Gunning for God (38 page)

33.
Dawkins,
A Devil’s Chaplain
, pp.288???.

34.
Baggini,
Atheism
, p.33.

35.
GNG
, p.5.

36.
Immanuel Kant,
Critique of Pure Reason
, p. 29 Bxxix-xxx.

37.
We should note here a further common use of “faith” to describe a body of doctrine.

38.
I am writing as a Christian. It is only fair and right that the representatives of other religions should respond to any New Atheist charge against them.

39.
John 20:25.

40.
John 20:26–29. The New Atheists might notice the use of the term “believe” in the translation rather than the term “faith” even though they are equivalent.

41.
Baggini,
Atheism
, p.33.

42.
Baggini is not alone. Philosopher A. C. Grayling is equally confused about the definition of faith – see p.49.

43.
John 20:30–31.

44.
For example, John 2:11, 3:2, 4:41, 4:53, 6:14.

45.
Times Higher Education Supplement
review of
GD
, 1 September 2006. Or see http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/terry-eagleton/lunging-flailing-mispunching.

46.
GD
, p.347.

47.
GD
, p.28.

48.
Acts 26:24.

49.
Alister McGrath,
Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life
, Oxford, Blackwell, 2005, p.87.

50.
Sigmund Freud,
The Future of an Illusion (Die Zukunft einer Illusion, 1927)
English translation by James Strachey, New York, London, W. W. Norton & Company, 1975.

51.
IDA
, p.23.

52.
IDA
, p.27.

53.
Manfred Lütz,
Gott: Eine kleine Geschichte des Grössten
, München, Pattloch, 2007.

54.
See the New York Review of Books http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1998/nov/19/discreet-charm-of-nihilism/.

55.
Lütz,
Gott: Eine kleine Geschichte des Grössten
– Lütz also argues in detail that the same holds for Jung and Frankl.

56.
GD
, p. 51.

57.
Daily Telegraph
Science Extra, 11 September 1989.

58.
Templeton Prize Address, 1995, http://www.origins.org/articles/davies_templetonaddress.html.

59.
See Max Jammer,
Einstein and Religion
, Princeton, University Press, 1999, p.94.

60.
GD
, p.34.

61.
See particularly Jammer,
Einstein and Religion
, p.50.

62.
Jammer,
Einstein and Religion
, p.48.

63.
Letter from Einstein to Phyllis Wright
, 24 January 1936, Albert Einstein Archive 52-337. Cited by Walter Isaacson,
Einstein
, London, Simon and Schuster, 2007, p.388.

64.
New Scientist
, 8 November 2007.

65.
I am of course aware that Einstein is an advance on Newton; but we should not forget that Newton’s laws are still accurate enough to do the necessary calculations to put a man on the moon.

66.
At a deeper level there are uncertainties within mathematics as shown by the work of Kurt Gödel, but we cannot digress to discuss them here.

67.
As is the case in my own field of algebra with the Classification of Finite Simple Groups.

68.
IDA
, p.1.

69.
GD
, p.125.

70.
Eugene Wigner
Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics
, Vol.13, No.1 (February 1960), New York, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

71.
Which argument, if valid, would of course, by the same token, dismiss atheism also.

72.
See John Haught,
God and the New Atheism
, Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2008, p.57.

73.
Hawking and Mlodinow,
The Grand Design
, p.181.

74.
John Gray,
Straw Dogs
, London, Granta Books, 2002, p.26.

75.
For the detail of this argument see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-science/.

76.
Materialism is the view that nothing exists apart from matter (or “mass-energy” in more technical terms) so that ultimate reality is the material universe.

77.
GD
, p.351.

Chapter 2: Is Religion Poisonous?

1.
Richard Brooks,
Sunday Times
, 2 September 2007.

2.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/wtwtgod/3518375.stm.

3.
Humphrys,
In God We Doubt
, p.117.

4.
GNG
, Chapter 13.

5.
GD
, p.49.

6.
GD
, p.342.

7.
Keith Ward,
Is Religion Dangerous?
, Oxford, Lion Hudson, 2006, p.55.

8.
In an edited transcript of a talk given at the Atheist Alliance conference in Washington D.C. on 28 September 2007.

9.
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell2.htm.

10.
Although Onfray entitles his book more broadly:
In Defence of Atheism
:
The Case against Christianity, Judaism and Islam
.

11.
E.g. Dawkins: “Unless otherwise stated, I shall have Christianity mostly in mind…”,
GD
, p.58.

12.
GNG
, p.11.

13.
Sam Harris,
Letter to a Christian Nation
New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

14.
It is not hard to see how such ideas could fan the flames of persecution against Christians.

15.
Matthew 26:52.

16.
For a discussion of miracles see Chapter 7.

17.
Luke 22:51.

18.
It is therefore clear that, when Christ said he had “not come to bring peace but a sword” (Matthew 10:34), he did not mean a physical sword; but rather that attitudes to him would lead to spiritual division within society and family. Some would accept him, and others reject him.

19.
John 19:12.

20.
John 18:28 - 19:16.

21.
Zechariah 9:9; John 12:12–19.

22.
John 18:36. In Greek the tenses in this hypothetical conditional sentence can refer either to the present, i.e. “my servants would now be fighting”, or to a past process, “my disciples would have been fighting”. According to Greek scholar Professor David Gooding, this second translation is to be preferred. Christ is referring to what happened in Gethsemane, when he forbade his disciples to fight in order to prevent his arrest by the Jews.

23.
John 18:37.

24.
It is important to note, however, that not all of that community supported these charges. By far the majority of Jesus’ early followers were Jews. In addition, two prominent members of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, disassociated themselves from the verdict against Christ by requesting his body to give it a proper burial.

25.
Matthew 23:23–28.

26.
Klaus Müller,
Streit um Gott
, Regensburg, 2006, p.33 (translation mine).

27.
Arnold Angenendt,
Toleranz und Gewalt
, Münster, Verlag Aschendorff, 2009.

28.
Die Tageszeitung
, 5th January 2008.

29.
Maarten t’Hart,
Mozart und Ich,
Munich, Piper, 2006.

30.
Angenendt,
Toleranz und Gewalt
, p.15.

31.
GD
, p.354.

32.
GD
, p.52.

33.
GD
, p.298.

34.
Times Higher Education Supplement
review of
GD
, 1 September 2006. Or see http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/terry-eagleton/lunging-flailing-mispunching.

35.
Jürgen Habermas,
Glaube und Wissen
, Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 2001, Frankfurt am Main, 2001, p.25.

36.
Jürgen Habermas,
Time of Transitions
, New York, Polity Press, 2006.

37.
http://www.ttf.org/index/journal/detail/atheism-and-moral-clarity/.

38.
David Sloan Wilson “Beyond Demonic Memes: Why Richard Dawkins is Wrong about Religion”, Internet magazine
eSceptic
, 4 July 2007.

39.
See Helen Phillips,
New Scientist
, 1 September 2007, pp.32–36.

40.
Ibid
.

41.
Nicholas Beale and Sir John Polkinghorne,
Questions of Truth
, Westminster, John Knox Press, 2009.

42.
Professor Andrew Sims,
Is Faith Delusion?: Why Religion is Good For Your Health
, London, Continuum, 2009.

43.
Ibid.,
p.100.

44.
Ibid.,
from the Preface.

45.
Matthew Parris,
The Times
, 27 December 2008.

46.
Ward,
Is Religion Dangerous?
, p.40.

47.
David Berlinski,
The Devil’s Delusion – Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions,
New York, Crown Forum, 2008, p.21.

48.
Noam Chomsky,
New Scientist
, 26 July 2008, p.46.

Chapter 3: Is Atheism Poisonous?

1.
Marilynne Robinson, “Review of
The God Delusion
”,
Harper’s Magazine
, 2006. See http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/10/20/.

2.
GNG
, p.230.

3.
Peter Berkowitz,
The Wall Street Journal
, 16 July 2007, p.A13.

4.
Chris Hedges,
I Don’t Believe in Atheists
, New York, Free Press, 2008, p.54.

5.
GNG
, p.57.

6.
John Gray,
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia,
London, Penguin, 2007, pp.36, 39.

7.
GD
, p.34.

8.
GD
, p.309.

9.
GD
, pp.315–16.

10.
Peter Berkowitz, “The New New Atheism”,
The Wall Street Journal
, 16 July 2007, p.A13.

11.
GNG
, p.12.

12.
The Difference between the Natural Philosophy of Democritus and the Natural Philosophy of Epicurus
, translated in K. Marx and F. Engels,
On Religion
, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1955, p.15.

13.
Ibid
. p.5.

14.
Black Book of Communism
, ed. Stephane Courtois, Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1999.

15.
Michael Rissmann,
Hitlers Gott: Vorsehungsglaube und Sendungsbewusstsein des deutschen Diktators
, Zürich, Pendo, 2001.

16.
The main ideas of his book are also to be found in Rissmann’s essay, “Hitlers Vorsehungsglaube und seine Wirkung” (Communio 4/2002, S.358-367).

17.
Hitler’s Table Talk
, stenographic notes of Hitler’s private conversations, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1953.

18.
GD
, p.309.

19.
Berlinski,
The Devil’s Delusion
, pp.26–27.

20.
Richard Schröder,
Abschaffung der Religion
, Freiburg im Breisgau, Herder, 2008, p.18, translation mine.

21.
Richard Dawkins,
The Greatest Show on Earth
, London, Bantam Press, 2009.

22.
In
50 Voices of Disbelief
, eds. Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk, Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, p.290.

23.
Cited by Ruth Gledhill,
The Times
, 2 April 2010.

24.
GD
, p.342.

25.
Gray,
Black Mass
, p.198.

26.
Romans 5:12.

27.
Gray,
Black Mass
, p.36.

28.
Revelation 6.

29.
Harris,
The End of Faith
, pp.52–53.