It's probable that most conservatives won't read Christopher Hitchens' book. The title alone could prevent the superstitious from even touching the book in a bookstore. Hitchens may be the "village atheist" as the New York Times called him, but if religionists knew that Hitchens was hostile to Bill Clinton, is an anti-Zionist and is a supporter of George W's Iraq war, they might be intrigued enough to tackle this very educational read.

With chapters like "…Why Heaven Hates Ham," "A Note on Health, to Which Religion can be Hazardous," "Is Religion Child Abuse?" and "...Religion's Corrupt Beginnings," the book covers every aspect of religion's affects on humanity. It will inform believers and non believers of facts forgotten (or never learned), such as the list of nine virgin births in religions and mythology, not including Jesus (page 23). Think we're living in an enlightened age? In chapter four, the reader learns that Timothy Dwight, an admired minister and a president of Yale University, opposed the smallpox vaccination because it [was] "an interference with god's design." The same chapter tells of newborn boys who died in New York City in 2005, victims of herpes infections they contracted during religious circumcision rites.

Some information in the book will not be a surprise to the fundamentalists who pride themselves on scripture knowledge. Moses' order to parents to stone their disobedient children to death, orders to armies to kill conquered males but keep "women-children that hath not known a man by lying with him…alive for yourselves," contradictory commandments ("Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live") - these are familiar. However, few churches spend any time teaching how the book came to be "the Bible" - who decided which writings to include and which to destroy, when the Bible was put together (hundreds of years after Jesus allegedly lived), and the Gnostic gospels' existence.

After finishing the book, I went online to read some reviews. One wrote that Hitchens "demonized" religion, another that he was "picking a fight," and one reviewer said indignantly that Hitchens calls those he "wishes to ridicule by their zoological class…mammals."

Yes, Hitchens gives religion full credit for the bad it has done; however, the choice of the word "demonize" is interesting, as atheists do not acknowledge the existence of demons. The reviewer's word choice demonstrates religion's insidious influence, filling our world and language with supernatural references. Is Hitchens picking a fight? It seems that people knocking on doors to distribute unwelcome religious pamphlets to those who didn't ask for them are spoiling for a fight much more than a scholar who writes a well-researched book and leaves it to the public to buy the book or not. The complaint that Hitchens calls people "mammals" to denigrate them is just wrong. Humans are mammals, and Hitchens refers to himself as a mammal on page 76. Religionists might prefer to think of themselves as "immortal souls." But there is no empirical proof of a "soul," while there's no denial of our physical nature. Calling a human an animal is not an insult, it's a scientific fact.

Hitchens agrees with many of his contemporaries that religion is so deeply ingrained in societies, it is probably ineradicable. However, he clearly sees the dangers of this poison we ingest, and he writes to warn of its lethal properties.

People may choose to continue ingesting religion, but here's a chance for consumers to read the product's "warning label."