It’s almost bizarre that Christopher Hitchens mentions Tolstoy and Dostoevsky as some type of secular thinker. They were Christian writers through and through! They not only quote the Bible at times, their plots are shaped by Christian patterns. Tolstoy even wrote about Christianity and art and promulgated what many would think was a rather narrow view of the intersection between the two. As for George Eliot, her idea that one could preserve Christian morality without the Christian god was the basis for Nietzsche’s mockery. I think it was at The Corner where I found cited a blogger’s delicious summary of Hitchens’s new book. It went something like: if God exists, he would not have permitted me to write my book, since my book is against God. But my book exists, so that must mean God doesn’t. It’s seeming more and more likely that this is exactly the level Hitchens is on.