Hitchens has expressed excellent thoughts and I agree with your positive highlighting of his passages. As I have nothing further to add to the points of agreement, I would like to comment on where I have objections.

I am not a religious believer. In order to be absolutely honest, I should not leave you with the impression that I am part of the generalised agnosticism of our culture. I am not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually the case.

Christopher Hitchens succumbs here funnily enough, in my view, to what he described as "that which is most difficult to recognise is right in front of your nose".

The considerable social pressure to repeat the same thing over and over again is expressed in the fact that "religion and faith" are impressively often lumped together with "church and institution". This trend in saying so stretches itself through so many writings that I lost count of them.

But what is right in front of our noses, what is obvious, such as the Ten Commandments, whose rules are familiar to everyone, such as the fact that murder, lying, stealing, cheating and greed are accepted as vices, is not taken note of, precisely because it is so obvious. Now, through what are the commandments brought to us? Through atheism, anti-theism, nihilism, any -ism?

"Faith" is in its best example based on the conviction that the commandments are correct and in deed there is nothing wrong with them. These rules have therefore not lost their validity. This makes it all the more astonishing for Hitchens to claim that "all religions are versions of the same falsehood", an extremely presumptuous assertion, since one must assume that he would have to have dealt with "all religions" in depth and breadth (both, theoretically and practically).
If he had, he would probably have come to a different conclusion: That religion impregnated virtues in the self-image of the respective culture because no reasonable mind could find the slightest fault with them (at least with the seven of the ten). These for us Christian rules are obviously correct.

In addition to its theoretical dogmas, religion has never ignored the practical actions, such as how the deceased are dealt with. They are buried ceremonially, there is a place (chapel and church) where the mourners can gather, there is a pastor/priest who is confident and not insecure in this matter and leads the ceremony, there is the tradition of the funeral feast and wake and so on.

Even those who speak of themselves as non-religious are thankful to take advantage of this service, it would be more than strange if we no longer carried out such traditions as a matter of course.

What Hitchens means by "false claims of religion" here is not clear. He is probably referring to beliefs about God. If one wants to stick to attacking that, one can, but is it relevant or helpful to attack something that says "belief" in name and not "knowledge"? Does that make the rules of the commandments wrong?

One can impute either ignorance or at least an imprecise and careless use of terms to Hitchens here. I think it is important to differentiate between "religion" and its "institutions". There is no doubt that atrocities and injustice have been carried out in the name of religion (in the name of Christ and God), but then I would say that the first and second commandments have been violated, as the exploiters of religion and its institutional power have placed themselves under its name and used it for their own dishonest purposes and then blamed it on religion. A clever and evil move to shake people's faith and put it to the hardest test. To speak in biblical terms: That is exactly what you would the devil do in order to spread discord.

It denigrates religion as a whole and that is the actual harmful thing, in my view.
It's like blaming alcohol for alcoholism or the knife for stabbings.

So much for my take on Hitchens expressed thoughts in here.

Greetings and bye.