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
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:
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
[p. 24] The details of the murder of Yusra al-Azami in Bethlehem can be found in “Gaza Taliban?,” editorial,
[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,”
[p. 33] For James Madison on the constitutionality of religious establishment in government or public service, see Brooke Allen,
[p. 35] For Charles Stanley and Tim LaHaye, see Charles Marsh, “Wayward Christian Soldiers,”
CHAPTER FOUR
A NOTE ON HEALTH, TO WHICH RELIGION CAN BE HAZARDOUS
[p. 45] For the Bishop Cifuentes sermon, see the BBC-TV production
[p. 46] The
[p. 47] For Daniel Dennett’s criticisms of religion, see his
[p. 57] For the Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins quote, see their
[p. 59] Pervez Hoodbhoy’s comments on the Pakistani nuclear tests can be found in
CHAPTER FIVE
THE METAPHYSICAL CLAIMS OF RELIGION ARE FALSE
[p. 68] E. P. Thompson,
[p. 69] Father Coplestone’s commentary is from his
