What Has Atheism Done for You Lately?
"The late Christopher Hitchens famously declared that religion poisons everything, but for someone of surpassing intelligence, the statement is an embarrassment. It conflates all religions and it’s an overly broad generalization. To refute it you need but show that religion is good for something. You might even demonstrate that the irreligious among us are handing out their own mental poison.
If we ask what religion has done for anyone lately, Byron Johnson and Maria Pagano respond that, in the world of drug and alcohol abuse, it offers distinct and measurable benefits."
Hitchens was a drunk and, like many drunks, saw that removing himself from a worshiping community and putting on the chasuble of "atheist" not only permitted him to indulge in the god of inebriation, but gave him a nice market niche for his well-compensated writings, public speeches and television appearances.