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[The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith] [By: Hitchens, Peter] [December, 2011]
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Published December 24, 2011
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About the author
Peter Hitchens
22 books303 followersPeter Jonathan Hitchens (born 28 October 1951) is an English journalist and author. He was educated at The Leys School Cambridge, Oxford College of Further Education and the University of York. He has published six books, including The Abolition of Britain, The Rage Against God, and The War We Never Fought. He is a frequent critic of political correctness and describes himself as an Anglican Christian and Burkean conservative.
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January 5, 2026
THE BROTHER OF THE NOTORIOUS ATHEIST EXPLAINS HIS OWN CHRISTIAN FAITH
Journalist and broadcaster Peter Hitchens is the brother of the late “New Atheist” Christopher Hitchens. He wrote in the Introduction to this 2010 book, “I will have to explain the curious thing that happened to the Christian religion in my country. In explaining this, I will describe influences I believe have operated on my brother, Christopher, much as they have affected me… [We] have lived entirely different lives. But since it is obvious that this book arises out of my attempt to debate religion with him, it would be absurd to pretend that much of what I say here is not intended to counter or undermine arguments he has presented in his own book on the subject…
“What I hope to do in the pages that follow is to explain first of all how I… should have come to reject so completely what [my teachers] said… My mistake was to dispense with it all, indiscriminately. I hope to show that one of the things I was schooled in was not, in fact, religion, but a strange and vulnerable counterfeit of it… I want to explain how I became convinced, by reason and experience, of the necessity and rightness of a form of Christianity that is modest, accommodating, and thoughtful…
“I then intend to address the fundamental failures of three atheistic arguments. Namely, that conflicts fought in the name of religion are always about religion; that it is ultimately possible to know with confidence what is right and what is wrong without acknowledging the existence of God; and that atheist states are not actually atheist… I am, of course, concerned especially about Christopher… His passion against God … grew more virulent and confident during the years while I was making my gradual, hesitant way back to the altar-rail… I do not loathe atheists, as Christopher claims to loathe theists… It is also my view that, as with all atheists, Christopher is his own chief opponent. As long as he can convince himself, nobody else will persuade him…”
He recalls, “I have passed through the same atheist revelation that most self-confident members of my British generation have experienced. We were sure that we, and our civilization, had grown out of the nursery myths of God, angels, and heaven… People still died, it was true, but generally off-stage and drugged [into] a painless passivity… I knew all the standard arguments… endorsed by the general culture of my country, which views God as a nuisance and religion as an embarrassment or worse.” (Pg. 22-23)
He recounts, “I had spotted the dry, disillusioned, and apparently disinterested atheism of so many intellectuals, artists, and leaders of our age… It did not then cross my mind that they, like religious apologists, might have any personal reasons for holding to this disbelief. It certainly did not cross my mind that I had any low motives for it. Unlike Christians, atheists have a high opinion of their own virtue.” (Pg. 24-25) Later, he adds, “Their faith in science was an attempt to replace the Christian faith, ruined by war and disillusion, with a new all-embracing certainty.” (Pg. 48)
He notes, “I came to the conclusion… that enormous and intrusive totalitarian state power… is an enemy of civility, or consideration, and even of enlightened self-interest… I have since concluded that a hitherto Christian society that was de-Christianized would also face such problems because I have seen public discourtesy and incivility spreading rapidly in my own country as Christianity is forgotten.” (Pg. 91)
In 1981, while viewing a religious painting [‘The Last Judgment’ by Rogier van der Weyden], “I did not have a ‘religious experience.’ Nothing mystical or inexplicable took place… But I had a sudden, strong sense of religion being a thing of the present day, not imprisoned under thick layers of time… I had absolutely no doubt that I was among the damned, if there were any damned… No doubt I should be ashamed to confess that fear played a part in my return to religion… But I should be even more ashamed to pretend that fear did not… I went away chastened, and the effect has not worn off in nearly three decades.” (Pg. 103-104)
He asks, “Why is there such a fury against religion now?... Only one reliable force stands in the way of the power of the strong over the weak. Only one reliable force forms the foundation of the concept of the rule of law… And, in an age of power-worship, the Christian religion has become the principal obstacle to the desire of earthly utopians for absolute power.” (Pg. 112-113) Later, he adds, “God is the leftists’ chief rival.” (Pg. 134)
He argues, “for a moral code to be effective, the code must be attributed to, and vested in, a non-human source. It must be beyond the power of humanity to change it to suit itself..” (Pg. 142) Later, he acknowledges, “This is not, alas, an argument for or against the existence of God, though it might just be an argument for the existence of good, with humankind left wondering how to discover what is good and what good is. It simply states the price that may sooner or later have to be paid for presuming that God does not exist and then removing him from human affairs.” (Pg. 147-148)
He admits, “I most definitely have motives for my belief. I believe in God and the Christian religion at least partly because it suits me to do so. I prefer to believe that I live in an ordered universe with a purpose that I can at least partly discover… I need these ideas many times each day… But I am human, fallen and flawed, so I am slippery about this faith… This is an argument for the belief that humanity is imperfect and fallen, not a condemnation or faith or of God. I have seldom seen a more powerful argument for the fallen nature of man… than those countries in which man sets himself up to replace God with the state.” (Pg. 151-152)
He points out, “Stalin’s atheist conquest of this vast Muslim region [Soviet Central Asia]… endured for decades. It succeeded in forcibly unveiling and educating women… and driving the Imams of Islam into the farthest corners of their societies. Yet one does not hear the supporters of the ‘War on Terror’ endorsing this action or using it as an example to be followed, even though it was far more successful in weakening Islam than anything they have ever done or ever will do. Any why should it not have been? Without God, many more actions are possible than are permitted in a Godly order. Atheism is a license for ruthlessness, and it appeals to the ruthless.” (Pg. 160)
He states, “I hope and pray that [atheists] (especially my brother) will one day choose differently, and I would be pleased if the case I make here helps them to do so. But I think it important… to recognize that it is a choice… But the new brand of militant atheism seems anxious to insist that there is no such choice. It adopts a mocking and high-handed tone of certainty… This style of attack conforms to the irreverent spirit of the age… It is not widely recognized that secularism is a fundamentally political movement, which seeks to remove the remaining Christian restraints on power and the remaining traces of Christian moral law.” (Pg. 161)
He observes, “I think it is absurd for my anti-theist brother to insist that the cruelty of Communist anti-theist regimes does not reflect badly on his case. After all, Soviet Communism used the same language … and appealed to the same constituency as Western atheism does today. Soviet power was, as it was intended to be, the opposite of faith in God… My brother Christopher suggests that Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union was in fact a religious state. The specifically anti-religious character of the Soviet system under Stalin makes such a claim nonsensical.” (Pg. 164)
He says in the Epilogue, “I end this book in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with some thoughts on the unsatisfactory debate that I had there in April 2008 with my brother Christopher, about the existence of God and the goodness of religion… Christopher and I have had over the past fifty years what might be called a difficult relationship. Some brothers get along; some do not. We were the sort who just didn’t… On that Thursday night in Grand Rapids, however, the old quarrel was… finished for good… Just at the point where many might have expected---and some have hoped---that we would rend and tear at each other, we did not… Both of us, I suspect, recoiled from such an exhibition… [which] would have been wrong, because we are brothers.” (Pg. 215-216)
This revealing book will be “must reading” for those seeking critiques of the “New Atheism,” as well the contemporary state of Christianity in England and elsewhere.
Journalist and broadcaster Peter Hitchens is the brother of the late “New Atheist” Christopher Hitchens. He wrote in the Introduction to this 2010 book, “I will have to explain the curious thing that happened to the Christian religion in my country. In explaining this, I will describe influences I believe have operated on my brother, Christopher, much as they have affected me… [We] have lived entirely different lives. But since it is obvious that this book arises out of my attempt to debate religion with him, it would be absurd to pretend that much of what I say here is not intended to counter or undermine arguments he has presented in his own book on the subject…
“What I hope to do in the pages that follow is to explain first of all how I… should have come to reject so completely what [my teachers] said… My mistake was to dispense with it all, indiscriminately. I hope to show that one of the things I was schooled in was not, in fact, religion, but a strange and vulnerable counterfeit of it… I want to explain how I became convinced, by reason and experience, of the necessity and rightness of a form of Christianity that is modest, accommodating, and thoughtful…
“I then intend to address the fundamental failures of three atheistic arguments. Namely, that conflicts fought in the name of religion are always about religion; that it is ultimately possible to know with confidence what is right and what is wrong without acknowledging the existence of God; and that atheist states are not actually atheist… I am, of course, concerned especially about Christopher… His passion against God … grew more virulent and confident during the years while I was making my gradual, hesitant way back to the altar-rail… I do not loathe atheists, as Christopher claims to loathe theists… It is also my view that, as with all atheists, Christopher is his own chief opponent. As long as he can convince himself, nobody else will persuade him…”
He recalls, “I have passed through the same atheist revelation that most self-confident members of my British generation have experienced. We were sure that we, and our civilization, had grown out of the nursery myths of God, angels, and heaven… People still died, it was true, but generally off-stage and drugged [into] a painless passivity… I knew all the standard arguments… endorsed by the general culture of my country, which views God as a nuisance and religion as an embarrassment or worse.” (Pg. 22-23)
He recounts, “I had spotted the dry, disillusioned, and apparently disinterested atheism of so many intellectuals, artists, and leaders of our age… It did not then cross my mind that they, like religious apologists, might have any personal reasons for holding to this disbelief. It certainly did not cross my mind that I had any low motives for it. Unlike Christians, atheists have a high opinion of their own virtue.” (Pg. 24-25) Later, he adds, “Their faith in science was an attempt to replace the Christian faith, ruined by war and disillusion, with a new all-embracing certainty.” (Pg. 48)
He notes, “I came to the conclusion… that enormous and intrusive totalitarian state power… is an enemy of civility, or consideration, and even of enlightened self-interest… I have since concluded that a hitherto Christian society that was de-Christianized would also face such problems because I have seen public discourtesy and incivility spreading rapidly in my own country as Christianity is forgotten.” (Pg. 91)
In 1981, while viewing a religious painting [‘The Last Judgment’ by Rogier van der Weyden], “I did not have a ‘religious experience.’ Nothing mystical or inexplicable took place… But I had a sudden, strong sense of religion being a thing of the present day, not imprisoned under thick layers of time… I had absolutely no doubt that I was among the damned, if there were any damned… No doubt I should be ashamed to confess that fear played a part in my return to religion… But I should be even more ashamed to pretend that fear did not… I went away chastened, and the effect has not worn off in nearly three decades.” (Pg. 103-104)
He asks, “Why is there such a fury against religion now?... Only one reliable force stands in the way of the power of the strong over the weak. Only one reliable force forms the foundation of the concept of the rule of law… And, in an age of power-worship, the Christian religion has become the principal obstacle to the desire of earthly utopians for absolute power.” (Pg. 112-113) Later, he adds, “God is the leftists’ chief rival.” (Pg. 134)
He argues, “for a moral code to be effective, the code must be attributed to, and vested in, a non-human source. It must be beyond the power of humanity to change it to suit itself..” (Pg. 142) Later, he acknowledges, “This is not, alas, an argument for or against the existence of God, though it might just be an argument for the existence of good, with humankind left wondering how to discover what is good and what good is. It simply states the price that may sooner or later have to be paid for presuming that God does not exist and then removing him from human affairs.” (Pg. 147-148)
He admits, “I most definitely have motives for my belief. I believe in God and the Christian religion at least partly because it suits me to do so. I prefer to believe that I live in an ordered universe with a purpose that I can at least partly discover… I need these ideas many times each day… But I am human, fallen and flawed, so I am slippery about this faith… This is an argument for the belief that humanity is imperfect and fallen, not a condemnation or faith or of God. I have seldom seen a more powerful argument for the fallen nature of man… than those countries in which man sets himself up to replace God with the state.” (Pg. 151-152)
He points out, “Stalin’s atheist conquest of this vast Muslim region [Soviet Central Asia]… endured for decades. It succeeded in forcibly unveiling and educating women… and driving the Imams of Islam into the farthest corners of their societies. Yet one does not hear the supporters of the ‘War on Terror’ endorsing this action or using it as an example to be followed, even though it was far more successful in weakening Islam than anything they have ever done or ever will do. Any why should it not have been? Without God, many more actions are possible than are permitted in a Godly order. Atheism is a license for ruthlessness, and it appeals to the ruthless.” (Pg. 160)
He states, “I hope and pray that [atheists] (especially my brother) will one day choose differently, and I would be pleased if the case I make here helps them to do so. But I think it important… to recognize that it is a choice… But the new brand of militant atheism seems anxious to insist that there is no such choice. It adopts a mocking and high-handed tone of certainty… This style of attack conforms to the irreverent spirit of the age… It is not widely recognized that secularism is a fundamentally political movement, which seeks to remove the remaining Christian restraints on power and the remaining traces of Christian moral law.” (Pg. 161)
He observes, “I think it is absurd for my anti-theist brother to insist that the cruelty of Communist anti-theist regimes does not reflect badly on his case. After all, Soviet Communism used the same language … and appealed to the same constituency as Western atheism does today. Soviet power was, as it was intended to be, the opposite of faith in God… My brother Christopher suggests that Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union was in fact a religious state. The specifically anti-religious character of the Soviet system under Stalin makes such a claim nonsensical.” (Pg. 164)
He says in the Epilogue, “I end this book in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with some thoughts on the unsatisfactory debate that I had there in April 2008 with my brother Christopher, about the existence of God and the goodness of religion… Christopher and I have had over the past fifty years what might be called a difficult relationship. Some brothers get along; some do not. We were the sort who just didn’t… On that Thursday night in Grand Rapids, however, the old quarrel was… finished for good… Just at the point where many might have expected---and some have hoped---that we would rend and tear at each other, we did not… Both of us, I suspect, recoiled from such an exhibition… [which] would have been wrong, because we are brothers.” (Pg. 215-216)
This revealing book will be “must reading” for those seeking critiques of the “New Atheism,” as well the contemporary state of Christianity in England and elsewhere.
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