The use and abuse of “religion”  Posted November 22, 2010
15:25:05  While one can only have deep sympathy for Christopher
Hitchens as he fights cancer, the Lateline interview with him
shows that Hitchens retains illogical views on religion.  When
asked about whether he thought religion would survive, Hitchens
responded like this: “Religion is part of the human make-up.
It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history”.  If
religion is poisonous as Hitchens claims, then it seems that the
“poison” will remain (despite its contribution to civilisation,
as he points out). But within Hitchens’s thinking, does this
make sense?  In the background to Hitchens's view are two ways
of seeing religion: as a naturally-occurring phenomenon; and as
a socio-cultural construction. Because Hitchens says that
religion is part of the human condition that won’t go away, he
seems to believe that it is based in natural human capacities.
If religion were merely a cultural construction, it could just
as easily be deconstructed