At first sight this seems the usual delightfully charming Hitchens saying the kind of things he was and is so famous and fondly remembered for. Only on second or third sight did I realize that, at least this time, the great man was in error. Completely in error.
For one thing, it is an unforgiveable insult to chimpanzees all over the world; worse, to the entire -- sans H. sapiens -- animal kingdom on this planet. If creating gods really is maladaptive, irrational, and just plain foolish, then we humans must be at the bottom of the evolutionary cesspool, hardly near the top. Yet Hitchens unfortunately implies exactly the opposite, as though creating supernatural beings somehow "reduces" our evolutionary pedestal down to the level of our clownish closest cousin. By half a chromosome, but that's a lot.
But then I re-wondered about it. How do we know that chimps haven't made, somewhere in their history, things akin to our gods? They certainly aren't capable of science, nowhere near to our level at least; so why shouldn't they believe in the supernatural? Lack of science is certainly most the reason almost all of our ancestors believed in gods and other supernatural phenomenon.
On the other hand, are chimps capable of belief, which involves some pretty sophisticated cognition skills? I don't know if (or how) there have been studies of this, or even conclusions drawn, but I will say this: don't bet your life's fortune that the answer is negative. So many animals, including the other apes, have been shown over the last 20-40 years to possess much more sophisticated behaviors and cognition skills than we'd ever suspected. New discoveries seem to happen almost daily. (Hence the animal rights movement.)
"Half a chromosome away from being chimpanzee" is probably at least a bad analogy; that little bit of DNA might not make as much difference as we suppose. It is certainly nothing to be either proud or ashamed of, and quite possibly has nothing to do with believing in gods or not.
Still -- it sounds so Hitch. So on the money.
