However, only the most naive utopian can believe that this new humane civilization will develop, like some dream of «progress», in a straight line. We have first to transcend our prehistory, and escape the gnarled hands which reach out to drag us back to the catacombs and the reeking altars and the guilty pleasures of subjection and abjection. «Know yourself», said the Greeks, gently suggesting the consolations of philosophy. To clear the mind for this project, it has become necessary to know the enemy, and to prepare to fight it.
Acknowledgments
I have been writing this book all my life and intend to keep on writing it, but it would have been impossible to produce this version without the extraordinary collaboration between agent and publisher — I mean to say Steve Wasserman and Jonathan Karp — that enabled me. All authors ought to have such careful and literate friends and allies. All authors ought also to have book-finders as astute and determined as Windsor Mann.
My old schoolfriend Michael Prest was the first person to make it plain to me that while the authorities could compel us to attend prayers, they could not force us to pray. I shall always remember his upright posture while others hypocritically knelt or inclined themselves, and also the day that I decided to join him. All postures of submission and surrender should be part of our prehistory.
I have been fortunate in having many moral tutors, formal and informal, many of whom had to undergo considerable intellectual trial, and evince notable courage, in order to break with the faith of their tribes. Some of these would still be in some danger if I were to name them, but I must admit my debt to the late Dr. Israel Shahak, who introduced me to Spinoza; to Salman Rushdie, who bravely witnessed for reason and humor and language in a very dark time; to Ibn Warraq and Irfan Khawaja, who also know something about the price of the ticket; and to Dr. Michael Shermer, the very model of the reformed and recovered Christian fundamentalist. Among the many others who have shown that life and wit and inquiry begin just at the point where faith ends, I ought to salute Penn and Teller, that other amazing myth- and fraud-buster James Randi (Houdini of our time), and Tom Flynn, Andrea Szalanski and all the other staffers at Free Inquiry magazine. Jennifer Michael Hecht put me immensely in her debt when she sent me a copy of her extraordinary Doubt: A History.
To all those who I do not know, and who live in the worlds where superstition and barbarism are still dominant, and into whose hands I hope this little book may fall, I offer the modest encouragement of an older wisdom. It is in fact this, and not any arrogant preaching, that comes to us out of the whirlwind: Die Stimme der Vernunft ist leise. Yes, «The voice of Reason is soft». But it is very persistent. In this, and in the lives and minds of combatants known and unknown, we repose our chief hope.
Over many years I have pursued these questions with Ian McEwan, whose body of fiction shows an extraordinary ability to elucidate the numinous without conceding anything to the supernatural. He has subtly demonstrated that the natural is wondrous enough for anyone. It was in some discussions with Ian, first on that remote Uruguayan coast where Darwin so boldly put ashore and took samples, and later in Manhattan, that I felt this essay beginning to germinate. I am very proud to have sought and received his permission to dedicate the ensuing pages to him.
REFERENCES
CHAPTER TWO
RELIGION KILLS
[p. 17–18] Mother Teresa was interviewed by Daphne Barak, and her comments on Princess Diana can be found in Ladies’ Home Journal, April 1996.
[p. 24] The details of the murder of Yusra al-Azami in Bethlehem can be found in «Gaza Taliban?» editorial, New Humanist 121:1 (January 2006), http://www.newhumanist.org.uk/volume121issuel_comments.php?id=1860_0_40_0_C. See also Isabel Kershner, «The Sheikh’s Revenge», Jerusalem Report, March 20, 2006.
[p. 27] For Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s letter to Osama bin Laden, see http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/31694.htm.
[p. 33] For the story of the born-again Air Force Academy cadets and MeLinda Morton, see Faye Fiore and Mark Mazzetti, «School’s Religious Intolerance Misguided, Pentagon Reports», Los Angeles Times, June 23, 2005, p. 10; Laurie Goodstein, «Air Force Academy Staff Found Promoting Religion», New York Times, June 23, 2005, p. A12; David Van Biema, «Whose God Is Their Co-Pilot?» Time, June 27, 2005, p. 61; and United States Air Force, The Report of the Headquarters Review Group Concerning the Religious Climate at the U.S. Air Force Academy, June 22, 2005, http://www.afmil/shared/media/document/AFD-051014-008.pdf
[p. 33] For James Madison on the constitutionality of religious establishment in government or public service, see Brooke Allen, Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006), pp. 116–117.
[p. 35] For Charles Stanley and Tim LaHaye, see Charles Marsh, «Wayward Christian Soldiers», New York Times, January 20, 2006.
CHAPTER FOUR
A NOTE ON HEALTH, TO WHICH RELIGION CAN BE HAZARDOUS
[p. 45] For the Bishop Cifuentes sermon, see the BBC-TV production Panorama, aired June 27, 2004.
[p. 46] The Foreign Policy quotation comes from Laura M. Kelley and Nicholas Eberstadt, «The Muslim Face of AIDS», Foreign Policy, July/August 2005, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3081.
[p. 47] For Daniel Dennett’s criticisms of religion, see his Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Viking Adult, 2006).
[p. 57] For the Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins quote, see their Glorious Appearing: The End of Days (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 2004), pp. 250, 260.
[p. 59] Pervez Hoodbhoy’s comments on the Pakistani nuclear tests can be found in Free Inquiry, spring 2002.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE METAPHYSICAL CLAIMS OF RELIGION ARE FALSE
[p. 68] E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage, 1966), p. 12.
[p. 69] Father Coplestone’s commentary is from his History ofPhilosophy, vol. iii (Kent, England: Search Press, 1953).
CHAPTER SIX
ARGUMENTS FROM DESIGN
[pp. 81–83] On the evolution of the eye and why it argues against intelligent design, see Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design (New York: Times Books, 2006), p. 17. The emphasis is in the original. See also Climbing Mount Improbable, by Richard Dawkins (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), pp. 138–197.
[p. 87] For the University of Oregon «irreducible complexity» study, see Jamie T. Bridgham, Sean M. Carroll, and Joseph W. Thornton, «Evolution of Hormone-Receptor Complexity by Molecular Exploitation», Science 312:5770 (April 7, 2006): pp. 97–101.
[p. 93] For Stephen Jay Gould’s quotation on the Burgess shale, see his Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), p. 323.
[p. 95] For the University of Chicago human genome study, see Nicholas Wade, «Still Evolving, Human Genes Tell New Story», New York Times, March 7, 2006.