Hitchens and John Lennox at the "Is God Great?" debate in AlabamaHitchens often speaks out against the Abrahamic religions, or what he calls "the three great monotheisms" (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). He said: "The real axis of evil is Islam, Christianity and Judaism,". In his book, God Is Not Great, Hitchens expanded his criticism to include all religions, including those rarely criticized by Western secularists such as Hinduism and neo-paganism. His book had mixed reactions, from praise in The New York Times for his "logical flourishes and conundrums"[117] to accusations of "intellectual and moral shabbiness" in The Financial Times.[118] God Is Not Great was nominated for a National Book Award on 10 October 2007.[119][120]
Hitchens contends that organized religion is "the main source of hatred in the world",[121] "[v]iolent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children",