. What Sloterdijk studies is the need for authority, either personal leadership or abstract authority (often focused on some idol or other) that cultures and ‘nations’ experienced in their cultural development. Naturally this was no matter of the likes of Hume, Dawkins or any of those, it was a matter of an underlying need. I have no learning or expertise in such matters, but at a superficial ‘helicopter’ level this makes sense to me in attempting to account for the religious focus on the irrational and the power it exerts. So what does one suppose Hitchens is trying to achieve with this book? He is a brilliant journalist and a brilliant writer, and his book is a pleasure to read, at least when the reader is receptive to the author’s cast of mind and personal values. I had the impression that he saw himself as a soldier of rationality fighting the good fight for reason against what he perceives as superstition, indeed often as plain old nonsense. He recognises that the fight has been going on for a while, and he cites Lucretius in the first century BC. I had never before thought of Lucretius as witty, but our author here is no doubt more perceptive than I am. One phrase often used by Lucretius is ‘patrii sermonis egestas’ – ‘the poverty of my native language’ – to complain about how difficult the doctrines of Epicurus were to represent in Latin. For the student that usually flagged a warning that we were in for a hard bit too. More accessible, and closer to our own era, is Arthur C Clarke’s short but awesome novel Childhood’s End. In this mighty story one aspect of the Overlords’ utopia is that they gave humanity extensive glimpses of humanity’s own history that humanity’s own resources had denied them. And as this unfolded, Clarke remarks laconically that religions which had bolstered mankind for centuries now dissolved in the face of proper knowledge. Hitchens was no Karellen, but he makes a worthy and strenuous effort of his own to help us understand.

On the inside cover of this book is a depiction of a slumbering, hag-ridden man, surrounded ominously by bats, birds and beasts. This is Goya’s Print #43 from his eternal etching collection Los Caprichos (The Caprices) and is captioned: "El sueno de la razon produce monstruos" - When reason sleeps, monsters are produced. If this haunting image and its message are a foreshadowing of what awaits the reader in this book, then Richard Dawkins' quote on the cover is an apt summation of its author: "If you are a religious apologist invited to debate with Christopher Hitchens, decline"! A pertinent warning since with his lucid polemics, Hitchens takes no hostages, cutting relentlessly to the heart of the matter: Mankind's almost primordial need to cling to religion, any religion, a condition - even a phenomenon, one might say - described by Marx as "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world... the spirit of a spiritless situation". But why such a yearning? Why the vast array of eclectic varieties of religion? Why such an impressive, a-la-carte menu of choices for expressing a singular universal truth? To this, Hitchens provides a simple yet profound answer: Religion was "our first and worst attempt at understanding the universe", the pre-requisite to which, as Aristotle postulates in his conceptualization of a concentric cosmos, was a "prime mover" - God - who sat beyond the "final sphere". Then, perhaps, it was not God who made man in his own image but rather quite the opposite: God, and by extension religions, were in fact man-made constructs, manufactured here on earth and not in the heavens, an idea expressed succinctly by the Pre-Socratic philosopher, Xenophanes of Colophon: “…Men make gods in their own image; those of the Ethiopians are black and snub-nosed; those of the Thracians have blue eyes and red hair.” The historian and political philosopher Montesquieu echoes the same notion in a more tongue in cheek fashion: “If triangles had a god, he would have three sides.” Quoting Heinrich Heine, Hitchens then brings his logic full circle: "...in a pitch-black night, a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind old men as guides". For the better part of four centuries, it is light that has increasingly cast its shadow on darkness, thanks to the scientific enlightenment brought about by the sacrifices of countless brave souls - notwithstanding the exactitudes and cruelties of (inter alia) the Inquisition, Catholic Church’s sinister veil over free thought. Heine’s analogy is exact if only we replace "blind men" with "high priests" (of any denomination), except perhaps through the ages, the latter knew the "roads and paths" less well than the former! Hitchens is a true practitioner of "the profession of disbelief", a phrase coined by Thomas Huxley, who also rejected the doctrine that "there are propositions which men ought to believe without logically satisfactory evidence". Here is the absolutism and rigidity of religion contrasted sharply with the relativism and flexibility of science, which Carl Sagan describes eloquently in his book "The Demon-haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark": "At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes - an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive, and the most ruthlessly sceptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense." If Sagan is a shining example of a standard bearer of “deep truths”, then Hitchens is an outstanding specimen of the slayer of “deep nonsense” – polite Sagan-speak for institutionalized ignorance and superstition – systematically dismantling the status quo of religious dogma with his cold and unforgiving yet frank logic; not for him this “transparent fiction”, to quote one Enoch Powell! To my delight, Hitchens also challenges the lexicon of religious debate, dismissing as "vulgar" (I consider it offensive and condescending) the often-used term "a-theist", preferring the more appropriate (in his view) descriptive of "anti-theist". After all, he argues, in common discourse we have no specific term for referring to someone who does NOT believe in fairies (hence no “a-fairy-ist”), for instance (or in Santa Claus, for that matter)! Why should we have one for yet another equally mythical figure? (In any case, I posit, is it not high time that we place this dysfunctional terminology in the same dustbin in which other such politically incorrect and long-obsolete words have been discarded?) For those who still insist on using the term, I am reminded of Richard Dawkins' excellent riposte when HE is branded an “a-theist”: "We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." So, let's ponder the divine a while lest we forget Zeus, the protector of all gods and humans; his daughter Tyche, the goddess of luck; Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and passion; Artemis, the goddess of nature; Nemesis, the goddess of retribution against hubris; and for good measure, Palamedes, the inventor of the first dice which he dedicated to .... Tyche. And that's only some of the Greek deities! In his debates, Hitchens took pleasure in occasionally referring to the humourist Peter De Vries’ novel, “The Blood of the Lamb” and a conversation between Stein, the tormented soul agonized by his child’s incurable illness, and a supercilious interlocutor: "You ought to be ashamed," a woman in an Easter bonnet told Stein. "Your race gave us our religion. From ancient polytheism, the belief in lots of gods," the woman continued a little more eruditely, "the Hebrew nation led us on to the idea that there is only one." "Which is just a step from the truth," said Stein. In Hitchens-speak, this is simply stating the obvious: “We were polytheistic at first; we then became monotheistic... we are getting closer to the real figure all the time!” But what of religion itself? Here Hitchens delivers his decisive coup de grâce: "Monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to the fabrication of a few non-events."

Christopher Hitchens died last year and until he died I had never heard of him. I read eulogies from his fellow journalists and then heard no more until last week when, by chance, I came across some video clips of Hitchens speaking about his views on religion and I found them fascinating. I then found that Hitchens had written a book, God is not Great: how religion poisons everything. I bought the book and have now read it. Firstly, I have only read a couple of chapters of Richard Dawkins The God Delusion and I have to say that Hitchens did a far better job than Dawkins. Religious people do not like God is not Great. Not because it tests their faith but because of what it reveals about what goes on in the name of religion. Hitchens tells us, almost in passing, that he has received death threats, nasty phone calls and threats of violence for holding his view that he believes that religions poison everything. Having been born and brought up in a country where freedom of speech is taken for granted, I wonder at who it could be that would so object to someone's views that they threaten murder. That's for their conscience! As for the book, it is entertainingly written and full of stories aimed at the three main monotheisms: Christianity, Jewry, Islam. He regales us with story after story of the things that clerics hiding under these three banners get up to and have got up to for millennia. Hitchens reveals a great number of sources too: he's not just letting off steam. I have to say that I read this book for the overview it provided and not to learn the deep and detailed information that Hitchens sometimes goes into: it's there if you want it, of course. I like Hitchens' style as it is keen, ascerbic, funny, witty, well sourced and contains many words that I had never come across before. At least it will improve your vocabulary. I have to say that another motivation for reading the book is that I arrived at a similar position to Hitchens vis a vis religion over the last two or three years having seen religious brainwashing and its consequences at first hand. No God will work in that way with those people: something else is most definitely going on and I could support these things no longer, having realised what was happening. I imagine there will be people who read this mini review and who might feel angry with me for having written it: well, that's for you to come to terms with. I am glad I read the book, I learned many things about religions that I did not previously know and Hitchens gives a message that we all ought to consider. You do not have to agree with him! What's wrong with the book? Well, Hitchens has a mission, to clarify why he thinks religions poison everything. He gives no time to the good that good people in religions often do. He does not attempt to redress any imbalances in his arguments at all in this respect. If he were alive to answer this point I am sure he would ask, why on earth should I? Overall, if you are deeply committed to your religion you might not want to read this book but I think you should suspend your faith, read it and then explore fully what Hitchens has to say. Don't dismiss this book with anger in your heart! If you give Hitchens a fair hearing and stick to your guns then fine. I recommend this book to everyone but if your English reading skills are weak, it will be difficult for you: Hitchens' English language skills are highly developed and he's writing for an educated audience. No offence to anyone, just a friendly warning! DW

This book is a diatribe from the pen of a superb and now sadly gone intellect and is terrifying to Christians, Muslims or any religion (man made and invented ) that believes in the ludicrous madness of supernatural life. Hitchens life has been threatened many many times simply for giving his opinions, truly religion is poisonous ( RIP Theo Van Gogh ) A cash in?, Hitchens just weighed in with his own opinion as was his nature. Any artist will strike while the iron is hot so that accusation is rather facile. Also Hitchens is never scared to put his head above the parapet. An artist who creates with honesty puts himself on the line and invites opprobrium. The smug criticisms of this book are by armchair critics who do not have the courage or mettle to say something themselves. BIBLE. The bible..hmm a great folkloric work made up by men in a primitive age when a gust of wind would drive humans to sacrifice any living thing even their children to keep the Djinns away. Nothing in it contributed by a woman (gods weaker and filthy invention according to many religions) Fables invented by men with a wee bit of twisted fact. No telly you see so scary entertainment had to be created to frighten the children, and keep the peasants bowed. Yes its fascinating literature, only a fool would deny that, but its been the most promoted work the world has ever seen, had the free press been around the bible would have had competitors, many, many , many of them but there was none so Pauls brainchild gathered momentum like a big snowball. Reason and science is like the sun, its bright, it makes sense and well...it melts snow, the bible is dripping. St Paul (Saul of Tarsus) the Saatchi fear mongering zealot of his day is to blame for such a pile of dogs-wallop gaining such credence over the millenia, rapidly followed by Mark, Luke et al (who strangely several decades later reported stuff that Paul had never even mentioned in his entire oeuvre about the Christ holy fella near the time he was 'beamed up') . The blood and screams of horribly tortured non believers litter and flood the centuries, fear piled on fear, death on death add to the weight of its heinous inflictions on mankind and add to the weight and momentum of the book called the Bible. Hitchens said 'religion is poison', I totally agree. I've seen it do terrible things in my 54 years on this earth (to friends and acquaintances as well as what I've witnessed on the media) and I'll see it do more. The bad easily outweighs the good. For instance If only we could hear the testimonies of the nurses and doctors who abandoned Mother Theresa centres because of her breathtaking insouciance to the pain of her patients and her indifference to the birth of millions of children born into starvation and agonising diseases because the church abhors birth control and would rather allow agonies to take place in the name of the holy spirit than sidestep, religion is poisonous, truly. Humanity will evolve away from this primitive supernatural rubbish if it wants to survive. Like Hitchens I am not an atheist I am an Antitheist.

I really enjoyed this book. Mr Hitchens writes in a superbly eloquent way and structures his arguments around his wordplay, something I haven't seen done before. I also really struggled with this book. It attacks something that I don't feel has any connection to the belief system I adhere to. Hence the 3 *'s I understand that religion has been used to do a lot of harm and wrong. But I am also fully aware that the issue doesn't stop at religion, it goes deeper than that, into the hearts and minds of the people who use religion to share the toxic ideas and beliefs that they hold. Religion can be used. As can politics, science, education and poverty. We can use the tools at our disposal to impact and elevate our ideas and the things we believe holds the most value. For good as well as for bad. We can all do this within our own lives - we do it every day. Trying to push all religious beliefs into the same box, gaffer taping it up and labelling it as poison undermines the whole of society. I understand that some religious teachings and scriptures have moral questions that we SHOULD be talking about today - so let's talk! Whether Mr Hitchens wants to admit it or not, we live in a society (in the West at least) that has formed from a religious belief structure. Religious ideas led to the enlightenment and to science holding the position within society that it does today. We need to recognise that this is a journey, like a tree spreading out its branches. Rather than a level in a platform game, that we complete, reach the next level and then forget about the path that took us here. If we begin to remove religion from our societies, then we saw away at the very branch that brought us to the place where we can honestly critique religion in the first place. I am all for honest conversation - but we need to survey both lines of the battlefield and acknowledge the good religion has done as well. Example? During the first 100 years after Christianity split from Jewdeism, we see small Christian groups within the societies it had spread to beginning to attribute value to the lowliest peoples within those societies. Salves, women, children, people with disabilities - Christians begin to see an intrinsic worth within all people, that the societies they lived in never saw, rather dismissing them without a second glance. We take that idea of worth for granted now, but it wasn't always the case. Christianity changed the Greco-Roman world, and I think it is still doing so today.