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Social Evolution.
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The Probability of God: A Simple
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Proves
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Why I Am Not a Muslim.
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Did
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How
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The Story of God.
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The Unnatural Nature of
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&c
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Six Impossible Things
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Why Intelligent Design Fails: A

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Rutgers
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NOTES

Preface

1
Wendy Kaminer, 'The last taboo: why America needs
atheism',
New Republic,
14 Oct. 1996;
http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/kaminer.htm
.

2
Dr Zoe Hawkins, Dr Beata Adams and Dr Paul St John
Smith, personal communication.

Chapter
1: A deeply religious non-believer
Deserved respect

3
The television documentary of which the interview
was a part was accompanied by a book (Winston 2005).

4
Dennett (2006).

Undeserved
respect

5

The full speech is
transcribed in Adams (2003) as 'Is there an artificial God?'

6
Perica (2002). See also
http://www.historycooperative.org/
journals/ahr/108.5/br_151.html.

7
'Dolly and the cloth heads', in Dawkins (2003).

8

http://scotus.ap.org/scotus/04-1084p.zo.pdf
.

9
R. Dawkins, 'The irrationality of faith',
New
Statesman
(London), 31 March 1989.

10

Columbus Dispatch,
19 Aug. 2005.

11

Los Angeles Times,
10 April
2006.

12

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/02/islamic-society-of-
denmark-used-fake.html.

13

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4686536.stm;
http://www.neandernews.com/?cat=6
.

14

Independent, 5
Feb. 2006.

15
Andrew Mueller, 'An argument with Sir IqbaP,
Independent
on Sunday, 2
April 2006, Sunday Review section, 12-16.

Chapter
2: The God Hypothesis

16
Mitford and Waugh (2001).

Polytheism

17

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608b.htm
.

18

http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/indexsnt.htm?NF=l
.

Secularism,
the Founding Fathers and the religion of America

19

Congressional Record,
16 Sept.
1981.

20

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/buckner_tripoli.html
.

21
Giles Fraser, 'Resurgent religion has
done away with the country vicar',
Guardian,
13
April 2006.

22
Robert I. Sherman, in
Free
Inquiry
8: 4, Fall 1988, 16.

23
N. Angier, 'Confessions of a lonely
atheist',
New York Times Magazine,
14 Jan. 2001:
http://www.geocities.com/mindstuff/Angier.html
.

24

http://www.fsgp.org/adsn.html
.

25
An especially bizarre case of a man
being murdered simply because he was an atheist is recounted in the
newsletter of the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia for
March/April 2006. Go to
http://www.fsgp.org/newsletters/newsletter_
2006_0304.pdf and scroll down to 'The murder of Larry Hooper'.

26

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mag/2001/ll/18/
stories/2001111800070400.htm.

The
poverty of agnosticism

27
Quentin de la Bedoyere,
Catholic
Herald,
3 Feb. 2006.

28
Carl Sagan, 'The burden of skepticism',
Skeptical Inquirer
12, Fall 1987.

29
I discussed this case in Dawkins (1998).

30
T. H. Huxley, 'Agnosticism' (1889),
repr. in Huxley (1931). The complete text of 'Agnosticism' is also
available at
http://
www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_huxley/
huxley_wace/part_02.html.

31
Russell, 'Is there a God?' (1952),
repr. in Russell (1997b).

32
Andrew Mueller, 'An argument with Sir
Iqbal',
Independent on Sunday, 2
April 2006,
Sunday Review section, 12-16.

33

New York Times,
29
Aug. 2005. See also Henderson (2006).

34
Henderson (2006).

35

http://www.lulu.com/content/267888
.

The
Great Prayer Experiment

36
H. Benson et al., 'Study of the therapeutic
effects of intercessory prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients',
American
Heart Journal
151: 4, 2006, 934-42.

37
Richard Swinburne, in
Science and
Theology News, 7
April 2006,
http://www.stnews.org/Commentary-2772.htm
.

38

New York Times,
11
April 2006.

The
Neville Chamberlain school of evolutionists

39
In court cases, and books such as Ruse (1982).
His article in
Playboy
appeared in the April 2006
issue.

40
Jerry Coyne's reply to Ruse appeared in the
August 2006 issue of
Playboy.

41
Madeleine Bunting,
Guardian,
27
March 2006.

42
Dan Dennett's reply appeared in the
Guardian,
4 April 2006.

43

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/03/the_
dawkinsdennett_boogeyman.php;
http://scienceblogs.com/
pharyngula/2006/02/our_double_standard.php;
http://scienceblogs
.
com/pharyngula/2006/02/the_rusedennett_feud.php.

Little
green men

44

http://vo.obspm.fr/exoplanetes/encyclo/encycl.html
.

45
Dennett (1995).

Chapter
3: Arguments for God's existence

The
ontological argument and other
a priori
arguments

46

http://www.iep.utm.edu/o/ont-arg.htm
.
Gasking's 'proof is at
http://www.uq.edu.au/
~pdwgrey/pubs/gasking.html.

The
argument from personal 'experience'

47
The whole subject of illusions is discussed by
Richard Gregory in a series of books including Gregory (1997).

48
My own attempt at spelling out the
explanation is on pp. 268-9 of Dawkins (1998).

49

http://www.sofc.org/Spirituality/s-of-fatima.htm
.

The
argument from scripture

50
Tom Flynn, 'Matthew vs. Luke',
Free
Inquiry
25: 1, 2004, 34-45; Robert Gillooly, 'Shedding light
on the light of the world',
Free Inquiry
25: 1,
2004, 27-30.

51
Erhman (2006). See also Ehrman (2003a,
b).

The
argument from admired religious scientists

52
Beit-Hallahmi and Argyle (1997).

53
E. J. Larson and L. Witham, 'Leading
scientists still reject God',
Nature
394, 1998,
313.

54

http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9610/reeves.html
gives a particularly interesting analysis of historical trends in
American religious opinion by Thomas C. Reeves, Professor of History at
the University of Wisconsin, based on Reeves (1996).

55

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3506.asp
.

56

R. Elisabeth Cornwell and
Michael Stirrat, manuscript in preparation, 2006.

57
P. Bell, 'Would you believe it?',
Mensa
Magazine,
Feb. 2002, 12-13.

Chapter
4: Why there almost certainly is no God
The Ultimate Boeing
747

58
An exhaustive review of the provenance,
usages and quotations of this analogy is given, from a creationist
point of view, by Gert Korthof, at
http://home.wxs.nl/
~gkorthof/kortho46a.htm.

Natural
selection as a consciousness-raiser

59
Adams (2002), p. 99. My 'Lament for
Douglas', written the day after his death, is reprinted as the Epilogue
to
The Salmon of Doubt,
and also in
A
Devil's Chaplain,
which also has my eulogy at his memorial
meeting in the Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

60
Interview in
Der Spiegel,
26
Dec. 2005.

61
Susskind (2006: 17).

The
worship of gaps

62
Behe (1996).

63

http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/design2/article.html
.

64
This account of the Dover trial, including the
quotations, is from A. Bottaro, M. A. Inlay and N. J. Matzke,
'Immunology in the spotlight at the Dover "Intelligent Design" trial',
Nature
Immunology
7, 2006, 433-5.

65
J. Coyne, 'God in the details: the biochemical
challenge to evolution',
Nature
383, 1996, 227-8.
The article by Coyne and me, 'One side can be wrong', was published in
the
Guardian,
1
Sept. 2005:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/
feature/story/0,13026,1559743,00.html. The
quotation from the 'eloquent blogger' is at
http://
www.religionisbullshit.net/blog/2005_09_01_archive.php.

66

Dawkins (1995).

The
anthropic principle: planetary version

61
Carter admitted later that a better name for the overall
principle would be 'cognizability principle' rather than the already
entrenched term 'anthropic principle': B. Carter, 'The anthropic
principle and its implications for biological evolution',
Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society of London A,
310, 1983,
347-63. For a book-length discussion of the anthropic principle, see
Barrow and Tipler (1988).

68
Comins (1993).

69
I spelled this argument out more fully in
The
Blind Watchmaker
(Dawkins 1986).

The
anthropic principle: cosmological version

70
Murray Gell-Mann, quoted by John Brockman on the
'Edge' website,
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/smolin.html
.

71
Ward (1996: 99); Polkinghorne (1994:
55).

An
interlude at Cambridge

72
J. Horgan, 'The Templeton Foundation: a skeptic's
take',
Chronicle of Higher Education,
7 April
2006. See also
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/horgan06/horgan06_index.html
.

73
P. B. Medawar, review of
The
Phenomenon of Man,
repr. in Medawar (1982: 242).

74
Dennett (1995: 155).

Chapter
5: The roots of religion
The Darwinian imperative

75
Quoted in Dawkins (1982: 30).

76
K. Sterelny, 'The perverse primate', in
Grafen and Ridley (2006: 213-23).

Group
selection

77
N. A. Chagnon, 'Terminological kinship,
genealogical relatedness and village fissioning among the Yanomamo
Indians', in Alexander and Tinkle (1981: ch. 28).

78
C. Darwin,
The Descent of Man
(New York: Appleton, 1871), vol. 1, 156.

Religion
as a by-product of something else

79
Quoted in Blaker (2003: 7).

Psychologically
primed for religion

80
See e.g. Buss (2005).

81
Deborah Keleman, 'Are children
"intuitive theists"?',
Psychological Science
15:
5, 2004, 295-301.

82
Dennett (1987).

83

Guardian,
31 Jan.
2006.

84
Smythies (2006).

85

http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/14223.htm
.

Chapter
6: The roots of morality: why are we good?

86
The movie itself, which is very good,
can be obtained at
http://www.thegodmovie.com/index.php
.