Oh, this is great fun. Read Laura Sheahen’s interview with writer/atheist/furious former Trotskyist Christopher Hitchens, author of the new book “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”

Here he is, in all his charming contrariness. An excerpt:

How do you think atheists should get along interpersonally with people of strong faith? Obviously, if they’re trying to convert you, that’s one thing, but if they’re just…

I don’t mind them trying to convert me at all. I welcome it. I’ve proved to be as difficult to convert as I am to hypnotize.

How many people have tried to hypnotize you?

Oh, several. I really ought to give up smoking. So not only did I try it, but I sort of wanted it to work. I wasn’t resisting. I was really hoping it would happen, and nothing did. It seemed to come to snake oil to me, but to take a step back, a lot of my religious friends have a habit that they don’t realize irritates me, of saying that I wouldn’t…write about [hating religion] as much as I do if I wasn’t secretly a rather religious person. And that I’m really just a seeker in disguise. I basically know that’s not true of me myself.

Yet you’ve made a swing politically from the left at least somewhat to the right. Do you think there’s a chance you would swing from unbelief to faith?

I’d rather not put it like that, but I know what you mean. It would have to be the equivalent of undergoing some transformation of the chemistry of my brain. I might have a stroke or become an epileptic and become religious, I suppose. But it would take that.