The God Delusion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion

The God Delusion

First edition UK cover
Author	Richard Dawkins
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Subjects	Criticism of religion atheism
Publisher	Bantam Books
Publication date	2 October 2006
Media type	Print (hardcover and paperback)
Pages	464
ISBN	978-0-618-68000-9
Dewey Decimal	211/.8 22
LC Class	BL2775.3 .D39 2006

The God Delusion is a 2006 book by British evolutionary biologist, ethologist Richard Dawkins, a professorial fellow at New College, Oxford and, at the time of publication, the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford.

In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator, God, almost certainly does not exist, and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig's statement in Lila (1991) that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion." With many examples, he explains that one does not need religion to be moral and that the roots of religion and of morality can be explained in non-religious terms.

In early December 2006, it reached number four in the New York Times Hardcover Non-Fiction Best Seller list after nine weeks on the list. More than three million copies were sold. According to Dawkins in a 2016 interview with Matt Dillahunty, an unauthorised Arabic translation of this book has been downloaded 3 million times in Saudi Arabia. The book has attracted widespread commentary, with many books written in response.

Background

Dawkins has argued against creationist explanations of life in his previous works on evolution. The theme of The Blind Watchmaker, published in 1986, is that evolution can explain the apparent design in nature. In The God Delusion he focuses directly on a wider range of arguments used for and against belief in the existence of a god (or gods).

Dawkins identifies himself repeatedly as an atheist, while also pointing out that, in a sense, he is also agnostic, though "only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden".

Dawkins had long wanted to write a book openly criticising religion, but his publisher had advised against it. By 2006, his publisher had warmed to the idea. Dawkins attributes this change of mind to "four years of Bush" (who "literally said that God had told him to invade Iraq"). By that time, a number of authors, including Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, who together with Dawkins were labelled "The Unholy Trinity" by Robert Weitzel, had already written books openly attacking religion. According to the Amazon.co.uk retailer in August 2007, the book was the best-seller in their sales of books on religion and spirituality, with Hitchens's God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything coming second. This led to a 50% growth in that category over the three years to that date.

Synopsis

Dawkins dedicates the book to Douglas Adams and quotes the novelist: "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" The book contains ten chapters. The first few chapters make a case that there almost certainly is no God, while the rest discuss religion and morality.

Dawkins writes that The God Delusion contains four "consciousness-raising" messages:

1. Atheists can be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled.
2. Natural selection and similar scientific theories are superior to a "God hypothesis"—the illusion of intelligent design—in explaining the living world and the cosmos.
3. Children should not be labelled by their parents' religion. Terms like "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should make people cringe.
4. Atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind.

"God hypothesis"

Chapter one, "A deeply religious non-believer", seeks to clarify the difference between what Dawkins terms "Einsteinian religion" and "supernatural religion". He notes that the former includes quasi-mystical and pantheistic references to God in the work of physicists like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, and describes such pantheism as "sexed up atheism". Dawkins instead takes issue with the theism present in religions like Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. The proposed existence of this interventionist God, which Dawkins calls the "God Hypothesis", becomes an important theme in the book. He maintains that the existence or non-existence of God is a scientific fact about the universe, which is discoverable in principle if not in practice.

Dawkins summarises the main philosophical arguments on God's existence, singling out the argument from design for longer consideration. Dawkins concludes that evolution by natural selection can explain apparent design in nature.

He writes that one of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain "how the complex, improbable design in the universe arises", and suggests that there are two competing explanations:

1. A hypothesis involving a designer, that is, a complex being to account for the complexity that we see.
2. A hypothesis, with supporting theories, that explains how, from simple origins and principles, something more complex can emerge.

This is the basic set-up of his argument against the existence of God, the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit, where he argues that the first attempt is self-refuting, and the second approach is the way forward.

At the end of chapter 4 ("Why there almost certainly is no God"), Dawkins sums up his argument and states, "The temptation [to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself] is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable". In addition, chapter 4 asserts that the alternative to the designer hypothesis is not chance, but natural selection.

Dawkins does not claim to disprove God with absolute certainty. Instead, he suggests as a general principle that simpler explanations are preferable and that an omniscient or omnipotent God must be extremely complex (Dawkins argues that it is logically impossible for a God to be simultaneously omniscient and omnipotent). As such he argues that the theory of a universe without a God is preferable to the theory of a universe with a God.

Religion and morality

The second half of the book begins by exploring the roots of religion and seeking an explanation for its ubiquity across human cultures. Dawkins advocates the "theory of religion as an accidental by-product – a misfiring of something useful" as for example the mind's employment of intentional stance. Dawkins suggests that the theory of memes, and human susceptibility to religious memes in particular, can explain how religions might spread like "mind viruses" across societies.

He then turns to the subject of morality, maintaining that we do not need religion to be good. Instead, our morality has a Darwinian explanation: altruistic genes, selected through the process of evolution, give people natural empathy. He asks, "would you commit murder, rape or robbery if you knew that no God existed?" He argues that very few people would answer "yes", undermining the claim that religion is needed to make us behave morally. In support of this view, he surveys the history of morality, arguing that there is a moral Zeitgeist that continually evolves in society, generally progressing toward liberalism. As it progresses, this moral consensus influences how religious leaders interpret their holy writings. Thus, Dawkins states, morality does not originate from the Bible, rather our moral progress informs what parts of the Bible Christians accept and what they now dismiss.

Other themes

The God Delusion is not just a defence of atheism, but also goes on the offensive against religion. Dawkins sees religion as subverting science, fostering fanaticism, encouraging bigotry against homosexuals, and influencing society in other negative ways. Dawkins regards religion as a "divisive force" and as a "label for in-group/out-group enmity and vendetta".

He is most outraged about the teaching of religion in schools, which he considers to be an indoctrination process. He equates the religious teaching of children by parents and teachers in faith schools to a form of mental abuse. Dawkins considers the labels "Muslim child" and "Catholic child" equally misapplied as the descriptions "Marxist child" and "Tory child", as he wonders how a young child can be considered developed enough to have such independent views on the cosmos and humanity's place within it.

The book concludes with the question of whether religion, despite its alleged problems, fills a "much needed gap", giving consolation and inspiration to people who need it. According to Dawkins, these needs are much better filled by non-religious means such as philosophy and science. He suggests that an atheistic worldview is life-affirming in a way that religion, with its unsatisfying "answers" to life's mysteries, could never be. An appendix gives addresses for those "needing support in escaping religion".

Critical reception

The book provoked an immediate response, both positive and negative, and was published with endorsements from scientists, such as Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA James D. Watson, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, as well as the popular writers of fiction and illusionists Penn and Teller. Metacritic reported that the book had a weighted average score of 59 out of 100. The book was nominated for Best Book at the British Book Awards, where Richard Dawkins was named Author of the Year. Nevertheless, the book received mixed reviews from critics, including both religious and atheist commentators. In the London Review of Books, Terry Eagleton accused Richard Dawkins of not doing proper research into the topic of his work, religion, and further agreed with critics who accused Dawkins of committing straw man fallacies against theists (something Dawkins rebuts).

Oxford theologian Alister McGrath (author of The Dawkins Delusion? and Dawkins' God) argues that Dawkins is ignorant of Christian theology, and therefore unable to engage religion and faith intelligently. In reply, Dawkins asks: "Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns?", and—in the paperback edition of The God Delusion—he refers to the American biologist PZ Myers, who has satirised this line of argument as "The Courtier's Reply". Dawkins had an extended debate with McGrath at the 2007 Sunday Times Literary Festival.

Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart says that Dawkins "devoted several pages of The God Delusion to a discussion of the 'Five Ways' of Thomas Aquinas but never thought to avail himself of the services of some scholar of ancient and mediaeval thought who might have explained them to him ... As a result, he not only mistook the Five Ways for Thomas's comprehensive statement on why we should believe in God, which they most definitely are not, but ended up completely misrepresenting the logic of every single one of them, and at the most basic levels."

Christian philosopher Keith Ward, in his 2006 book Is Religion Dangerous?, argues against the view of Dawkins and others that religion is socially dangerous.

Ethicist Margaret Somerville, suggested that Dawkins "overstates the case against religion", particularly its role in human conflict.

Many of Dawkins' defenders claim that critics generally misunderstand his real point. During a debate on Radio 3 Hong Kong, David Nicholls, writer and president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, reiterated Dawkins' sentiments that religion is an "unnecessary" aspect of global problems. Dawkins argues that "the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other". He disagrees with Stephen Jay Gould's principle of nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA). In an interview with the Time magazine, Dawkins said:

I think that Gould's separate compartments was a purely political ploy to win middle-of-the-road religious people to the science camp. But it's a very empty idea. There are plenty of places where religion does not keep off the scientific turf. Any belief in miracles is flat contradictory not just to the facts of science but to the spirit of science.

Astrophysicist Martin Rees has suggested that Dawkins' attack on mainstream religion is unhelpful. Regarding Rees' claim in his book Our Cosmic Habitat that "such questions lie beyond science; however, they are the province of philosophers and theologians", Dawkins asks "what expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that scientists cannot?" Elsewhere, Dawkins has written that "there's all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic, and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority or revelation."

Debate

On 3 October 2007, John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, publicly debated Richard Dawkins at the University of Alabama at Birmingham on Dawkins' views as expressed in The God Delusion, and their validity over and against the Christian faith. "The God Delusion Debate" marked Dawkins' first visit to the Old South and the first significant discussion on this issue in the "Bible Belt". The event was sold out, and the Wall Street Journal called it "a revelation: in Alabama, a civil debate over God's existence." Dawkins debated Lennox for the second time at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in October 2008. The debate was titled "Has Science Buried God?", in which Dawkins said that, although he would not accept it, a reasonably respectable case could be made for "a deistic god, a sort of god of the physicist, a god of somebody like Paul Davies, who devised the laws of physics, god the mathematician, god who put together the cosmos in the first place and then sat back and watched everything happen" but not for a theistic god.

Reviews and responses

• Alvin Plantinga: The Dawkins Confusion
• Anthony Kenny: Knowledge Belief and Faith
• Thomas Nagel: The Fear of Religion
• Michael Ruse: Chicago Journals Review
• Richard Swinburne: Response to Richard Dawkins
• Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath: The Dawkins Delusion?
• H. Allen Orr: A Mission to Convert
• Terry Eagleton: London Review of Books, Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching
• Antony Flew: The God Delusion Review – Dawkins response
• Murrough O'Brien of The Independent: Our Teapot which art in heaven – Dawkins responds: Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?
• Marilynne Robinson: The God Delusion Review, Harper's Magazine 2006
• Simon Watson: "Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Atheist Fundamentalism," in Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology (Spring 2010)
• William Lane Craig: "Dawkins' Delusion", web article excerpted from Contending with Christianity's Critics

Sales

As of January 2010, the English version of The God Delusion had sold over 2 million copies. As of September 2014, it increased to 3 million copies. It was ranked second on the Amazon.com best-sellers' list in November 2006. It remained on the list for 51 weeks until 30 September 2007. The German version, entitled Der Gotteswahn, had sold over 260,000 copies as of 28 January 2010. The God Delusion has been translated into 35 languages.

Awards

For The God Delusion, Dawkins was named Author of the Year at the 2007 British Book Awards. The Giordano Bruno Foundation awarded the 2007 Deschner Prize to Dawkins for the "outstanding contribution to strengthen secular, scientific, and humanistic thinking" in his book.

Responding books

Many books have been written in response to The God Delusion. For example:

• The Devil's Delusion, by David Berlinski
• Darwin's Angel, by John Cornwell
• God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?, by John Lennox (Oxford: Lion, 2009)
• The Dawkins Delusion?, by Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath

Legal repercussions in Turkey

In Turkey, where the book had sold at least 6,000 copies, a prosecutor launched a probe into whether The God Delusion was "an attack on holy values", following a complaint in November 2007. If convicted, the Turkish publisher and translator, Erol Karaaslan, would have faced a prison sentence of inciting religious hatred and insulting religious values. In April 2008, the court acquitted the defendant. In ruling out the need to confiscate copies of the book, the presiding judge stated that banning it "would fundamentally limit the freedom of thought".

Dawkins' website, richarddawkins.net, was banned in Turkey later that year after complaints from Islamic creationist Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya) for alleged defamation. By July 2011, the ban had been lifted.

Editions

English

List of editions in English:

• (in English) The God Delusion, hardcover edition, Bantam Press, 2006.
  • The God Delusion, paperback edition (with new preface by Richard Dawkins), Black Swan, 2007.
  • The God Delusion, 10th anniversary edition (with new introduction by Richard Dawkins and afterword by Daniel Dennett), Black Swan, 2016.

Translations

The book has been officially translated into many different languages, such as Spanish, German, Italian, and Turkish. Dawkins has also promoted unofficial translations of the book in languages such as Arabic and Bengali. There are also Telugu and Tamil translations of the book. The Richard Dawkins Foundation offers free translations in Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, and Bahasa Indonesia.

Non-exhaustive list of international editions:

• (in Greek) Η περί Θεού αυταπάτη, translated by Maria Giatroudaki, Panagiotis Delivorias, Alekos Mamalis, Nikos Ntaikos, Kostas Simos, Vasilis Sakellariou, 2007 (ISBN 978-960-6717-07-9).
• (Brazilian Portuguese) Deus, um Delírio, translated by Fernanda Ravagnani, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2007 (ISBN 9788535910704).
• (European Portuguese) A desilusão de Deus, translated by Lígia Rodrigues and Maria João Camilo, Lisbon: Casa das Letras, 2007 (ISBN 978-972-46-1758-9).
• (in Swedish) Illusionen om Gud, translated by Margareta Eklöf, Stockholm: Leopard, 2007 (ISBN 9789173431767).
• (in Finnish) Jumalharha, translated by Kimmo Pietiläinen, Helsinki: Terra Cognita, 2007 (ISBN 9789525697001).
• (in Turkish) Tanri Yanilgisi, translated by Tnc Bilgin, Kuzey Yayinlari, 2007 (ISBN 9944315117).
• (in Croatian) Iluzija o Bogu, translated by Žarko Vodinelić, Zagreb: Izvori, 2007 (ISBN 0-618-68000-4).
• (in German) Der Gotteswahn, translated by Sebastian Vogel, Ullstein Taschenbuch, 2008 (ISBN 3548372325).
• (in French) Pour en finir avec Dieu, translated by Marie-France Desjeux-Lefort, 2008 (ISBN 9782221108932).
• (in Italian) L'illusione di Dio, translated by Laura Serra, Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 2008 (ISBN 8804581646).
• (in Norwegian) Gud - en vrangforestilling translated by Finn B. Larsen and Ingrid Sande Larsen, 2007 (ISBN 9788292769027).
• (in Russian) Бог как иллюзия, 2008 (ISBN 978-5-389-00334-7).
• (in Tamil) கடவுள் ஒரு பொய் நம்பிக்கை, translated by G. V. K. Aasaan, Cen̲n̲ai, 2009 (ISBN 9788189788056).^[86]
• (in Spanish) El espejismo de Dios, translated by Natalia Pérez-Galdós, Madrid: Espasa, 2013 (ISBN 8467031972).
• (in Latvian) Dieva delūzija, translated by Aldis Lauzis, Riga: Jumava, 2014 (ISBN 9789934115202).
• (in Slovak) Boží blud, translated by Jana Lenzová, Bratislava: Citadella, 2016 (ISBN 978-80-89628-66-7)

Interviews

• "The flying spaghetti monster", interview with Steve Paulson, Salon.com, 13 October 2006
• "God vs. Science", discussion with Francis Collins, TIME, 13 November 2006
• "The God Delusion", interview with George Stroumboulopoulos, The Hour, 5 May 2007
• "God . . . in other words", interview with Ruth Gledhill, The Times, 10 May 2007
• "Richard Dawkins: An Argument for Atheism", interview with Terry Gross, Fresh Air, 7 March 2008

The Bible and humor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_humor 

 

Sarah, 90 years old, hears that she will have a child, and laughs at the idea. James Tissot, c. 1900

The Bible and humor is a topic of Biblical criticism concerned with the question of whether parts of the Bible were intended to convey humor in any style. Historically, this topic has not received much attention, but modern scholars generally agree that humor can be found in biblical texts.

Scholarly assessment

Finding humor in the Bible, for those who hold reverence toward the Bible, can be hindered by that seriousness, but it can be difficult for anyone to pick up on, because humor does not translate well from culture to culture or from language to language. It is also difficult to recognize humor in written form. The age of the texts makes it difficult to be sure that what we are interpreting as humor was intended as humor by the author. Finding humor in the Bible requires a broad eclectic definition of humor and some awareness of literary types of humor such as satire, farce, parody, irony and so on. Therefore, the vast majority of Bible interpreters over the last 1,500 years have not only not detected humor in the Bible, they have often discounted or even disdained the possibility of humor in the Bible.

Professor Yehuda T. Radday notes that some scholars have flat out denied that humor in the Bible exists. He references a 1984 conference in Israel on the subject of Jewish humor, where no attention was given to humor in the Bible. Radday goes on to say "it is a widespread misconception that the Bible is lacking in humor."

Scholars like Steven C. Walker, a professor of literature, and Howard R. Macy, a professor of religion, claim humor is prevalent in the Bible. Macy says that "if we think that humor in the Bible mostly looks like stand-up comedy or telling jokes, we won't see much of that." Anthony J. Perotta, priest and professor at Fuller Seminary, argues that:

... humor as we know it today is probably not part of the Bible any more than love (and marriage, etc.) as we know it today is a feature of the Bible. But this is a minor point, maybe even trivial and pedantic. ... The ancient Hebrews loved and married—and joked—no doubt, in a different idiom than "we" do, but they still engaged in such activities and we can speak about those activities without being anachronistic or solipsistic

Professor of Jewish theology and Near Eastern studies Leonard Greenspoon says, "In sum, biblical humor is certainly not stand-up comedy nor is it especially cerebral either. Rather, it is participatory and fully in keeping with the overall themes and emphases of the Hebrew Bible." Author David A. Peters states that he finds over a thousand "humorous lines and stories" in the Bible.

There is general agreement that the kind of humor that can be found in the Bible becomes apparent when the Bible is viewed as literature. Rev. Marion Daniel Shutter asserts we would find genuine wit if, in literature other than the Bible, we came across sentences such as that found in Proverbs 26:17: Interfering in someone else's argument is as foolish as yanking a dog's ears. He says, "When Isaiah characterizes certain ones as 'mighty to drink wine and men of strength to mingle strong drink,' does he not use essentially the same reproach Prince Hal fastened upon Falstaff, 'Wherin is he good but to taste sack and drink it?" Macy says the Bible authors use dark humor, satire, a great deal of wit, and are particularly fond of the dry humor that goes with exaggeration. Walker adds, "The humor of the Bible is deadpan. It sneaks up on you."

When discussing biblical humor scholars generally agree humor is often in the situation itself. Macy gives the examples of Sarah having Isaac at the age of ninety, and the Messiah turning up in a barn. Macy says "The Bible gives us tale after tale of comic reversals and narrow escapes." He says "mischievous exploits", names and name changes, literary plays on words, exaggeration, and the unexpected: a surprising word, an unexpected phrase, or an abrupt change of direction are what the Bible uses to convey wit and humor. According to Macy, the Book of Proverbs includes funny images and word-play while "trickster themes also bring surprise and laughter." Professor of Biblical Literature J. William Whedbee says the biblical authors use "humorous juxtaposition" where things seem funny because they're together: for example, short and tall, fat and thin, irony and paradox. Those scholars who do find humor in the Bible agree the odd, awkward, or absurd such as mismatches in character and actions, are examples of how the Bible uses humor. "Balaam the 'seer' who doesn't 'see' or 'know' what's going on, and his donkey who both sees and knows," is an example of this type of wit and humor in the Bible.

Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)

Genesis

Macy, Walker, M. D. Shutter, and other scholars contend that the Book of Genesis has several stories that offer humor through absurdity, trickery, surprises and reversals. Macy says that in speaking of humor in the Bible, he usually begins with asking how it might feel to personally get the message Abraham and Sarah received, putting them into the absurd situation of a ninety year old having a baby. He argues that the Biblical author shows that the situation is replete with humor: "Abraham laughs, Sarah laughs, everybody else laughs, and they name the baby 'laughter' or He-laughs [Isaac Yitzack]."

Humor in Genesis, Macy says, includes "Both Abraham and Isaac trying to pass off their wives as their sisters, [however] translations of Genesis 26:8 range from [Isaac and his 'sister'] "laughing together" to "caressing" or "fondling" to "making love" giving evidence of Isaac's 'savvy' in pulling off the lie. Jacob and Laban make deals with each other that make a reader cringe. In Genesis 18, the topic is serious but bargaining with God looks a lot like buying a used car."

Walker says Genesis contains several "odd couples" that contrast and complement each other like 'Laurel and Hardy': Jacob and Esau, Abraham and Sarah, Abraham and Lot, Jacob and Laban, and others. He adds, "Bible characters learn a lot about their own 'dark sides' by those contrasts." The pattern of reversal of fundamental motifs such as primogeniture are evidence of humor according to Walker. He references 12 incidents in Genesis of younger sons getting the better of their elder brothers.

Greenspoon offers Genesis 4 as an example of Biblical humor using ironic wordplay with names. After murdering his brother and attempting to shift the blame, Cain is condemned to wander ceaselessly, but after complaining God agrees to let him settle in the land of Nod. Greenspoon says, "The root of the Hebrew verb 'to wander' is n-w-d and "the proper name 'Nod' derives from the same root as the verb 'to wander'... What sort of settling is Cain likely to experience in a land whose very name connotes (constant) wandering?"

Exodus

Greenspoon says Aaron's response to getting caught after making the golden calf is humorous. "Does Aaron come clean when confronted by his enraged brother...? Not exactly. He does attempt to shift blame—"You know this people is bent on evil". He also admits to asking the people for their gold, at the same time notably truncating the scope of his original request... Even though the biblical text had earlier narrated in some detail the active role he took ... [he says]: 'They gave it to me', Aaron concludes, 'and I hurled it into the fire and out came this calf'."

Numbers

Balaam and the Ass, Rembrandt 1626

Anthony J. Perrota and others find plenty of humor in the story of Balaam and his talking donkey in the Book of Numbers. Balaam is repeatedly asked by king Balak to curse the Israelites, but Balaam can only bless them, making the king increasingly angry. Petrotta explains that humor exposes the pretensions of a culture, and that Balaak is certainly drawn as a caricature of a monarch. The story is set up in terms of threes—"three people, three incidents, etc.—that is required for many types of jokes: "A prophet, a priest and a prostitute die on the same day and came before St.Peter...where the third element breaks the pattern" and provides the joke. "Balaam is risible; Balak is pitiful. ... Their ridiculous stance is increasingly absurd with each stupidly unresponsive reaction. ... We laugh at Balaam for not seeing, but all the time the Israelites have not seen either, both what God has done above, or the consequences of what they are doing below."

Judges

Shutter finds humor in the Fable of the Trees (Judges 9). Abimelech maneuvered to have himself proclaimed king in Shechem, but Jotham believed he was unfit to rule and the people foolish to accept him. Jotham contrives a satire. "The trees went forth to anoint a king over them. They said to the olive tree, 'reign over us.' But the olive tree answered, ‘Should I give up my oil, by which both gods and humans are honored, to hold sway over the trees?’ Next, the trees said to the fig tree, ‘Come and be our king.’ But the fig tree replied, ‘Should I give up my fruit, so good and sweet, to hold sway over the trees?’ Then the trees said to the vine, ‘Come and be our king.’ But the vine answered, 'Should I give up my wine, which cheers both gods and humans, to hold sway over the trees?' Finally all the trees said to the thornbush, 'Come and be our king'. The thornbush said to the trees, 'If you really want to anoint me king over you, come and take refuge in my shade; but if not, then let fire come out of the thornbush and consume the cedars of Lebanon!'" Then Jotham left "for in that day, as in every subsequent age, there was no room for a satirist in the kingdom of an incompetent ruler".

Shutter also asserts that Samson is a humorous character, very similar to Ajax in Sophocles' play Ajax. Quoting Rev. A. G. L'Estrange in his History of English humor..., Shutter says: "He was an exaggeration of a not very uncommon type of man in which brute strength is joined to loose morals and whimsical fancy... We can only smile at his folly."

Greenspoon finds humor in the word play of the names and characteristics of two protagonists found in the account of the murder of the King of Moab in the second half of Judges 3. One of these characters is Ehud, a "left-handed man" from the tribe of Benjamin (Judg 3:15). "Such a description serves two functions here: first, as a play on words-—Ehud's tribe, Benjamin, literally means the son of the south, or right. (Ancient Israelites oriented themselves with the Mediterranean Sea behind them and East was straight ahead; so, the south was to their right.) Thus, it would not escape the notice of the reader that here was a "son of the south" or "the right hand" who was left-handed... Second, because Ehud was left-handed, he strapped his sword to his right thigh... the Moabite king's bodyguards, who would certainly have checked out anyone seeking admittance to their monarch, performed only a perfunctory check on Ehud, never thinking that the weapon would be on his right, rather than the expected left, thigh. It is especially the name of the Moabite king, Eglon, that would have immediately attracted the attention of an ancient reader ... Eglon comes from the same Hebrew root as the word for a fatted calf, often one prepared for sacrifice. And, of course, sacrifice is exactly what Eglon becomes at the hand of Ehud... biblical writers seemed to draw upon just such incidents to display what might be termed the wicked side of their humor."

1 Samuel

Abigail soothes David, who is angry at her husband Nabal. Giustino Menescardi, mid-18th century

According to Shutter, Nabal, a rich man who insults David, is a dark comic character similar to Squire Western in the classic comedy Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. "He is churlish and evil... blunt in speech, rude, and even boorish in manners... The servants of Nabal say, "He is such a son of Belial [a devil] that a man cannot speak to him!' He is fond of wine and sometimes falls asleep over his cups."

In this same story Greenspoon finds humor in names and wordplay. The root of Nabal's name—"n-b-l"—(and the word "fool") appears as two nouns one of which appears in the expression for "wine skin"; Nabal is a drunk. "The second noun from 'n-b-l' is a feminine form ending with the Hebrew letter he. With the vocalization (that is, vowels) I am thinking of, the word means carcass or corpse. Surely, Nabal was a 'dead man' when he crossed David as he did. The same consonants also make up a noun meaning 'foolishness', the very noun that Abigail used to describe her husband in her plea to David. Reading back then, we can sense a double play on words, as it were, by the narrator of this account".

Walker says, "The Bible reads like a rogue's gallery of unlikely heroes... Gideon the coward, Samson the bully, David the trickster". He gives the example of the powerful and popular warrior David fleeing Saul's murderous jealousy by going to Achish king of Gath, then deciding he'd made a mistake, and coping with that by faking insanity. Macy says this entire scene with David is humorous, but King Achish's response is the epitome of Biblical sarcasm: "Am I so short on insane people in my own kingdom you bring me more from other places?" David fools Achish—then later goes to work for him. Walker says this demonstrates "David's trickster aspect is an equal-employment jester, 'laughable for how it succeeds in duping others and how it recoils to dupe the mischiefmaker".

1 Kings

Religion Professor and Presbyterian minister Conrad Hyers finds humor in Elijah's ridicule of "the priests of Baal who wailed and slashed themselves in the hope that Baal would send fire from Heaven. "Shout louder!...Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling; or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened!" (1 Kings 18)

Psalms

Psalm 2:2, 4 and 37:12-13 speak of God's laughter.

Proverbs

All scholars who find humor in the Bible agree it can be found in the book of Proverbs. Shutter gives numerous example such as: "A man of great anger will bear the penalty, for if you rescue him, you will only have to do it again". In other words, a man of violent temper is always getting into difficulties; you have no sooner helped him out of one than he has plunged madly into another. Like the irascible person in the old nursery rhyme, who "jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes", he is no sooner extricated than "with all his might and main, he jumps into another bush and puts them out again."

Shutter also says humor is often used to communicate morality claiming "Can a man take fire in his bosom And his clothes not be burned?" is a sarcastic question about adultery. Shutter includes "Wealth makes many "friends"; poverty drives them all away" and "Many curry favor with a ruler, and everyone is the friend of one who gives gifts" as social satire.

"All the brothers of a poor man hate him; How much more do his friends abandon him! He pursues them with words, but they are gone." Shutter references this Proverb as humor by citing a comparison with the satiricist William Makepeace Thackeray: "Thackeray has drawn such a picture in his more elaborate description of Harry Warrington in the sponging house, making vain appeals for help to his rich relatives and friends. His Aunt, a member of the great and always established Church of the Pharisees, sent him her blessing--and a tract!"

Ecclesiastes

Shutter says biting Biblical humor often gives insight into human nature: "All people spend their lives scratching for food, but they never seem to have enough."

Jeremiah

Ridicule and political commentary have gone hand in hand for many centuries. According to Shutter, when Jeremiah describes the disaster that fell on Egypt's allies, the comments that follow to the King of Egypt drip with scorn: "Pharaoh, King of Egypt, is but a noise. He hath let the appointed time pass by." "In the same spirit, Queen Catherine says of the dead Wolsey, "His promise was as he then was, mighty; but his performance is as he is now, nothing."

Jonah

Walker explains that "A crucial function of humor in the Bible is to persuade the self-righteous to laugh at themselves--a process that proves especially enlightening when the self-righteous turn out to be us. Jonah sasses God. Heathen Ninevites and scurrilous sailors prove more pious than the prophet [Jonah], who is subjected unceremoniously to his comeuppance." Shutter points out that Jonah pouts when the Ninevites repent and are not destroyed; he yells at God, 'didn't I know this would happen?' without recognizing the irony in his own comments which is itself ironic. Shutter compares this to the character Mr. Mantalini in Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby.

Esther

Leonard Greenspoon says "Like Jonah, the Book of Esther is filled with a number of plots and subplots, the humor of which is not always immediately evident." The proud Haman is unaware of his comic nature, but the reader knows the very real irony that "everything Haman plans against his enemies will ultimately be done to him".

Walker finds humor in the comic reversal in Esther. The king asks one night, "What should be done for a man whom the king desires to honor?" (6:6). Haman assumes the king means Haman himself and answers in vivid detail. He is then required to give it all to his worst enemy. Walker also points out the pivotal role in the book of Esther is built around a female, which is a situation filled with cultural commentary and irony. Walker says, "The wit of Esther, by turning our usual expectations upside down, reminds us to expect the unexpected." He says "I second Adele Berlin's ranking of Esther high among "the most humorous books of the Bible, amusing throughout, and at certain points uproriously funny." People who have looked closely find the book funny: "Esther emerges as perhaps the clearest embodiment of the comic vision among all the Biblical narratives."

Walker and Macy both cite the careful attention to words and wordplays in this book, while Walker also includes Esther in what he calls "genial gender humor" where, he says, women often prove to be "more dynamic characters" than their male counterparts and always seem to get the "last scriptural word".

Greenspoon explains "the wisdom and/or bravery exhibited by women and other "outsiders" is often expressed or acted out at the expense of those who appear to wield the most power. This is in keeping with the frequently articulated theme of biblical humor that demonstrates and reflects God's infinite ability to disrupt the plans of finite humans, especially the seemingly powerful."

Daniel

Greenspoon notes humorous wordplay in the tale of Susanna, included in the Old Testament of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. The words of Daniel's judgement is related to details in the false witness of Susanna's accusers.

New Testament

Hyers says "Paul had an unusual way of selling the gospel. His techniques have not been widely followed... Nor has he been hailed as a pioneer in the world of advertising. [Paul's] term for the Christian faith is foolishness. The cross is foolishness. Preaching is foolishness. Christians are called to be fools for Christ's sake. The Apostles are ridiculed as fools, "a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men" (1 Cor.4:9)." Hyers says themes of divine foolishness overturning human wisdom form the plot lines of many Bible stories and such reversals are familiar in comedy as well. Macy says, "In his letters Paul reveals a robust sense of humor... He teases to teach, uses grand exaggeration, enjoys parody and reversal, and even creates vivid comic [word] pictures." For example in 2 Corinthians 11, Paul uses a biting sarcasm to give what has been termed his "anti-autobiography" while calling himself a fool. In the Acts of the Apostles, a young man called Eutychus listens to Paul, falls asleep and then falls out of a window and dies. This story may be a comment on Paul's long-windedness.

Hyers says "Jesus freely used humor, irony and satire" and offers the examples of "the blind leading the blind; straining out a gnat, then swallowing a camel; meticulously cleaning the outside of a cup while leaving the inside filthy; maintaining whitewashed tombs that are outwardly beautiful but inwardly full of dead men's bones; loudly honoring past prophets while plotting to kill present ones who preach the same message." These are examples of what Whedbee describes as "Jesus as the cynic sage." Comedian Eric Idle opines that Jesus is "not particularly funny, what he's saying isn't mockable, it's very decent stuff..."

Biblical scholar F. F. Bruce finds the story of Rhoda in Acts 12:12–15 "full of vivid humour". When Rhoda hears the voice of Peter, miraculously released from prison, she becomes so happy that she forgets to open the door and let him in.

The Bible as material

Charlie Chaplin quotes the Gospel of Luke in The Great Dictator (1940)

The Bible has inspired a multitude of art and fiction in many categories, including humor and comedy. William Shakespeare's comedy The Merchant of Venice includes elements from the Book of Daniel. Biblical references can be seen in films with Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy.

Modern examples include Monty Python's Life of Brian, Mel Brooks History of the World, Part I and sketches by Rowan Atkinson.

New Atheism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Atheism

The term New Atheism was coined by the journalist Gary Wolf in 2006 to describe the positions promoted by some atheists of the twenty-first century. This modern-day atheism is advanced by a group of thinkers and writers who advocate the view that superstition, religion and irrationalism should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and challenged by rational argument wherever they exert undue influence, such as in government, education, and politics.

New Atheism describes a period of time when atheistic, anti-religious, humanist, and antitheist talking points were highly visible in the media landscape. New Atheism often criticised what writers such as Richard Dawkins described as the indoctrination of children and the social harms caused by perpetuating ideologies founded on belief in the supernatural. At the time, critics of the movement deployed pejorative terms such as militant atheism and fundamentalist atheism to malign vocal atheists.

History

The 2004 publication of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris, a bestseller in the United States, was joined over the next couple years by a series of popular best-sellers by atheist authors. Harris was motivated by the events of 11 September 2001, which he laid directly at the feet of Islam, while also directly criticizing Christianity and Judaism. Two years later Harris followed up with Letter to a Christian Nation, which was also a severe criticism of Christianity. Also in 2006, following his television documentary series The Root of All Evil?, Richard Dawkins published The God Delusion, which was on the New York Times best-seller list for 51 weeks.

In a 2010 column entitled "Why I Don't Believe in the New Atheism", Tom Flynn contends that what has been called "New Atheism" is neither a movement nor new, and that what was new was the publication of atheist material by big-name publishers, read by millions, and appearing on bestseller lists.

On 6 November 2015, The New Republic published an article entitled, "Is the New Atheism dead?" The atheist and evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson wrote, "The world appears to be tiring of the New Atheism movement." In 2017, PZ Myers who formerly considered himself a new atheist, publicly renounced the New Atheism movement.

The book The Four Horsemen: The Conversation That Sparked an Atheist Revolution was released in 2019.

Prominent figures

"Four Horsemen"

The 'Four Horsemen of the New Atheism' clockwise from top left: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris

On 30 September 2007, four prominent atheists (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett) met at Hitchens' residence in Washington, D.C., for a private two-hour unmoderated discussion. The event was videotaped and titled "The Four Horsemen". During "The God Debate" in 2010 featuring Christopher Hitchens versus Dinesh D'Souza, the men were collectively referred to as the "Four Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse", an allusion to the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelation. The four have been described as "evangelical atheists".

Sam Harris is the author of the bestselling non-fiction books The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, and Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, as well as two shorter works, initially published as e-books, Free Will and Lying. Harris is a co-founder of the Reason Project.

Richard Dawkins is the author of The God Delusion, which was preceded by a Channel 4 television documentary titled The Root of All Evil?. He is the founder of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. He wrote: "I don't object to the horseman label, by the way. I'm less keen on 'new atheist': it isn't clear to me how we differ from old atheists."

Christopher Hitchens was the author of God Is Not Great and was named among the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines. In addition, Hitchens served on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America. In 2010, Hitchens published his memoir Hitch-22 (a nickname provided by close personal friend Salman Rushdie, whom Hitchens always supported during and following The Satanic Verses controversy). Shortly after its publication, Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, which led to his death in December 2011. Before his death, Hitchens published a collection of essays and articles in his book Arguably; a short edition Mortality was published posthumously in 2012. These publications and numerous public appearances provided Hitchens with a platform to remain an astute atheist during his illness, even speaking specifically on the culture of deathbed conversions and condemning attempts to convert the terminally ill, which he opposed as "bad taste".

Daniel Dennett, author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Breaking the Spell and many others, has also been a vocal supporter of The Clergy Project, an organization that provides support for clergy in the US who no longer believe in God and cannot fully participate in their communities any longer.

"Plus one horse-woman"

After the death of Hitchens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (who attended the 2012 Global Atheist Convention, which Hitchens had been scheduled to attend) was referred to as the "plus one horse-woman", since she was originally invited to the 2007 meeting of the "Horsemen" atheists but had to cancel at the last minute. Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, fleeing in 1992 to the Netherlands in order to escape an arranged marriage. She became involved in Dutch politics, rejected faith, and became vocal in opposing Islamic ideology, especially concerning women, as exemplified by her books Infidel and The Caged Virgin.

Hirsi Ali was later involved in the production of the film Submission, for which her friend Theo Van Gogh was murdered with a death threat to Hirsi Ali pinned to his chest. This event resulted in Hirsi Ali's hiding and later emigrating to the United States, where she now resides and remains a prolific critic of Islam. She regularly speaks out against the treatment of women in Islamic doctrine and society and is a proponent of free speech and the freedom to offend.

Others

• Rebecca Goldstein (philosopher and author of 36 Arguments for the Existence of God)
• A. C. Grayling (philosopher and author of The God Argument)
• Peter Boghossian (philosopher and author of A Manual for Creating Atheists)

Perspective

Many contemporary atheists write from a scientific perspective. Unlike previous writers, many of whom thought that science was indifferent or even incapable of dealing with the "God" concept, Dawkins argues to the contrary, claiming the "God Hypothesis" is a valid scientific hypothesis, having effects in the physical universe, and like any other hypothesis can be tested and falsified. The late Victor Stenger proposed that the personal Abrahamic God is a scientific hypothesis that can be tested by standard methods of science. Both Dawkins and Stenger conclude that the hypothesis fails any such tests, and argue that naturalism is sufficient to explain everything we observe. Nowhere, they argue, is it necessary to introduce God or the supernatural to understand reality. Some New Atheists adhere to the fringe Christ myth theory.

Scientific testing of religion

Non-believers (in religion and the supernatural) assert that many religious or supernatural claims (such as the virgin birth of Jesus and the afterlife) are scientific claims in nature. For instance, they argue, as do deists and Progressive Christians, that the issue of Jesus' supposed parentage is a question of scientific inquiry, rather than "values" or "morals". Rational thinkers believe science is capable of investigating at least some, if not all, supernatural claims. Institutions such as the Mayo Clinic and Duke University are attempting to find empirical support for the healing power of intercessory prayer. According to Stenger, these experiments have found no evidence that intercessory prayer works.

Logical arguments

Stenger also argues in his book, God: The Failed Hypothesis, that a God having omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipotent attributes, which he termed a 3O God, cannot logically exist. A similar series of logical disproofs of the existence of a God with various attributes can be found in Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier's The Impossibility of God, or Theodore M. Drange's article, "Incompatible-Properties Arguments: A Survey".

Views on non-overlapping magisteria

Richard Dawkins has been particularly critical of the conciliatory view that science and religion are not in conflict, noting, for example, that the Abrahamic religions constantly deal in scientific matters. In a 1998 article published in Free Inquiry magazine and later in his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins expresses disagreement with the view advocated by Stephen Jay Gould that science and religion are two non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA), each existing in a "domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution".

In Gould's proposal, science and religion should be confined to distinct non-overlapping domains: science would be limited to the empirical realm, including theories developed to describe observations, while religion would deal with questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. Dawkins contends that NOMA does not describe empirical facts about the intersection of science and religion: "It is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science's turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims."

Science and morality

Popularized by Sam Harris is the view that science and thereby currently unknown objective facts may instruct human morality in a globally comparable way. Harris' book The Moral Landscape and accompanying TED Talk How Science can Determine Moral Values propose that human well-being and conversely suffering may be thought of as a landscape with peaks and valleys representing numerous ways to achieve extremes in human experience, and that there are objective states of well-being.

Politics

In the context of international politics, the principles of New Atheism establish no particular stance in and of themselves. New Atheism's key proponents are, states PZ Meyer, "a madly disorganized mob, united only by [their] dislike of the god-thing." That said, the demographic that supports the New Atheism is a markedly homogeneous, one that is primarily American, "more likely to be younger, male and single, to have higher than average levels of income and education, to be less authoritarian, less dogmatic, less prejudiced, less conformist and more tolerant and open-minded on religious issues." Because of this homogeneity among the group, there exists not a formal dynamic but a loose consensus on broad political "efforts, objectives, and strategies." For example, one of the primary aims here is to further reduce the entanglement of church and state, which derives from the "belief that religion is antithetical to liberal values, such as freedom of expression and the separation of public from private life". Additionally, new atheists have engaged in the campaign "to ensure legal and civic equality for atheists", in a world considerably unwelcoming to and distrustful of non-religious 'believers'. Christopher Hitchens may be the new atheist concerned most with religion's incompatibility with contemporary liberal principles, and particularly its imposed limitation on both freedom of speech and freedom of expression. And because New Atheism's proliferation is accredited partly to the September 11 attacks and the ubiquitous, visceral response, Richard Dawkins, among many in his cohort, believes that theism (in this case, Islam) jeopardizes political institutions and national security, and he warns of religion's potency in motivating "people to do terrible things" against international polities.

Criticisms

Scientism, accusations of evangelicalism and fundamentalism

The theologians Jeffrey Robbins and Christopher Rodkey take issue with what they regard as "the evangelical nature of the New Atheism, which assumes that it has a Good News to share, at all cost, for the ultimate future of humanity by the conversion of as many people as possible." They believe they have found similarities between New Atheism and evangelical Christianity and conclude that the all-consuming nature of both "encourages endless conflict without progress" between both extremities.

Political philosopher John Gray asserts that "New Atheism", humanism, and 'scientism' are extensions of religion, particularly Christianity.

Sociologist William Stahl said, "What is striking about the current debate is the frequency with which the New Atheists are portrayed as mirror images of religious fundamentalists."

The atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse has made the claim that Richard Dawkins would fail "introductory" courses on the study of "philosophy or religion" (such as courses on the philosophy of religion), courses which are offered, for example, at many educational institutions such as colleges and universities around the world. Ruse also claims that the movement of New Atheism—which is perceived, by him, to be a "bloody disaster"—makes him ashamed, as a professional philosopher of science, to be among those holding to an atheist position, particularly as New Atheism does science a "grave disservice" and does a "disservice to scholarship" at more general level.

Paul Kurtz, editor in chief of Free Inquiry, founder of Prometheus Books, was critical of many of the new atheists. He said, "I consider them atheist fundamentalists... They're anti-religious, and they're mean-spirited, unfortunately. Now, there are very good atheists and very dedicated people who do not believe in God. But you have this aggressive and militant phase of atheism, and that does more damage than good".

Jonathan Sacks, author of The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning, feels the new atheists miss the target by believing the "cure for bad religion is no religion, as opposed to good religion". He wrote:

Atheism deserves better than the new atheists whose methodology consists of criticizing religion without understanding it, quoting texts without contexts, taking exceptions as the rule, confusing folk belief with reflective theology, abusing, mocking, ridiculing, caricaturing, and demonizing religious faith and holding it responsible for the great crimes against humanity. Religion has done harm; I acknowledge that. But the cure for bad religion is good religion, not no religion, just as the cure for bad science is good science, not the abandonment of science.

The philosopher Massimo Pigliucci contends that the new atheist movement overlaps with scientism, which he finds to be philosophically unsound. He writes: "What I do object to is the tendency, found among many New Atheists, to expand the definition of science to pretty much encompassing anything that deals with 'facts', loosely conceived..., it seems clear to me that most of the New Atheists (except for the professional philosophers among them) pontificate about philosophy very likely without having read a single professional paper in that field.... I would actually go so far as to charge many of the leaders of the New Atheism movement (and, by implication, a good number of their followers) with anti-intellectualism, one mark of which is a lack of respect for the proper significance, value, and methods of another field of intellectual endeavor."

Atheist professor Jacques Berlinerblau has criticised the New Atheists' mocking of religion as being inimical to their goals and claims that they have not achieved anything politically.

Roger Scruton has extensively criticized New Atheism on various occasions, generally on the grounds that they do not consider the social effects and impacts of religion in enough detail. He has said, "Look at the facts in the round and it seems likely that humans without a sense of the sacred would have died out long ago. For that same reason, the hope of the new atheists for a world without religion is probably as vain as the hope for a society without aggression or a world without death." He has also complained of the New Atheists' idea that they must "set people free from religion", calling it "naive" because they "never consider that they might be taking something away from people."

Criticisms of responses to theistic arguments

Edward Feser has critiqued the New Atheists' responses to arguments for the existence of God, especially Dawkins' and Dennett's.

Major publications

Title	Author	Date
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason	Sam Harris	2004
The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam	Ayaan Hirsi Ali	2004
Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam	Michel Onfray	2005
Infidel: My Life	Ayaan Hirsi Ali	2006
The God Delusion	Richard Dawkins	2006
Letter to a Christian Nation	Sam Harris	2006
God Is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything	Christopher Hitchens	2007
Why we cannot be Christians (much less Catholics)	Piergiorgio Odifreddi	2007
Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity	John W. Loftus	2008
Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists	Dan Barker	2008
Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless	Greta Christina	2012
A Manual For Creating Atheists	Peter Boghossian	2013
The God Argument	A.C. Grayling	2013
Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now	Ayaan Hirsi Ali	2015
Fighting God: An Atheist Manifesto for a Religious World	David Silverman	2015
Unapologetic: Why Philosophy of Religion Must End	John W. Loftus	2016
God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction	Dan Barker	2016
The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American	Andrew L. Seidel	2019
Outgrowing God: A Beginner's Guide	Richard Dawkins	2019