Christopher Hitchens Criticized for Errors in Book

Mark Oppenheimer, writing for The Huffington Post’s Eat the Press, recently criticized Christopher Hitchens for perpetuating a myth about Orthodox Jews in his book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Oppenheimer writes:

On p. 54, Hitchens writes, “Orthodox Jews conduct Congress by means of a hole in the sheet…” This is, as even most idiots know, a total fabrication. As a lie, it’s not as bad as the blood libel, but it’s not so far from the old tales of sexual perversion in Catholic monasteries and convents — it’s a lie meant to discredit a whole people by making them seem sexually bizarre and far outside decent society.

Oppenheimer goes on to show us that snopes.com agrees that this is just a myth.

Recently, Hitchens was on Lou Dobbs and Dobbs put up a list from Hitchens which listed famous virgin births. One of the ones that struck me as odd was Buddha. In my studies of Buddhism, I don’t remember ever reading anything about a virgin birth.

He is referring to stories that later came about regarding Buddha being born through a slit in his mother’s side. This is nothing but an example of a story becoming corrupted over time with repeated re-telling. More info here.

Here’s the video in case you missed it: