Emancipation of the Mind

Christopher Hitchens is interviewed in the Atlantic Monthly. Here's an excerpt (interviewer in bold and then Hitchens's response):

All right, here it is: the fact that all these totalitarian regimes keep popping up, with or without religion, just shows that people have a tendency toward hero worship, and leaders have a tendency to corrupt that power. Religion might be a tool that leaders can use. But it’s awfully tricky to find religious motives behind every anti-religious dictatorship.

You’re quite right. Atheism is a necessary condition for emancipation of the mind, but it’s not a sufficient one. You can free yourself from superstition and still end up a nihilist or a hedonist or a Stalinist. What’s innate in our species isn’t the fault of religion. But the bad things that are innate in our species are strengthened by religion and sanctified by it. The fact is, we are a mammalian species one half-chromosome away from chimpanzees, and it shows. Curing ourselves of religion is only a small step along the road. Fortunately, our brains seem to be evolving.

His three major points in the interview seem to be: most people who claim to be religious may in fact just belong to social clubs (it's impossible for them to believe in the things their religions demand they believe in - virgin births, for example), religion is all right if it's personal (i.e., if you keep it to yourself), and atheism is only as good as its ability to steer clear of right-wing totalitarianism and cults-of-personality. Hard to disagree.