[p. 96] Voltaire’s statement—Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer—is taken from his «À l’auteur du livre des trois imposteurs», Epîtres, no. 96 (1770).
[p. 96] Sam Harris’s observation on Jesus being born of a virgin can be found in his The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005).
CHAPTER SEVEN
REVELATION: THE NIGHTMARE OF THE «OLD» TESTAMENT
[p. 102] For Finkelstein and Silberman’s work, see Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s
New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (New York: Touchstone, 2002).
[p. 103] For Sigmund Freud on religion’s incurable deficiency, see The Future of an Illusion, translated by W. D. Robson-Scott, revised and newly edited by James Strachey (New York: Anchor, 1964).
[p. 104] The Thomas Paine quotation is from The Age of Reason in Eric Foner, ed., Collected Writings (Library of America, 1995).
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE «NEW» TESTAMENT EXCEEDS THE EVIL OF THE «OLD» ONE
[p. 110] For H. L. Mencken’s assessment of the New Testament, see his Treatise on the Gods (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 176.
[p. 118] For C. S. Lewis’s quotation beginning «Now, unless the speaker is God», see his Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), pp. 51–52.
[p. 119] For C. S. Lewis’s quotation beginning «That is the one thing we must not say», see Mere Christianity, p. 52. For his quotation beginning «Now it seems to me obvious», see p. 53.
[p. 122] For Bart Ehrman, see his Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (New York: HarperCollins, 2005).
CHAPTER NINE
THE KORAN IS BORROWED FROM BOTH JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN MYTHS
[p. 124] For why Muslims must recite the Koran in its original Arabic, see Ziauddin Sardar and Zafar Abbas Malik, Introducing Mohammed (Totem Books, 1994), p. 47.
[p. 136] The Karen Armstrong quotation comes from her Islam: A Short History (New York: Modem Library, 2000), p. 10.
CHAPTER TEN
THE TAWDRINESS OF THE MIRACULOUS AND THE DECLINE OF HELL
[pp. 145–146] The Malcolm Muggeridge and Ken Macmillan anec-dotes regarding Mother Teresa are included in my Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (Verso, 1995), pp. 25–26.
[p. 147] The information on Monica Besra’s tumor and recovery comes from Aroup Chatterjee, Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict (Calcutta: Meteor Books, 2003), pp. 403–406.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
«THE LOWLY STAMP OF THEIR ORIGIN»: RELIGION’S CORRUPT BEGINNINGS
[p. 164] Mark Twain’s «chloroform in print» comes from his Roughing It (New York: Signet Classics, 1994), p. 102.
[p. 165] On the possible utility of religion in curing disease, see Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Viking Adult, 2006).
[p. 165] For Sir James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1922), see http://www.bartleby.com/196/.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A CODA: HOW RELIGIONS END
[p. 170] For the story of Sabbatai Sevi, see John Freely, The Last Messiah (New York: Viking Penguin, 2001).
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DOES RELIGION MAKE PEOPLE BEHAVE BETTER?
[p. 177] The information on William Lloyd Garrison can be found in his letter to Rev. Samuel J. May, July 17, 1845, in Walter M. Merrill, ed., The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison (1973) 3:303, and in The Liberator, May 6, 1842.
[p. 178] The information on Lincoln comes from Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004), p. 118.
[p. 181] Barbary ambassador Abdrahaman’s justification for slavery is included in my Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), p. 128.
[p. 191] The material on Rwandan genocide is derived primarily from Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998) pp. 69–141.
[pp. 201–202] The philosophy of «Gudo» and the Nichiren declaration
are excerpted from Brian Victoria’s Zen at War (Weatherhill, 1997), pp. 41 and 84, respectively; the Japanese Buddhist wartime proclamations are from pp. 86–87.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
IS RELIGION CHILD ABUSE?
[p. 220] Mary McCarthy, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (New York: Harcourt, 1946).
[p. 221] Joseph Schumpeter’s model of «creative destruction» can be found in his Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1976), pp. 81–86.
[p. 224] For Maimonides on circumcision, see Leonard B. Glick, Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 64–66 [emphasis added].
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AN OBJECTION ANTICIPATED: THE LAST-DITCH «CASE» AGAINST SECULARISM
[p. 239–240] On the Vatican’s endorsement of Nazi Germany, see John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York: Viking Adult, 1999).
[p. 242] On the misrepresentation of Einstein, see William Waterhouse, «Misquoting Einstein», in Skeptic vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 60–61.
[p. 250] For H. L. Mencken’s social Darwinism, see his Treatise on the Gods (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 176.
[p. 250] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, 1994).
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A FINER TRADITION: THE RESISTANCE OF THE RATIONAL
[p. 262] Einstein’s statement on «Spinoza’s god» can be found in Jennifer Michael Hecht’s Doubt: A History (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), p. 447. See also Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times (New York: Avon, 1984), p. 502.
[p. 263] The Heinrich Heine quotation can be found in Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History, p. 376. See also Heine as cited in Joseph Ratner’s introduction to The Philosophy of Spinoza: Selections from His Works (New York: Modern Library, 1927).
[p. 264] The information about Pierre Bayle can be found in Ruth Whelan, «Bayle, Pierre», in Tom Flynn, ed., The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006).
[p. 265] The Matteo de Vincenti quotation can be found in Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History, p. 287. See also Nicholas Davidson, «Unbelief and Atheism in Italy, 1500–1700», in Michael Hunter and David Wootton, ed., Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1992), p. 63.
[p. 266] Benjamin Franklin’s quotation on the lightning rod can be found in The Autobiography and Other Writings (New York: Penguin, 1986), p. 213.
[p. 268] Hume’s quotation can be found in Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History, p. 351.
[p. 268] The information on Paine and his religious views comes from Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History, pp. 356–57.
[p. 271] The Albert Einstein quotation beginning «It was, of course, a lie» can be found in Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History, p. 447. See also Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffinan, eds., Albert Einstein, the Human Side: New Glimpses from His Archives, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 43. The quotation beginning «I do not believe in the immortality of the individual» can be found in Hecht, Doubt: A History, p. 447. See also Dukas and Hoffman, Albert Einstein, the Human Side, p. 39.