We Don’t Want it and God Does Not Either:
One thing that I can certainly agree with Christopher Hitchens about is that I too “feel very uneasy about it.” This is the way that we are supposed to feel when someone has to do something for us that we cannot do for ourselves, particularly if it comes at great cost to them.
Indeed, I also “don’t want torture, don’t want human sacrifice, don’t want authoritarian blood lettings, smoking temples and altars, incantations of priests around, don’t want it,” and guess what: God does not want it either.
God determined that God alone could bring salvation and established certain rituals for His Jewish people to follow. The Jews had become institutionalized by centuries of slavery in Egypt and they needed to be built up as a nation from the bottom up. God gave them instructions which included smoking temples, altars, incantations, etc. Two important things to note are that eventually, as with all human activity, these rituals came to be done by robotic rote and that these rituals were highly symbolic and prophetic.
“So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ” (Colossians 2:16-17).
On occasion God made it clear that the rituals were not an end unto themselves:
“_Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams” (1st Samuel 15:22).
“This people draws near with words only and honors me with their lips alone, though their hearts are far from me, and their reverence for me has become routine observances of the precepts of men” (Isaiah 29:13).
“Your new moons and your appointed feasts My soul hates; they are a trouble to Me; I am weary to bear them” (Isaiah 1:14).
“I will also cause all her joy to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts_My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you from being priest to Me. Since you have forgotten the Law of your God, I will also forget your sons, even I_For I desired mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (Hosea 2:11, 4:6, 6:6).
The most vociferous and besmirchful New Atheist could not hope to write a book that is more anti-religion than the Bible.
Christopher Hitchens is very entertaining, emotive, vociferous and expresses his personal outrage very well. However, he often ends up merely succeeding in arguing against his own misunderstandings. He knocks himself out while shadow boxing.