Just a quick aside to the person who checked out Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything before me from the Missoula Public Library: thanks. No, I mean it. It wasn’t enough for me to appreciate Hitchens’ wit and intellect.
I wouldn’t have pumped my fist in the air and said “Yes!” after each insight into religion and the human condition without your helpful brackets, exclamation points, lines, arrows, dog ears, and other notations. Reading it, I’m excited. And I’m happy you’re excited. After all, this is one of the best polemics against faith and superstition on the bookshelves today.
Who can blame you for wanting to share your joy? I can only assume there was no one else in your life to share it with; perhaps you’re newly freed from the shackles of a local church and feeling unsure of your intellectual liberty. However, I can’t help but notice the supreme irony of your markings and spindlings.
In a book devoted to the argument that unbelievers can and do operate from a position of moral and ethical superiority, in a book owned by a public library–the very heart of a secular society that’s constantly under fire from fundamentalists of every stripe who lust to ban books and thus knowledge–you choose to deface public property. Thanks.