Converts' Corner

“And I thought and thought and thought. But I just didn’t have enough to go on, so I didn’t really come to any resolution. I was extremely doubtful about the idea of god, but I just didn’t know enough about anything to have a good working model of any other explanation for, well, life, the universe, and everything to put in its place. But I kept at it, and I kept reading and I kept thinking. Sometime around my early thirties I stumbled upon evolutionary biology, particularly in the form of Richard Dawkins’s books The Selfish Gene and then The Blind Watchmaker, and suddenly (on, I think the second reading of The Selfish Gene) it all fell into place. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.”

Douglas Adams The Salmon of Doubt, p 99.

“Douglas, I miss you. You are my cleverest, funniest, most open-minded, wittiest, tallest, and possibly only convert. I hope this book might have made you laugh – though not as much as you made me. . . Douglas’s conversion by my earlier books – which did not set out to convert anyone – inspired me to dedicate to his memory this book – which does!”

Richard Dawkins The God Delusion, p 117

Is Douglas Adams Richard’s only convert? Or is he just the first of many? Please write in to Converts' Corner if you have lost your religion (or have been encouraged to come out of the closet) as a result of reading The God Delusion or other Dawkins books.

Email

51

I'm not a religious person at the first place, although I was growing up I attending Christian schools. During my college days, a devout Christian friend keep persuading me to attend his "church". It was one of those charismatic church where they gather in a big hall inside an office building or something, so it's not like a typical church. I was reluctant but he was so persistent, so I thought what the heck, there's nothing much to do on Sunday afternoon either. So this one was located at the 3rd floor, and one have to take the escalator to go up to that floor, and during the 3rd or 4th visit, someone from a competing church was standing near to the escalator at the 2nd floor handing out brochures saying that his church promise everyone that join them will go to heaven. It was really an eye-opener. This church thing is really more about making money and make a living out of it especially for the people at the top, and they member of the church think that they're doing the lord's work by getting as many people to join them. That single event was like the point where I abandon the whole idea about religion. In my opinion, anyone who went to school and have the smallest amount of reason should know that the idea behind religion is simply ridiculous.

S.G. Gecko

52

Dear Richard Dawkins,

Technically, you didn't convert me to atheism. Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Sagan, and Joseph Campbell beat you to it. But I want to tell a story that illustrates your indirect influence on my life.

As a sophomore in college I took my first philosophy class. One class featured a debate between a philosopher and a biologist about "nature vs. nurture." The biologist argued that this formula is a false dichotomy, while the philosopher hammered on the allegedly nihilistic immorality of naive reductionism and genetic determinism -- his interpretation of the selfish gene. A seed was planted in my mind: "Obviously our brains -- and therefore our minds -- are products of natural selection. How could it be otherwise?" In hindsight I now recognize a debate between the ignorant and the exasperated, but how ironic that by arguing badly against the selfish gene, the philosopher actually proved the concept to my mind!

I should have switched then and there to biology, but theism still had its hooks in me, and I desperately needed to find a way to reconcile science and faith. So I studied philosophy. But always the concept of the selfish gene (and its immense explanatory power) lurked in the background, and I noticed from then on that the name Richard Dawkins was like the bogie man to a certain kind of insufferably politically correct humanities specialist. It took almost two decades before I got around to picking up one your books, but once I had been exposed to it the meme was always there.

The meme of the selfish gene perfectly encapsulated the mechanism of evolution that I learned as a child from Carl Sagan's "Cosmos."

The same meme enabled me to read Nietzsche and recognize one of the first evolutionary psychologists in action, and it enabled me to recognize the cheat in any philosophy unwilling to account for evolution in its theory of mind.

And the meme gave credibility and power to Joseph Campbell's immense anthropology of religious development around the world, so that when I finally set down the fourth volume of "The Masks of God," I had a small revelation: The only credible candidate for the origin of so many gods and values, similar in so many ways but dissimilar in other ways, is a process of natural selection that has generated a certain kind of mind and then shaped the ideas that percolate in those minds. There is no god, but there is something grander, subtler, and more astonishing than any god could ever be that accounts for all our ideas of god.

Evolution.

And at the margin of all my studies was the name Richard Dawkins, a word with which to terrify theists and postmodernists alike. So when, just a year ago, I finally picked up one of your books -- "Unweaving the Rainbow" -- it was like coming home. A worldview full of shattered and contradictory parts shuddered into alignment and turned into a machine capable of doing work instead of languishing as a giant, fragile mess of unconnected cogs. It still needs maintenance and improvement, of course, but it works.

So now, thanks to your past efforts, I find "The God Delusion" almost superfluous (though I certainly like the style). Instead I'm "following my bliss" by reading "The Selfish Gene" and "The Extended Phenotype." For which I want to thank you, even though I'm a couple of decades late in doing so. Please keep up the good work! The wolf is at religious dogma's door, and that wolf is Darwin's Rottweiler.

Best wishes from a guy who was your fan long before he knew it himself,

Marvin

53

Dear Dr. Dawkins,

From the ages of 17 to 20 I was a tormented Christian. I believed (i.e. was too scared to not believe) just enough to fear reading anything that might cause me to doubt Christianity. I was in an endless loop of doubt caused by the obvious absurdities of the bible followed by extreme fear of hell. In exasperation I asked my sister for some material, something to combat the fear that dominates an ignorant mind. She gave me The Selfish Gene. I read it and was deconverted. It didn't take more than the first few chapters, just enough fodder to give me the confidence to question. Once one accepts the possibility that the bible or whatever MAY be false, plus Darwin, the Hubble space telescope, etc, it doesn't take a genius to see that Jesus is about as credible as The Wizard of Oz.

The Selfish Gene motivated me to study biology and I've been working in biotech for last 11 years working on DNA sequencers (Moore's Law of DNA). My favorite book of yours is The Extended Phenotype, it's better than the best science fiction.

Thanks so much for your books, they have truly changed my life.

Sincerely,

Dave Holden

54

I am 50 today, and, after a life of delusion, became, this year, a Born-Again Enlightened Atheist.

I know - I squirm at 'Born-Again' too - but as I will illustrate - I really do feel that way....

I bitterly resent the invidious, devious calculating process whereby the Christian Church appropriated, or should I say 'stole', even 'raped' me of my childhood sense of wonder by misnaming it a sense of God - and by branding my burgeoning nascent curiosity as reprehensible.

Both your 'God Delusion', and Sam Harris's 'End of Faith' have been an inspiration to me this year as I embarked upon my Science Degree through the Open University.

I am voracious in my appetite for Science now, whereas, in younger years I felt 'blocked' - maybe even 'conditioned' into a negative response to Science as a subject and method. There is something dark at work there - I need to understand.... I remember reading an article by EP Thomson and being struck by the concept of 'Trained Incapacity' he outlined. ..

Having gained release from the Royal Navy as a Conscientious Objector I strove whilst doing a BA (Hons) at Lancaster in 'Organisation Studies', to comprehend the forces and techniques of power deployed to develop my powers of reason sufficient to good engineering yet stunted when it came to any analysis of my officers or orders.... M. Foucault's 'Discipline and Punish' helped with this and took me beyond 'trained incapacity' to the beginnings of a comprehension of the degree to which control of the body controls and conditions the mind.

Both in the Navy and as a Christian, it was as though some part of my critical apparatus was disabled - I could not 'see' how ridiculous my beliefs were. I just laugh out loud when I read simple facts like the proportion of pregnancies ending in miscarriage cast light on God as being the greatest abortionist of all time... how could I not 'see' such glaring inconsistencies before.....

These books have provided a powerful antidote to the religious memes that riddled my addled religious sensibilities!

It is as though a veil has been lifted: I feel a visceral empathy with the proto-human 'Moonwatcher' in the film '2001 A Space Odyssey': as he discovers the multiplying effect bone + gravity imparts to both reach and power; as he smashes a pile of bones to dust. But for me the tools newly discovered are in the field of reason: those of parsimony and Occam's Razor...

Thank You for what you are doing - it is the most pressing matter of our times - all else flows from reason.

I believe it is a matter of great urgency if mankind is to survive this nuclear adolescence.

I had my first book 'Practical Leadership' published this year.

My next will address this issue head-on.

Like Luther "Here I stand and can do no other" - I would willingly fix my ninety-five theses to the cathedral door in Wittenberg or anywhere else!

Gordon MacKay

55

Your books have helped me greatly in getting over the brainwashing of my childhood. I was raised in an conservative evangelical home, in the Church of the Nazarene. I took it all very seriously but by the time I was in my 20's I was, anguishingly, having very many doubts. I doubted my salvation and longed and prayed for answers. I read a lot of Christian apologetics books and nothing really helped for more than a couple days--none of them gave good answers to my questions.

Eventually, as I was interested in astronomy anyway, I started spending a lot of time browsing the science section in the small library of my hometown. I starting checking out books by Carl Sagan and such and took them home and read them in secret. I found you there as well, in a copy of River Out of Eden. It said something about a "Darwinian view of life" on the cover, which made me stop and stare for a moment. I'd completely rejected evolution as 'godless' and 'evil' in middle school and homeschooled with a curriculum from "Christian Liberty Academy" in high school. And spent my first two years of college at a Nazarene university. So I was totally, totally, ignorant of the theory of evolution. But by the time I found your book I was intrigued and hungry to know what my Christian leaders were keeping from me. Since then I've also read The Blind Watchmaker, Unweaving the Rainbow, A Devils Chaplain, The Ancestor's Tale (still working on that one), as well as a few from Carl Sagan, Steven Pinker, etc...

After reading yours and the other's works, all the apologetics and creationist books I ever read before or since look like the pure drivel that they are! And for helping to convince me that being an atheist is something to cherish, not to hide.

Thanks for helping to show the grandeur in the Darwinian view of life,

Mikel

56

Dear Professor Dawkins,

I was born and raised a Shiite Muslim. At the age of 17 years, I began taking religion seriously and was on the quest for the "meaning of life" and "truth". I read the Koran almost inside out (5 different translations from the various muslim sects plus their commentaries). I even learnt some Arabic and was reading the book from its original language.

At age 19, I left mainstream Shiite Islam and became a so called "reformist muslim" who forsook all the Islamic traditions but still considered the Koran to be divine in origin, and tried to interpret the Koran from a modern perspective. That led to various inconsistencies with the core teachings of the book, that I was already on the road to Agnosticism. That was when I was 21. At the same time, I started reading the Bible and the hindu scripture the Bhagvad Gita. I then came across a book that changed my life. It was the late carl sagans Cosmos (a book version of the famous television documentary series). I was an Atheist.

I then read Richard Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable and that nailed God in to the coffin as far as I was concerned. To date, I have read most of Dr. Dawkins' books. It has truly been a pleasure and an honor.

Dr. Murtaza Hameer

57

I was a Catholic school boy, indoctrinated and imbued with Christian theology and dogma. I do have to say I enjoyed the old Catholic mass, the chanting, the gorgeous vestments, the incense, the candles, the warm, fuzzy feeling coming from familiarity. During the long, tedious sermons my mind tended to wander around such subjects as what movie to see later that day, should I do my wash or just read a book, or which trendy bar should my buddies and I go to this evening. Then one time, somewhere in my twenties, I suddenly perked up during the mass and started to listen to what the priest was saying. In a very monotone and bored tone of voice, he was telling us what's going to happen once we die. All of a sudden I received this flash of light, this epiphany, of tremendous disbelief. I thought to myself, how the hell does he know what's going to happen to us when we're dead, I don't really believe this stuff, I'm out of here. I left the church and never looked back. Now at the old age of 63 I'm content to live and let live. Except that I'm terribly upset as to what seems to be happening at present in America and in the world, with the rise of religious fundamentalism of all stripes. I studied American history in college and know about all the religious revival movements that seem to have plagued America from time to time since its inception. But I didn't think it could happen again in my country, not with all the progress and openness made during the '60's and '70's. Boy, was I wrong!! It seems to me that America is lurching towards some kind of theocracy with a born-again president and snake-oil salesmen like Falwell and Robertson given tremendous prestige and power. My taxes are given over to faith-based organizations, my science is taken over by intelligent design nonsense, my kids are taught abstinence only, and religious toadies are running the Congress as well as governmental agencies overseeing the environment, natural resources, and the Pentagon. In the new political correctness we have liberals, homosexuals, feminists, abortion, and atheists as the main evils in the world, the things that need to be overcome. My mind boggles at the irrationality of it all. I don't care if my neighbors want to be religious, just leave me alone, is that so hard to understand??

B. A. Niechlanski

58

Dear Professor Dawkins, or may we call you Richard?

Your influence via the God Delusion, lecture talks posted on this site and the various RDF forums have been a great help and have boosted our psychological well being.

I will be brief, our tale is no longer a cause of pain, guilt and deceipt. It was not always this way. Methodism and Roman Catholicism are strong brands of the God thing. In my adult life as a firefighter I was not often in contact with church-goers except for my bipolar, overly religious, hypochondriac mother and the occasional duties of attendance as a senior member of the service. My father was a low key catholic and died the day I started work at 17. As a youth I was encouraged and nearly accepted at a seminary to follow in the footsteps of my uncle but evaded it through a combination of scouting, outdoor activities and the poor health and operations on my father's heart that necessitated spells in hospital as did the psychological problems of my mother. My wife's and my father's familes were quite normal I think, my mothers were imigrant Irish catholics and producers of large families that like ours, are largely disfunctional.

From about 15 I was always interested in physics and astronomy although unaware of the internal religious conflict most of the time. In 1973 I attended a lecture on black holes and later read Stephen Hawking and although well and truly lapsed had not really made the right connections. Our own children were brought up outside the church and are well balanced not really understanding of the anger and frustration we were was caused. My wife is an ex-methodist who tried the evangelical approach as a young woman but was always a little worried by the overt displays at "meetings". We are really horrified by the God channels on Sky and Peter Popoff once outed as a fake and bankrupted is at it again but is not alone. "Miracles" abound and miracle water and prayer cloths are pushed nightly from UK bases.

We are seriously grateful to you and hope to meet you at Oxford. Your eloquence and knowledge inspired us, we hope to pass on the message. Thank goodness we met with the results of the life you have dedicated to reason, critical thinking and science! I like to think I am "evolving".

Damian & Jenny Walker - AKA Mr Blue Sky

59

Dear Dr Dawkins

I was once a committed 'born again' christian.

I had always believed that creation was far too intricate and wonderful to have just occurred. Evolution was not a problem for me, my beliefs ultimately rested on the existence of god not on the details of how he arranged the universe and life to actually unfold. I had been converted to christianity as a teenager and my life after that had been lived with my faith as the main focus.

The idea that the laws of nature 'always were' seemed to me to be quite untenable. There must have been something that made them. They are too wonderful and productive to just 'be'. Hence, there must be a God! I had never questioned this.

Late one night many years ago I was reading the Blind Watchmaker (and was enjoying learning about evolution having little biology). I was in no way feeling threatened because evolution still required an ordered, rational universe and where else could you get one of those without a god to have made it so?

Then I came across what seemed an almost throw away part in the Blind Watchmaker where you asked, (roughly paraphrased) "which is the more complicated entity, the universe or god?" I was stunned.

Something had to have always kind of 'been'. Which was the easier one to believe had always 'been'? The laws of physics or a being who could put in place those laws and so create a universe? My heart sank. In the space of a few sentences my whole world view was, thanks to the blade of Occam, in tatters. Something always had to have 'been' in some sense, either god or (for want of a better description) the 'laws of the universe'. God is a far more complicated explanation. It stretches my mind to believe that there always was some 'order' but it surely should stretch it further to imagine there was something even more ordered that created the laws of nature.

It was a remarkably similar experience to my conversion to christianity (around fifteen years earlier) in that I was faced with a choice to follow a belief that I knew would change dramatically the future direction of my life and mean turning away from a large part of my previous life. I was quite scared. I knew that I would never be as close to some of my closest friends (where our friendship had been intricately tied with our shared faith) and that I had no idea how to live a life without the idea that there was someone looking out for me and that there was a reason behind my existence.

I actually had to make a decision, do I ignore this 'revelation' and go on living my life as before, do I try to argue against it to keep my faith or do I give in to an idea that seems convincing but at the same time desperately empty. I was actually quite fearful - if there is no god then my life would have no meaning or purpose. How do I live without believing that my life has a purpose and significance. In the end I reluctantly chose to give in and become an atheist (although in a sense there was no choice - you can't believe in something you don't believe in).

The most unexpected part however was once I made this decision, rather than experiencing the feeling of despair and loss I was expecting I actually experienced quite a remarkable feeling of peace (quite similar in fact to what I experienced when I originally 'became' a christian and which was one of the things that seemed at the time to further convince me that all this christian stuff was true). To realise that life is mine to live and that I am the one who creates my purpose for existing was amazingly iberating. It also removed the guilt I felt about my life never seeming to live up to the way it was supposed to be as a christian.

I have often thought to write to you to say thank you for your part in the dramatic change in my life that occurred that night (many years ago now) but had always figured you must be inundated with correspondence and that you would probably not be that interested. Coming across the invitation on http://richarddawkins.net/convertsCorner for readers to write if they had lost their beliefs in some way through your books has prompted me to belatedly write and say, thank you!

If you ever want to compete with the testimonials more often found on the covers of the 'self help' books here is one:

Richard Dawkins' book "The Blind Watchmaker" genuinely changed my life. (feel free to add as many exclamation marks as necessary)

Sorry it may not win you many readers but it is honest.

kind regards

Jonathan

(Born Again Atheist)

60

Good afternoon,

By now you certainly should recognize the immense impact of your work in raising the public's consciousness about religious falsehoods. Thanks for helping me step out of the atheism closet. I love your work, and appreciate your effort to improve scientific literacy (much needed).

Sincerely,

Steven Madewell

61

Dear Professor Dawkins,

I am a piano teacher from Southampton, mother of two, ex-roman catholic. I had already taken the painful journey of denouncing my religion as a result of much reflection after studying Philosophy at college. I have since moved through Agnosticism to proud Atheism. I am currently reading 'The God Delusion' and enjoying every moment of it. As a result I have looked into the local humanist society group. I have so much respect for you and hope that you experience all the public gratitude you deserve for all your work, and that you can see plenty of the fruits of your labour with Atheist conversion during your lifetime!

Fiona

62

Mr. Dawkins,

I have just finished reading your book, "The God Delusion" and watching some of your videos as well. The gratitude I have for your unwavering stance based upon truth and reason is immesaurable. I must say that since my evolutionary de-conversion over the last year, I have grown somewhat cowardly in my admission of being a full-blown athiest. It has not helped, of course, to be constantly bombarded with scripture from parents, "logical" arguments from Christian friends, whom Im sure remain my friends purely to re-convert me, and the like. I have even started to encounter the mindset from some agnostic friends of "don't be so harsh on religion, who cares, live and let live" . However, the overwhemling historical evidence of sheer violence due to religious fundamentialism as well as my own near incapability to come to terms with the idea that I was NOT going to hell, have made me see that this is not just a matter of "to each his own". I will be there fighting behind the many, fighting against organized religion until the day I die.

I sincerely cannot thank you enough for your brain, knowledge, dilligence, passion and inspiration.

Amanda Schendel

63

Richard Dawkins, I want to thank you.

I was wrong for the first 25 years of my life.

My religious education had placed blinders over my sense of reason and if I hadn't read your books, I'd probably have gone on as a faithful lemming until my death.

The strength of my former conviction was based mainly on what I thought to be solid evidence in the form of Paley's design argument, and others like it. When you demonstrated the elegant simplicity of the Darwinian explanation for life in The Blind Watchmaker and the fallacy of sky-hook superstitions in The God Delusion, it all came sharply into focus.

At first I was depressed, because I would've liked there to be a good god and a heaven at the end of my life. Then I was a bit angry at our species as a whole for allowing faith to be taught as absolute fact in this age of fantastic scientific enlightenment. But now, I'm overwhelmed with excitement. You were right; atheism is life affirming in a way that religion can never be.

I was seeing a distorted world because of faith-colored glasses, but you helped me to take them off. I'm afraid that it will be some time before humanity gives you the proper credit for your contribution to science, but for my part, I owe you my deepest thanks.

My final thought is this: Critics of evolution claim that universal laws and constants are too finely tuned for supporting the life we see to have come about by a sheer accident. I think they've got it backwards. It is, rather, the life we see that is too finely tuned to the universal constants to have arisen by a sheer accident. If those laws and constants had been any different, sooner or later a self replicating chemical reaction would probably have occurred and evolved via natural selection anyway. It may have looked vastly differently than the life we're all familiar with, but a kind of life would most likely have arisen none the less. Regardless of universal laws, life, when defined to mean matter capable of self replication, is almost certainly inevitable if only given enough time.

Sincerely,

Kevin Nye

64

Professor Dawkins,

I'd like to be able to credit you with my conversion from Roman Catholicism to Atheism, but that honour lies with the late, great, Douglas Adams. I distinctly remember reading one of the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy novels (I think it was The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe), which in the introduction contains a line that reads (and I'm paraphrasing) "2000 years after someone was nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be for people to be nice to one another for a change". It's funny how a throwaway line like that can start the mind rolling, but even at the tender age of 10 this started me on the journey away from religion.

Yours,

Ed Courtenay

65

Dear Dr. Dawkins:

I wish that I could say I was always an atheist. Raised with very benign Christianity - Christmas, weddings etc. Religion wasn't really discussed or debated, we were allowed to believe what we wanted but left to figure it out on our own. I remember going to church and Sunday school when I was about 5 - I liked the stories, but remember it being boring. But personally, I had come to accept that there was a God, Jesus was real but hadn't really thought about the son of god thing too closely, and that there was something after we died and whether that was going to be a good experience or not was going to depend on whether I was good in this lifetime. I prayed irregularly and just basically thought I was being ignored. I loved Christmas and all the myth surrounding it; as far as I was concerned the best thing about Christmas was getting out the Christmas albums in November, October if my parents would have let me and listening and singing along until they disappeared after the new year.

There have been times over the past several months where I have been almost ashamed that I didn't intrinsically "know" it was all bunk and "see the light" or lack of light much younger and on my own. But reading other people's experiences has helped me to realize that personally pursuing religion may be make sense at a specific point in time, given the situation and environment one finds themselves. Luckily I was also taught to question and think for myself and take responsibility for my actions and thoughts. So even though I was not formally introduced to Atheism as an option as a child, my Mom in particular laid the foundation for me to become a critical person in pursuit of self actualization. Rather than beat myself up about "taking this long to become an Atheist" but be grateful I did find Atheism before my own children were asking questions about religion - I am most proud of the future I have helped my children create for themselves.

I had a best friend at the end of high school into University that was a devote Lutheran. I was exploring religious ideas, questioning what it was I actually believed. I have never been someone to do things half way. I started researching; even took a University course in second year on Eastern Religions. I think I was looking at a way of understanding people in general. More specifically I was desperately searching for personal happiness. I was always seeking approval and feeling like "nobody likes me, everybody hates me" whenever conflict arose or I did not get the approval I was seeking; ultimately this was either a symptom or a contributing factor that led me to experience extreme mood swings, eventually diagnosed as unipolar depression at the age of 20.

My best friend and I were very close and I wanted to know more about why she felt so strongly and felt that God and her religion added so much to her life - at the same time I was struggling through life long depression, first time on Prozac etc, parents divorcing and dealing with my father's mild alcoholism and my mother's extreme depression that led to the divorce, while working towards a Commerce degree. Now at 36 I look back and see that period as when depression took over my life; the pursuit of "fixes" for it, including finding someone to love me dominated my behaviour. The Prozac wasn't enough or the right thing at the right time. I blamed myself for my condition, outlook on life and my parents of course. I drank a lot and remember how desperate I was to be loved and get approval from everyone.

As part of my exploration, I went with my friend to her church for a weekly Bible discussion. I wasn't planning on converting, just finding out more. She had suggested the course, but never pushed me, she didn't need to, I was looking. By the end of the 15 weeks or something like that, I decided I wanted to be Baptized. It's easy to talk about religion with Christians when you say you are and just got Baptized. At least I wasn't judgmental of non Christians at this time, I was simply too self absorbed. Like I said I don't do things half way and I was much much harder on myself than I was on others and I expected more of myself than I did of others. The best thing that came about as a result of this is that I read the Bible cover to cover more than once and started paying attention to other people's behaviour and choices with respect to religion more closely. The hypocrisy was impossible to ignore. It took over 4 years to completely reject formalized religion based on my own exploration and the influence of my now husband.

Surprisingly at the same time became best friends with my now husband. At the time he hated religion, thought it was all stupid and useless. Luckily for me he loved me more than he hated religion and stuck with me as my boyfriend through the entire Baptism thing and even accompanied me once or twice to church. Hell, once we were engaged, I still wanted a "Church Wedding" and we even attended marriage classes at my church. His family's background is Ukrainian Orthodox so he had good reason to hate religion and all the strict nonsensical rituals and beliefs that went with it. There was enough pressure and basic expectations from his family and in some part of him that he didn't fit the fact that we would be married in a church and everything that would entail.

He has an Aunt that was and is REALLY into alternative spirituality which influenced his personal views on religion/spirituality for the next several years and mine too. When she started talking about how she believed strongly that we all originated from the constellation The Seven Sisters - my husband and I backed away fast from alternative spiritually. I don't think I went to church more than once after we were married. We didn't really buy into any formalized religion, but were kind of vague about our beliefs. I went to palm readers, read all about essential oils and continued to be immersed in fantasy and science fiction literature. I honestly don't think that if I hadn't forced him to articulate his beliefs he would be in the same place with respect to religion. But I forced the issue, kept asking him to explain if he was an atheist or agnostic. I finally got to the point where I was a solid agnostic and he was able to state with confidence that he was atheist.

I kept exploring, questioning and was getting to the point where I finally considered myself closer to atheism than agnosticism - there was no ah-ha moment. One day he showed me an essay Penn Jillette had written on "I believe" which so succinctly defined Penn's atheism and it clicked in me how much committing myself 100% to the fact that there was no god could be freeing, positive and the antithesis to much of the thinking that fuels my depression. That was sometime in the fall 2005. Like I said, I go all out once I believe something and the more I read and thought about the impact of truly believing there was no god the more it made sense. I have felt the need to identify myself as an atheist since the spring of 2006 and it has been one of the best years of my life personally so far. I spent the summer of 2006 listening to podcasts of Penn's radio show and e-mailing regularly with Goudeau. I listened intently to your (Richard Dawkin's) appearance on the show promoting The God Delusion. Up until that point I hadn't read any non-fiction on atheism, agnosticism or the like. I was finding sufficient evidence in day to day exposure within the media and my daily life that Atheism was the way to go and felt right to me. Needless to say my husband loved me joining him on the dark side - it definitely strengthened our relationship in terms of values and our approach to child rearing. We have two extremely inquisitive daughters now aged 6 and 3 1/2 years old.

Both my husband and I began appreciating how many of the authors and writers of both fiction and non-fiction of books, graphic novels and television were Atheist or at least addressing the challenge and idiosyncratic nature of religion. Particularly, Joss Whedon as we had both become avid fans of all his work. I read Unweaving the Rainbow while waiting for our local bookstores to restock The God Delusion; I loved the scientific approach and challenge of grasping the biological and genetic rationale. I loved reading The God Delusion on so many levels. I appreciated the humour, how grounded in popular culture and current issues the entire book was. I laughed out loud and constantly interrupted my husband from whatever he was doing or reading to read aloud to him passages and entire sections at a time. I have now just completed The End of Faith by Sam Harris and will be taking some time to consider other novels suggested by both Mr. Harris and yourself.

Oh, and with regards to the depression thing, Atheism didn't cure me, I have actively sought psychological and psychiatric therapy, currently am on the right dose of a combination of anti-depressants and have a solid support system around me that makes staying healthy possible. I came out with being a depressive, or someone who will be managing depression in one form or another probably for most of my life to people for around 6 years. The hypocrisy of people saying they understand and felt badly for me and that they don't think I am any less capable but at the same time insipidly seeing me as overwhelmed and emotional even when I am simply tackling very demanding and stressful projects/jobs (I'm a high school teacher) infuriates me. Just as the reluctance of intelligent, generally rational people have by refusing to debate and discuss religion or beliefs like I was proposing we cook and consume children or something equally horrid.

Coming out as an Atheist has been an entirely different experience. So far no one looks at me like I am defunct or a less capable person but rather are slightly taken back. As far as the future is concerned I want to put myself in a position to reduce stigma's and their powerful effect as they relate to people suffering from depression and further promote discussion about religion and present Atheism as a healthy and viable alternative to any type of religion. Thank-you for providing the final rational, evidence based push away from faith towards an exciting and transforming life as an Atheist. I am confident that my children will be able to thank-you in their own time!

Sincerely and with Gratitude,

Michelle Martin

66

I can't say I was converted rather reinforced by your book(s). Knowing little about the subject of genetics or Darwinism beyond what Time magazine might have to say, I have to believe that you know what you are talking about in those areas. It certainly makes as much or more sense than the idea that a ruthless god created the world and its inhabitants so that he could have a son who would save them from a hell that god himself created. The anthromorphic principle reigns in the old and new testament. The original authors must have been a joy to behold and be in the company of.

David Williams

67

Dear Richard,

I am writing to thank you for your brilliant book, The God Delusion. I had been an atheist for some time, but could never really clarify my thoughts on the matter or defend my opinions effectively. Your book said what I did not have the eloquence to say. Thank you for giving me the confidence to stand up for my atheism. Your book has changed my life for the better.

Thank you,

Christopher Slattery

68

It is nearly midnight and I can hardly believe that I am sitting here at the computer, but I have been glued to it for the last three hours, looking at The Edge and the reviews of the Beyond Belief conference. I started to read The God Delusion because I attended an Alpha Course here in Bury St Edmunds, I really went to support a friend who wanted to go, but after the first couple of weeks I was feeling more and more anxious and felt, I totally disagree with what these people are teaching but I need the vocabulary to express it. (I thought an Alpha course would deal with pertinent issues relevant to life, such as Christianity and Islam, Christianity and stem-cell research, but it doesn't, its like Sunday school!). So I bought and read The God Delusion, then I bought Breaking the Spell, then River out of Eden, and now I am reading The Devils Chaplain. Believe me I am the dimmest thing in the world but even I can read these books! I am looking at the website and do not know whether to get The Third Culture or The Next Fifty Years next, perhaps I will get both.

I work as an operating department practitioner and working closely with anaesthetists feel that some of them are among the cleverest people I will ever know, yet some of them are church goers, I don't know how they square the two really, I will keep reading and maybe I will get an understanding.

Many thanks for revitalising this old (nearly Fifty) bat.

Gill Miller

69

I have always been an atheist. I was raised by Christian parents and had siblings that were also believers but I essentially gave up my belief in God and Santa Claus at the same time. We lived on a farm and I observed that the visible evidence was that animals had sex, made babies, grew old and died and that no supernatural forces were involved at any stage in the cycle of life.

I have subsequently read and enjoyed several of Richard's books and am looking forward to reading The God Delusion. I recommend Richards books to any theists that I meet whom are prepared to discuss their beliefs.

Cheers

David McCosker

70

Dear Mr. Dawkins,

Although it would be dishonest to give you full credit for turning me into an atheist, your efforts have helped me feel more confident about it. Religious fundamentalism is a widespread political mechanism that relies on fear, hatred, xenophobia and ignorance in order to force agreement and obedience from people of all beliefs. I have often been cowardly when faced with superstition in the past. However, your writings have demonstrated to me that the only ethical and responsible way to live as an enlightened person in this world is to challenge hateful dogmas wherever they may be found. Thanks for the newfound courage and intellectual ammunition. My hat goes off to you... please keep it up!

Yours in Truth and Justice,

Dylan Figueiredo

71

Dr. Dawkins,

I do not expect a response to this email; in fact, I do not really expect you to have time to read it. But for myself, I wanted to send it for two reasons:

1. To thank you for writing The God Delusion;

2. To briefly relate my experience with religion deep in the fabled heart of Texas, in case that should be useful to you; and

Thank you for having the courage to write The God Delusion. I feel much less alone in the world, and have just a bit more hope that your book will raise the general consciousness of enough people so that the rising tide of religious fundamentalism can be turned before a devastating tsunami of irrational religious oppression sweeps over even my own country. Even at this time, I feel somewhat disenfranchised in my country, and it is difficult to understand how an institution created by the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin could have become so subverted by this Christian movement. Even my own representatives in Congress are of the opinion that the founding fathers were Christians, and that this nation was founded as a Christian nation. I have had these discussions with them all, and they are quite unwilling to listen to historical fact.

Please to do not think that this statement is a casual suck up - it is sincerely thought out, and it is the culmination of a great deal of study: Your work stands as the current pinnacle of human intellectual achievement. I am continually amazed at the intellectual output from such a small region as the Midlands of England anyhow. Within a relatively few miles' radius, we can locate the birthplace of Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, the Industrial Revolution, William Shakespeare, William Smith (the father of Geology), etc., etc. Benjamin Franklin's parents were born in the epicenter of the region I'm describing. And now, I can add Richard Dawkins to my list. We can extend the region southwest a bit and include Bertrand Russell. There are many literary and other cultural figures we could include. But, that is not the reason I admire your work, it is simply an observation that makes me wonder how much of this can be attributed to the gene pool of the region, and how much can be attributed to a raised level of consciousness in a human community wherein elevated achievement becomes a more common occurrence because one or two happenstance achievements raised expectations and prepared the community's mind for it, up to the point of specially imprinting the children.

But, to my original point, your work sums up the world's cultural maturation struggles, makes sense of what has befuddled our minds for millennia, and offers a way for us to achieve full conscious intellectual maturity as a species, which would be a first on Earth if not a first in the Universe.

I was born the son of a share-cropper in the geographic center of Texas in 1940. No blacks were allowed to live in the area. We lived in a relatively backwoods environment, particularly during WWII, with no electricity, no running water, and no automobile. Dad farmed with a team of horses. We raised most of what we ate. There were many denominations of the Christian religion represented in the area, but the dominant one was the Baptist Church. There were different variations on the Baptist theme, of course. We attended the one that was most local to us, and which happened to the most mainstream version.

Probably, it was my fortuitous path of learning that caused me to become an anomaly: a liberal minded citizen of the world. By the time I entered school, I could already do all the things they tried to teach us to do, and was clearly a creature apart from the other students in my class, to the extent that other teachers in the building were sometimes brought in to watch a spelling bee wherein I would spell everybody down and go beyond our current place in the book. By the time I was in second grade, I could read and write more fluently than any adult in the community. Such leverage kept me from ever feeling intellectually intimidated, and that has to make a huge difference in the trust that I placed in my own thinking. I can understand how others in the community could never achieve such independence of mind.

However, in my youth, I was impressed by the sincerity and "niceness" of the people in our church, and became quite devout. But, problems began to become evident in our rural paradise. This niceness did not extend to people outside our communal sphere. Observed intolerance, a penchant for applying reason and logic to issues, a reading of the Bible, and attendance at the nearby Baptist University undid all that indoctrination (I later received a Master's Degree and pursued extensive science and mathematics training at state universities). I was appalled at the hatred, murder, deception, genocide, intolerance, and series of contradictions that I found in the Bible. The character God (Jehovah as we knew his name) seemed like a monster to me. In lighter moods, I called him the Yosemite Sam of the heavens. And, finally, I came to realize that faith itself is a foolish and gullible mindset, and not something we should ever require of anybody. Indeed, we should strenuously discourage it. The threat of hell fire, to be administered if one didn't go along without question, seemed to me to be the ultimate child abuse. Adults should know better, so I dismissed them, although I've become more understanding since then.

The distortion of sex into a thing of evil struck me as a self-imposed mental illness. The manipulation of guilt in order to gain power over people's minds struck me as a deliberate evil. I came to see that if a person becomes convinced that he (she) is absolutely right, then anyone with any other view is deemed to be absolutely wrong, and that absolutely right person finds himself (herself) justified in committing any act against those absolutely wrong people, for their own good, for the good of the world, and for the good of God. And I saw that nobody knew what was actually in the Bible; either because they did not read it all, or because they chose to blind themselves to passages that did not fit with preconceived notions. I saw that the Bible was far from factual, far from rational, far from fair, far from good, and far from being a reliable guide for anything at all - other than for hatred, prejudice, oppression, cruelty, murder, enslavement, warfare, ethnic cleansing, abdication of life, etc..

But, I was a poor lad, and needed to support a young family. I taught in the public schools of the region, gradually going from the smallest schools in farming and ranching communities to the largest division schools in the DFW Metroplex. One day, I was reminding students in class, who had become excited about UFO reports in the newspapers, that there had never been one shred of hard evidence accumulated from all these alleged encounters. The students began to question me further along those lines, and one student asked me if I believed in God. It seems that believers tend to believe in a multiplicity of things, including things that should be mutually exclusive, so the progression to the subject of religion was quite natural. A superstitious mindset is pretty much a superstitious mindset, I suppose. Now, for years, I had skirted the topics that were dangerous to my tenure, but after 15 years, I was disappointed with the lack of quality in our educational system, and I felt that this imposed community deception (religious belief) was a part of the reason why we weren't actually teaching much of anything. I decided to see if I could survive the truth, if I would couch it in a clinically sterile manner. So, I replied that I did not have any evidence that there actually were any supernatural beings of any kind. I went on to say that that certainly did not prove God's nonexistence, and that nonexistence could not be proved in any case. But we must make our decision based on the best evidence we can muster, and we must be open to changing our opinions if and when acceptable evidence is presented. I said that I was very open to good evidence, if anyone could present it.

As expected, the students reported me to the High School Principal. One student said to me, "It's a good thing my grandmother didn't hear what you said; she'd get her shotgun and blow you away, man!"

The principal told me that a belief in a supreme being was a condition of employment. I quietly dismissed his claim, and he found out from the school lawyer that he was wrong. He spent the next year searching for a loophole through which he could slip my contract, and he found a sufficient one that probably would have worked only in the state of Texas. It was unethical if not illegal, and I could probably have defeated the move in court. However, by that time, I wanted to see what else I could do in the world besides work 24/7 teaching school and coaching athletics. I had had about as much success as there was to be had, and didn't like all the restraints to teaching that were required of us. Perhaps in Victor Hugo's France, the teacher was the torch, but in my Texas, he/she had joined with the clergyman as the extinguisher.

In a large sense, they did me a favor. They caused me to liberate myself from a stagnant system and to enter industry, where, with no business training and no business experience, I quickly rose to levels of some influence, and later became a consultant to industry. I served the major manufacturing companies of the world, traveling to and working in the world's largest corporations across the United States, Canada, and Europe (including your country, which I came to love - particularly Wales). Of course, I discovered ignorance, repression, and graft in industry, so it wasn't a Utopian briar patch into which they had thrown me - except from the standpoint of pay. I earned many times the salary I would have earned if I had remained in Education. Also, I had time to pursue a rigorous line of formal and personal study in the sciences and mathematics.

To my family's credit, they did not ostracize me completely, although I never openly challenged them as perhaps I should have. It became a curious kind of agreed-upon blindness, wherein we continued to respect each other for our human qualities, but the subject of religion was understood to be a taboo topic when we were together. It was as if they had tacitly agreed to pretend not to notice that this one aspect of our lives was now unshared. I think they considered my educational and business achievements to be a negative in one sense, in that it had somehow robbed me of my ability to embrace religion. I was at heart a decent fellow, but I had been corrupted and blinded by the sinful world. They would never venture to go where I had gone, and would not want to. They would hear nothing from me on the subject, and would refrain from all but the most subtle suggestions about religion in my presence. It was the same sort of thing as when we choose not to acknowledge to one another that we defecate, urinate, and have sex. We don't deny it; we just talk and behave as if those things were nonoccurrences. Even going to the bathroom somehow doesn't include the admission of the things that go on in a bathroom. My relationship with my wife of 44 years, while it is a loving relationship, has much of the same quality when it comes to religion. She has heard what I have to say, and she has read what I have written about the topic, and she doesn't go to church. But she cannot put aside a belief in Yosemite Sam and his passive-aggressive son who would have us burn in hell forever if we are not gullible.

Overall, I'm quite safe as long as I keep my opinion pretty much to myself. Most people allow it. But if I were to openly advocate the abolition of religion, which I think is something that should be done, then I could very easily disappear. And I'm quite sure I'd not have 70 virgins waiting for me.

Thomas D. Brown

72

I was raised catholic and ironically left that path because i was opposed to lack of truth that the church was portraying. However due to circumstances in life i was swayed in to attending a Pentecostal church for the better part of three years. Thankfully i have returned to my intelligent, question asking self.

Shane Frick

73

Mr. Dawkins,

I just recently finished reading your book The God Delusion and I must say it was very inspiring. For one, it gave me a topic for my psychology CRP (similar to a dissertation). I plan to study the harmful effects of indoctrinating (a.k.a. brainwashing) young children in religious dogma. Your book pointed out to me that I was one of these children, and although I am not yet comfortable declaring what you declare about a god, your book did move me down on the religious/atheism scale. I would say before reading, I was a 6 (pretty much agnostic but leaning towards the supernatural) and now I fall somewhere between a 3 and 4, meaning I lean towards atheism.

I was raised in a fundamental Protestant school from the age of 6 until I was 16. From the beginning I was warned that I would be going to hell if I did not believe in god and that trials and tribulations in my life were a direct act of god... punishing me, I guess, for my sins. As much as I realize the sillyness of this now, there is still some nagging fear in the corner of my mind that prevents me from completely converting to atheism, which is indeed sad. However, your book Unweaving the Rainbow has renewed my love of physics (I was studying to be a physicist at one time) and I feel that if I continue to study in depth, perhaps I will eventually be able to cut ties with the frightful god of my youth.

At any rate, I owe you a huge "thank you" not only for renewing my love of science and for re-opening my eyes to the truth of science, but also for giving me a dissertation topic. I was starting to feel panicked about not feeling passionate about any particular subject in psychology. Perhaps, eventually, I can dedicate my life to pulling the wool from others' lives and supporting them in the journey towards atheism and science. I know it has been a big journey for me, and I would love to help others cast off the fear of eternal damnation as they should have when they discovered the truth about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

Much thanks to you, good sir, and keep writing those books!

Cindy Pence

74

Dear Richard,

I am happy to say that your book "The God Delusion" is responsible for 100% of my conversion to Atheism. However, I am sad to say that it may cost me my girlfriend. She is more Christian than God. Although I tried explaining to her my reasons for being an atheist, she just can't seem to let go of her faith. We love each other and are perfect for each other except on this one issue, and believe me, I have often entertained the idea of pretending to be Christian for the rest of my life, just so that I could be with her, except it would be easy to tell that I was lying.

I have also found that it is difficult for me to stop praying. I've prayed every night before I went to bed for my whole life, and now, I can't sleep unless offer at least a pretend prayer. So I usually pray that my girlfriend will open her mind to atheism.

Despite all this, I am so happy to finally knowing the truth, especially after being raised a pastor's son. It has given me a new appreciation for life.

My deepest thanks,

Joe

75

Dear Professor Dawkins,

As many of your readers, I have been brought up as a "Christian child", not realizing that I was in fact merely the child of Christian parents. I have recently left my faith behind and now consider myself an Atheist, with pride I might add. Your book has provided me with the strength and arguments I needed to stand my ground against my parents. Throughout my life, if anything good happened to me I was always expected to "thank God", yet when things went wrong, it was my faulty or sinful behavior. I recently got accepted to an Ivy League Medical School in the United States and for the first time in my life I was able to say "I achieved this, by myself. I am here because I worked hard and not because of a whim of a divine being." I have never felt this good before. Therefore, I think that you, who served as the spark that lit this fire in me, deserve more than the few dollars (or British pounds in your case) you will get in royalties from the book I bought. I hence want to give you the most sincere, deep rooted "thank you" I possibly can.

Thank you,

Eike Blohm

76

Dear Dr. Dawkins,

I want to reassure you that you are making a difference. You and others like you, from the pugnacious Sam Harris to the revolutionary Daniel Dennett to the heroic James Randi, are freeing minds at this very moment. Few legacies will deserve more credit than yours come the day humankind eradicates this psychological cancer we call religion.

I think I've been an atheist my whole life, though I can't be entirely sure of that. I began applying myself with determination to a study of the Bible, using the methodology that felt by far the most natural to me: rational analysis. Unfortunately no-one had warned me that Christianity is not amenable to such inspection of its philosophy. I still remember how deeply shocked I was -- and believe me, I was by no means naive at that point -- by the extent of the irrationality and unpleasantness I encountered in those stories. My eventual desperation led me to attempt a new methodology more favored by liberal theologians, but the intellectual convolutions so provoked my already shrieking intuition that I was forced very quickly to abandon that approach.

Then, for years, I tried not to think about it. My social circle consisted at that time almost exclusively of fundamentalist Christians, which made this somewhat challenging, to say the least, and when the topic arose I'd shift uncomfortably in my seat while remaining uncharacteristically reticent. It was not a happy period of my life.

Then I read The End of Faith, and it gave me back my voice. It freed me from my intellectual solitary confinement. It raged like a hurricane through those neglected, embarrassing corridors of my worldview and ripped away everything that wasn't sound. And in its wake, The God Delusion filled in the cracks and made even better than new the edifice of reason upon which I'm now convinced my existence must rest.

Both books made me angry. They made me active. They made me want to show others the transcendental sense of hope and wonder I found in a godless universe. You helped make that possible.

Thank you.

Ross

77

Dear Professor Dawkins,

Whilst I'm afraid that I can't give you the credit for my current Atheism, I would still like to share my thoughts and feelings on the subject with the other readers of Converts Corner.

I still feel vaguely disgusted with myself for the time that I spent learning the whole Lords prayer and my School prayer at the age of five. I felt so smart and satisfied with myself and that God would surely take notice of how good I was being. This was the first year of Primary School (I'm a Devonian Brit) so I suppose I can't really be blamed for being a little bit gullible, even if I don't like remembering it. I'm now a University student and speak out every chance I get about the absurdity of Christian Worship services in British schools and other related causes.

My Mother was an Agnostic and my Father an Atheist so I guess I had a little help in that there was no God at home even if there was at School. I went to a Methodist College for my Secondary and sixth form education and I must at this point thank my first Pastor, Reverend Brandt for his easygoing form of preaching where sometimes the only place God was mentioned was in the prayer at the end of the service. Some of my best moral lessons came from that man and this made his absence all the worse when the second Pastor came.

By this point I was an out-of-the-closet Atheist. I never sang hymns, never bowed my head to pray or said Amen at the end either. When "God-Girl" (the entire school called her this) came along to take over from Brandt, things got a little difficult. One of the first things she asked our class was how many people were Christians. She seemed taken aback when only three of a class of twenty said they were. She told the rest of us that we were all going to burn in hell. If I wanted that kind of treatment I'd live in America's Bible Belt. She never took any criticism and always had an answer for everything. Knowing what I know now from your books and other sources I would tear her arguments to shreds.

I guess that I'm also lucky to be living in a country where Atheism is seen as a sign of a sane and rational mind, and faith as something to be generally avoided when polite. I'm new to the Online Atheist and Freethought community and still have a lot to look at. I hope someday to be able to debate Theists publicly and start winning not souls, but enquiring minds.

Like you, when I feel in awe of the multitudinous biological and other natural systems around me, I do not reach for ignorance and God but for an even deeper understanding of precisely what It is to be human in a naturalistic Universe.

Keep doing what you're doing, It does make a difference, despite what many nay-saying Theists might say. Converts Corner is the proof after all…

Thanks

Yours,

Chris Bullard

78

I have long been highly sceptical of religion but was yet to articulate the opinions I was coming to form.

Your programme on Channel Four, The Root Of All Evil?, gave me enormous clarity.

I am now reading The God Delusion and enjoying it thoroughly.

I now enjoy engaging others on the subject and find many people are also atheist but reticent in admitting so.

Too many people think of religion as little old ladies going to church. If only that were so. So much damage and suffering has been done for many centuries in the name of religion.

I am now something of an evangelical atheist (pun intended).

Thank you — I look forward to finishing The God Delusion and moving on to your other works.

David Wright

79

Dear Professor Dawkins,

It took me 30 years to pry myself loose of the Roman Catholic religion I was indoctrinated into. Unfortunately I haven't been able to bring my family into the light of reason with me, at least not yet. It was merely 5 weeks before I purchased "The God Delusion" that I became atheist. In that time though, I was fully content to not confront others on their dogmatic beliefs. Live and let live as they say. Maybe it was because I was so afraid of losing touch with my social networks...I don't even personally know anyone else who is atheist. Perhaps because of the undue amount of respect for faith that we seem to so value in our society. But even more so I feel it was because I felt unprepared to defend my position.

Having read your book, I am no longer a soft target for apologists. I feel much more prepared, and motivated to challenge others on their false beliefs. I will not be a strawman, and I will do everything I can, in the most compassionate way I can, to educate my family and friends.

At the heart of the matter, I've seen in my own life that religion does a great disservice to the human mind. It trades curiosity for a warm fuzzy feeling and false certainty. Thankfully I had somehow managed to keep my curiosity in dormancy all these years and in the end I had the courage to follow it directly out of church.

Thank you,

Vince Rzecznik

80

Dear Professor Dawkins,

I would like to thank you for your fantastic book 'The God Delusion'. Before I started reading, I was very much an agnostic, but as I made my way through the book, I was completely bowled over by the truth you were writing. You were thinking what I was thinking before I even knew it! I am now absolutely convinced of the irrationality of religion, the damage it can cause, and of the truth of the sound Darwinian arguments you put across in its place. Everyone should read this book, if only to encourage people to think more about the beliefs they hold. I hope very much to meet you one day (maybe at Oxford University, where I have a place to study Theology next year) to shake your hand and to thank you for finally dismissing some of the religious nonsense still left in my head from indoctrination into Christianity as a child. You have truely changed my life.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Head

81

I am an atheist. I can now state that I have believed in no gods all my life; it's just taken 54 years to be able to verbalize it. It was a real revelatory moment in my life, much like when at 18 I recognized that I was gay. I have always been gay, but I learned to put a label on my feelings, and I understood myself better. Then I was able to get on with my life.

Coming to the realization that I'm an atheist has been a similar 'Eureka'-type experience for me. I was raised in protestant churches, studied pipe organ performance at university, where the only hope for a job was in the church. Fortunately, it was easy to hide behind the organ console and only pretend to believe. Some time ago I quit playing, and now build pipe organs, so that I don't have to work in a church in order to pay the rent. In recent years I joined a super-high Episcopal church. I had always been fascinated with the smoke and bells (and dresses!) associated with high-church worship. I became an acolyte and thurifer. I had a great time swinging the thurible and I excelled at censing things. However, I still didn't believe in god. Soon the novelty of the drama wore off and I was left empty and bored with all of it. I haven't been to church since.

I've always experienced confusion regarding the concept of Christian sin. I never felt I had sinned. Don't misunderstand: I don't consider myself to be a perfect person, or one who is better than anyone else. I don't break civil laws (except the usual minor ones that everyone 'breaks'). I adhere to the golden rule, the basic tenet of most religious and spiritual philosophies. Of course, there are the sins in the bible. What a truly odd and contradictory list of items! But what is to be considered a sin in modern times? What should I confess to if I was of a mind? I hadn't a clue. Yet, people confess their sins on a weekly or even daily basis, and then continue to act as they did before without overt change. This includes clergy. I was baffled. But, it baffles me no more. It's one of those concepts with which I don't need to wrestle anymore.

I also considered the possibility that all religions are simultaneously true. That would mean that when people die, they would go to one version of heaven plus several versions of other people's hell. Sounds like a giant traffic jam, and sounds like hell would win. King Solomon is up there, somewhere, dividing up souls? A much more plausible idea is that there is neither heaven nor hell, or any of the other claptrap that dreamt them up. Any other solution involves arrogance, as in "I'm right, you're wrong." I began to contemplate many other religious premises with fresh eyes and tossed them out as conflicted and incredible. I became a skeptic.

Shortly after I renounced the church, Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and both of Sam Harris' books came to my attention, which I devoured. This opened up a new world for me. It's much like realizing one's gayness, and then discovering a world of other gay people. As a member of Mensa, I've discovered a community of atheists there. We have a tremendously active online group of remarkably diverse and opinionated people.

I am convinced that, sooner or later, science and rational thought will prevail, and that humans will give up their silly notions of supernatural beings. I don't hold out much hope that it will occur during my lifetime, however. I think that religions were invented, and gods created, to explain the unexplainable. We don't need them for that now. Greek and Norse gods came and went. The gods du jour will fade away, too, since they have outlived their usefulness. But, churches are big businesses that won't disappear quietly. It's too bad that so many people are so terrifically worried about their next lifetime that they squander this one, the only life they have. Such a waste.

Being an atheist has given me the freedom to think and question. Being skeptical has allowed me to discard old beliefs and pretenses, and get on with my life here. It's been a tremendous relief to not believe.

Mark Hotsenpiller

82

Hi Richard,

just like to mention that by reading your works - most notably the God Delusion - I have become very self-assured in my disbelief. I am a 23 year old student at St Andrews university, and it was there that I first became aware of your opinions and passionate views on atheism. For many years I was midly religious, experiencing bouts of scepticism every now and then. I never had the courage to become an avowed atheist because the thought depressed me. However, your books have given me the strength to articulate my disbelief. thank you so much!

With regards,

Michael Soutar

83

I was a youth minister, a theist among theists. I was passionate about God, Jesus, and the whole thing. The problem was is that it was slowly destroying my life.

The concept that there was "saved" and "unsaved" - essentially dividing equal people into seperate groups - and being told the unsaved were evil ruined my relationship with my friends and family who were not in the Church. I found myself withdrawing from general society and spending more time alone or around people who thought like I did. The quality of my personal life plummeted.

The charity and love amongst evangelical Christians... I never found it. It was those ideas that brought me to Christianity at 19, but I found out they are not Christian ideas. Instead evangelicals were a group who tried to be loving and tried to be charitable because inside themselves they were not. Mostly, they were people who were the evil ones and covering up their evil with religion. It was very fake.

I wasn't like them. I was always honest with my failings and didn't believe in covering up things. I believed in loving people of all groups. I was in the minority. My constant complaint is that Jesus seemed to never be reflected with these people.

I had a breakdown in May 2006 and religion was one of the big causes. It's not popular to say that religion can be dangerous for your mental health, but it is. Very. When I realized how much Protestant fundamentalism had ruined my ability to live in the real world, be around real people, get any joy out of my life, and remove my ability to reason... I pulled out. The more I pulled out of the Church, the Bible, and religious people the more I recovered to the point I am recovered.

It was Tom Harpur's the Pagan Christ which proved to me that I had given my life to a lie but it was Richard Dawkin's video's and book which gave me something real to rebuild my life on.

For someone who had lived the God delusion every day, that is the greatest blessing I could have ever gotten.

Jonah Emery

84

Dr. Dawkins:

I would like to add my name to the ever-growing list of those lured from the flock by your writings. I must admit I was already on the road of doubt when I encountered your book, "The Blind Watchmaker," in my Introduction to Philosophy class freshman year of university.

I was raised in a moderate Christian church (The Presbyterian Church, USA) and was the youngest church officer ("deacon") I know of, ordained at age 14 to take part in the leadership of my congregation. By age 18 I was no longer going to church regularly, but I was still participating in some activities like choir and youth meetings. I grew increasingly skeptical through discussions with friends who were fundamentalist, as I realized the faith I was brought up in was founded on a "pick and choose" system lacking authority. I began to search for authority outside of religion, because the authority offered within it, that of the fundamentalists' reading, struck me, ironically, as so immoral and destructive.

My freshman year of university gave me 24-hour access to the internet and that eye-opening philosophy class. I read about science, skepticism, and rationality voraciously, and your book cemented it all. My professor's obvious endorsement of the text and my classmates' lame arguments against your systematic and thorough support of a universe without an intelligent designer encouraged me to make the final step and label myself an atheist. The authority moderate Christianity is lacking I have found: it is in the laws of nature, the power of time, and the unfailing and elegant system of logic and reason. I have since shared your book with my father and grandfather, closet atheists both, and I know your writings have helped them, in private moments, to come to terms with what they know is the truth.

Thank you.

CS

85

Dear Richard

Two weeks ago my wife and I enjoyed our usual walk into the city of Wells from high up in the surrounding Mendips. As usual, we completed the walk with a visit to the pasty shop and a stroll around the wonderful architecture of Wells Cathedral.

The only change to me, which had happened before this walk and after all of those which preceded it, was that I had just finished reading your book. I entered the Porch and didn't donate the requested £5. As always, I was impressed with the scale of the building and the beauty of the stonework but that was all. Missing was the indescribable reverence I had felt during previous visits. I thought that the Priests (if that is what they should be called) looked ridiculous in their robes and I felt very sad for the young Choristers who appeared to be much too young to have decided for themselves whether they wanted to wear such silly costumes (when will Christianity stop favouring ridiculous dress?) or sing in praise of Jesus in Latin.

Of course I can still respect the beliefs of others, and I understand that anyone in mourning or faced with a terrible disease might want to sit quietly in such beautiful surroundings, but I also feel that there is an absurdity attached to such behaviour. Therefore I think it might be better to keep a respectful distance from this type of behaviour and also from Cathedrals, Churches and other religious buildings. I think that this is a bit of a shame but I don't think that God's house is any place for an atheist.

I suppose my wife and I will begin to see the relevent and thriving parts of cities from now on, rather than those which have become out of date and pointless.

Its all your fault!!

Thank you,

Stuart Taylor

86

Professor Dawkins,

I may be just one of those in the mass of ordinary people who hardly ever write in to public forums like this. Certainly this is out of the ordinary for me, but I can't just sit back and be one of the "silent minority - or majority?" - -what are the statistics? -- about such a profoundly important issue as this.

I've just read "The God Delusion" which then pointed me to this website. Before, I'd been prepared to call myself privately an atheist, but never to others. If pushed, I might have said agnostic, because I couldn't marshall all the arguments why I do not believe in god. The God Delusion strips away all the wishywashy agnostic arguments. It puts together in one place all the reasons and facts why atheism, to me, is my central personal philosophy of life, and the only rational way to be and look at the world and the universe.

Like I suppose for many people, religion doesn't often come up as a subject in conversations, but, no more sitting in closets. I'm an ATHEIST. I have you, Richard, to thank very largely for that, for being comfortable with saying that. I have read all your other books over the last few years and found them all wonderfully illuminating and thought provoking.

To all those who wonder about the truth of their religious beliefs, or their agnosticism, – read Richard Dawkin's books – especially The God Delusion.

And to all those atheists in highly religious societies who have "come out" – your courage is inspiring and noble.

Thank you,

Martin Cole

87

I was born an atheist. I have always been an atheist. I always regarded the attempt to give me a religious upbringing as complete nonsense.

Peter Rogers

88

Dear Dr. Dawkins,

I have been an avid fan of Douglas Adams since my adolecense. In his interviews he was always eager to recommend his favourite books such as James Gleick "Chaos" and the "Selfish Gene".

Whatever D.N.A. recommended, I had to read. I have been an avid fan of science and an atheist ever since.

So you could say that Douglas Adams made an atheist out of me, which makes you responsible by association.

Thank You Both,

Erifily

89

Professor Dawkins,

I was sent to 12 years of Catholic school growing up. Amazingly enough, it was there that I has one teacher that tought me to think critically about the Bible. Since then, I have always been a skeptic and as I educated myself more through my college years I had more and more problems with the idea of religion, although I still believed in the idea of a "God" as a Diest, only because I couldn't truely comprehend the origin of the earth. I am now fully converted non-believer thanks to "The God Delusion" and I am recommending your book as well as a few other quality books on the topic to everyone I know.

A New Rationalist,

Joseph Clemens

90

Richard Dawkins,

I was born in 1967, I was brought up until the age of nine in Belfast. I damaged my ears enough when an IRA bomb blew out the front of a large department store, Woolworths I think, to keep me out of the army. Disappointing when I tried to join up as a school leaver but a "blesssed" relief now. I was taught that fenians were the enemy. I was sent to Sunday school. I wore a sash and walked the Orange march and I will never forget the day that a proddy v fenian stone throwing incident between me, David Thompson (Tommy machine gun), Eddie Larmer (Larmer bell) and a few catholic lads turned into the biggest riot I have ever seen.

All this and plenty more before 1976 when I left Ireland to join my mum in northeast England.

Nine members of my family were in Stephensons shop next door to the fish&chip shop that was blown to pieces by a bomb on the Shankill Road. The IRA bomber was still holding it when it went off. My aunt , Doreen Stephenson owned the business next door and recently had the dividing wall reinforced. If not for that my family would have suffered a far greater loss than a few minor injuries.

A few weeks after arriving in South Shields I got a twinkle in my eye for a local girl. It turned out she was catholic but that didn't seem to matter to anybody. I'm the type that will just stay schtum and observe when things get a little odd. So I played and teased and flirted and enjoyed her company very much and absolutley nothing untoward happened.

It was shortly after that that I realised if they just mixed the schools in Ireland the trouble would probably all stop after a while. I was still nine years old.

I sometimes feel, in fact no, I far too often feel like I am still nine years old and the reason I don't understand anything is because all the politicians, priests, and self proffessed smart arses are the proper grown ups.

After reading "The God Delusion" I feel as if they are all nine years old and I have grown up.

It was a wonderous release from much of my ignorance. I was always a little afraid to really ask myself the question about what my beliefs were. As I read the book it was as if you knew all the questions I wanted to ask but hadn't.

I can't thank you enough for teaching me to accept my Atheism. Of course I feel as though I want to run shouting it from the rooftops and I worry a little about the anger that arises about how much of my life is and has been tarnished by fairies. It hurts alot.

On my fortieth birthday relaxing in the Dominican Republic I read the first book I could be bothered with in ten years and I don't believe there can be any other book that would have invigorated me more. Thank You , in the word of Brian, "Alot!".

John McMullan

91

[NB: This is an edited version of a journal entry from November 11, 2006. The good friend who showed me the two movies is Matthew Gress, whose letter appears on your deconversion page]

I am an atheist.

This is not a conclusion that I drew overnight. Like many other nonbelievers, it happened gradually.

My religious instruction was not intense. I went to Sunday School maybe, 2-3 times a year. My mother was raised a mainline Lutheran. Every once in a while, she would remember to drag us out of bed to attend church because (I believe) she thought that it was what all good people did. From a young age, I viewed bible stories in the same vein as the stories of Cinderella and Snow White. I never made any distinction between the two. I thought that fairy godmothers, magic powers, and people rising from the dead were interesting to think about. Even at a young age, I don't remember believing that the stories were true. I was shocked when I realized that, even though adults said that Snow White and Cinderella were imaginary, they believed that God and Jesus were real.

I also remember one of my Sunday school teachers saying, "Pray to God, and he will help you." I took her advice and prayed for a new bike. Nothing happened. By the time I could read, I saw a poster that showed a boy praying for a bike, with the caption saying something along the lines of "Don't pray for selfish things." I remember being a little ticked off at that. I mean, here was one source saying that God could do anything and would answer all your prayers. Now, I thought, I'm being told that I'm not supposed to do that? What gives?

I did not tell anyone what I was thinking. I had a feeling that it would not go over well.

In the third grade, I had an epiphany of sorts. The teacher was telling us that Mary, the mother of God, was the best woman that ever lived, and that we girls should all try to be like her. But, I remember thinking, she was a virgin AND a mother. I did not believe that I would have my own personal annunciation. After all, only one was required. So in order to emulate Mary, I had two choices. I could either remain a virgin, or I could become a mother. I could not possibly do both. No matter what choice I made, I would fall short. I thought I was being set up to fail. That ticked me off, too.

Again, I said nothing. I did not think it would go over well.

I went to catechism. I was confirmed. The entire time, I felt like a fraud. I didn't believe a word of it. I didn't dare put a stop to it. My parents threw a big party in my honor. They rented out a room at the Yacht Club and invited everyone they knew. My mother told me that only my wedding would be bigger. I just kept my head down until it was over. Once it was, I never went to church again. My parents never pressured me. They never went much themselves, so what could they say?

I did have one year when I went to church every Sunday, but only because I sang in the choir. I didn't care about the worship. I just wanted to sing.

The faith I was raised in would not be that easily shaken. I ended up at St Olaf College, a Norwegian Lutheran "college of the church." I sang in the choir all four years I was there. I also took three religion classes. The college required it for graduation. It also required that two of those classes had to be about the Christian religion. (In contrast, I only had to take one science class. Then again, I was an English major.)

As it happens, those classes were not mere indoctrination. In the first class, we went through the Bible from cover to cover. The next class was about the history of the church. The last was about the history of women in the church from the Old Testament through the Second Great Awakening to Feminist theology.

I was especially incensed by the church's attitude toward women. It started with the Old Testament patriarchs, continued through Paul, and was built on from there. Some of the worst offenders were members of the early church. I remember reading Tertullian, who said something along the lines of, "Women are all Eve. They are the gateway to hell. They should wear sackcloth and ashes because they are responsible for the fall of Man. They are all sinful, worthless, and vain."

After reading Tertullian, I literally thew the book across the room. By the time I got to the "Malleus Malificarum," a few months later, my throwing arm was just too tired.

The effect of all this was to educate me out of any faith I had, if indeed I ever had any.

That was a big deal to me. I was raised to believe that faith, and faith alone, would get me to heaven, and that God, through his grace, would grant me faith, i.e. the ability to believe in Him. God never gave me that ability. Because I had no grace, I had no faith. Without faith, there is no salvation. So, with that kind of logic, it was God who, by depriving me of my ability to believe, had condemned me to hell. So either that was true, or God didn't exist, and none of it mattered. Understandably, I liked the second option better. Besides, after reading one misogynistic screed after another, I concluded that His followers didn't like women much.

While I was at St. Olaf College, I met more than my fair share of fundamentalist Christians. The rules they chose for themselves were oppressive. Even when I thought I might believe, I did not want to live by their rules. They couldn't drink. They couldn't smoke. They could not have sex until they were married. (Many of them did get married just so they could have sex.) They went to the Assembly of God church every Sunday, where they spoke in tongues. I thought that was nuts. (To be fair, so did a lot of Lutherans.) One of the fundies said that he punished himself in some way every time he thought about sex. Another fundamentalist told D__, one of my best friends , that D__ was possessed by Satan and going to hell because he had come out as gay. When D__ cane out to his mother, she told him that he was going to hell unless he was celibate for the rest of his life. I was appalled.

Nevertheless, I sometimes envied them. I wondered what it must be like to be so sure of everything. I still do.

After I lost my remnants of faith, I went religion shopping. I was agnostic, then pagan, flirting with Wicca. then I was agnostic again. For the last few years, I had been following Thelema--I even bought Aleister Crowley's "Magic," a large, comprehensive, and expensive book summarizing many of his works on ceremonial ritual.

My deconversion began when a good friend of mine showed me a BBC special called,
"The Root of All Evil?" It's a documentary by evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins. He said things about religion, often to practitioner's faces, that shocked me. He minced no words. He even said that indoctrinating children into a religious belief was child abuse. I kept thinking, "Yes, I see your point, but you can't talk to Christians like that! You're going to piss 'everybody' off!"

I found him arrogant and shrill. Even so, the seed of my changing my mind was planted in the program itself. One of Dawkins's interviews was with a Jewish man from New York who was no longer a Jewish man from New York. He had converted to Islam, and was now living in the West Bank. The guy was a complete fanatic. During his anti-secular rant, he said, "..And you allow your women to dress in this shameful, immodest..."

"They dress themselves!" exclaimed Dawkins, interrupting.

O.K., I thought. Maybe he's not so bad.

After I saw the movie, I thought about it for days. Then my friend played another movie for me called, "The God that Wasn't There," directed by an ex-fundamentalist turned atheist named Brian Flemming. I know a bit about comparative religion, mythology, and church history, so he did not say anything about Jesus that I hadn't heard before. Flemming also had a much better idea of how to approach believers, having lived in the United States and been raised as a fundamentalist Christian.

Then I thought some more. I thought about all that religion shopping I had done. How, from the time I was in kindergarten Sunday school to Aleister Crowley's Rites of Eleusis, there was a small, yet persistent voice in my head saying, "You know...All of this 'could' be complete bullshit."

It was a part I had to ignore in order to be an effective singer of sacred music, or an effective scryer, and a decent ceremonial magician. It has always been at odds with whatever religion I was investigating that year. Nevertheless, through my whole life, I have held on to my skepticism.

So with all this in mind, I thought about the Dawkins documentary some more. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got--but not at Dawkins. We have, in America, been so deferential to the faithful. In the name of politeness and tolerance, we have given them a pass. Dawkins did not. That is why he sounded so shocking—he was doing something that I have never heard anyone do. He didn't stand aside and allow the religious to be hateful, unreasonable and willfully ignorant. He called them on it.

As much as a pass we nonbelievers have given the religious, they have not given us the same courtesy, from every right wing church in the nation, all the way up to our idiot in chief, whose father and predecessor said, "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God." We nonbelievers have stood by, in the name of peace and tolerance, while they called us every awful name they could think of. They say that we are arrogant, that we have no morality. That we cannot be trusted by good, right thinking people.

Not even 9/11 could stop them from leaving us out.

9/11 was a bad day for a lot of people. (To be fair, it wasn't as bad for me as it was for the people of New York City.) When it happened, I went to my friend's house to mope in horror. That evening, there was footage at the Washington DC Cathedral of the Christians, Jews, and Muslims in a big ecumenical show. There was lots--and lots--of God language. I had thought that this was a time for all Americans to pull together. Instead, I came away feeling more marginalized than ever.

I have had enough of this.

People can believe whatever they want. In the US, their freedom to do so is guaranteed by the Constitution. I will not force anyone to abandon their beliefs, no matter how misguided I think they are. However, if they are going to use their religion as a basis for public policy, I will hold their beliefs to the same scrutiny that I hold political and economic beliefs that are used as a basis for public policy. Religious belief will no longer get a pass from me in the public sphere. The time for unquestioning deference is over.

As for me, I have finally found a way of thinking that is compatible with my skepticism. Even better, I have given up nothing. I know that I am a part of something bigger than myself. The earth is more diverse, and the universe more vast, than I can comprehend. When I die, my consciousness will cease. Yet, within the short blip of a lifetime I do have, anything is possible. It feels selfish to ask for more than that. I do not need someone to look over my shoulder to make me good. I want my fellow human beings to be as free as possible, and I help and do nice things for my friends and loved ones because I want to. I have not lost my sense of wonder. There is more wonder in the smallest quark and the farthest reaches of the Andromeda Galaxy than there ever was in any god or goddess. And the best part is, they actually exist.

****

That's the entry. Thank you, Richard Dawkins. Thank you for sticking your neck out and calling religious believers on their irrationality. When you wrote "The God Delusion," you articulated what had been percolating in my head for quite some time. Also, thank you, Josh Timonen, for your work on this website. I have enjoyed reading the news and comments.

You know, after all that, I am a little bit afraid to sign my full name. Which is, in my opinion, all the more reason why I should do it.

Whitney Joondeph

92

I was one of those weird (and I think quite unusual) children who never even believed in Father Christmas, let alone in angels and archangels, nor in all the dreary company of heaven who taught me the meaning of Te Deum throughout my entire childhood and schooldays. I was naturally quite chuffed to be told that Father Christmas officially did not exist, as I had got there first. The vindication of a long-held world view by an erudite scholar is a great relief.

Could someone do some research to see if us "Brights" are in fact more intelligent than the gullibles? Are atheists useless in Darwinian terms because we would notionally be eaten by crocodiles as a result of disbelieving the grown-ups?

Juliet Blaxland

93

Dear Professor Dawkins,

I am another person converted to athiesm because of your views. As a young girl I was a passionate athiest and advocate for scientifc truth. But aged 13 I was swept away by the words of an evangelical preacher. They convinced me that only with God could I be moral and God was the only source of puropse and comfort. Nothing could have prepared me for what was to follow.

The psychological programming that was involved in the religion eventually lead to me developing suicidal clinical manic depression. I felt worthless and a victim of self-imposed emotional and mental abuse. It was a true blessing the rational sense of the word when I started studying science GCSEs in December 2005. The world through the eyes of athiesm was so beautiful and the scientific method was a complete liberation to the way I had destroyed myself with an absolutist way of thinking.

Then I saw 'The Root of All Evil' and everything you said about relgion made sense. Jill Mytton on 'The Virus of Faith' was a perfect example of how relgion has caused pschological problems for people like me and I particularily enjoyed 'The God Delusion' (tv episode) because it drew me to study science and philosophy and see what was inherntly violent and intolerant in relgion and what was enlightened about secularism.

Since then I've read 'The God Delusion' and 'Unweaving the Rainbow' and I've set my life on a path of athiesm and a sensitivity to the wonder of science and it has been the greatest thing that every happened to me. I've got my whole life together and a more positive course and things are so much better.

All I can say is a million heartfelt thanks for showing the truth that there is something wrong with religion and encouraging confident athiesm and wonder in science. If I hadn't been introduced to this my life would be much worse today than I could imagine (at the very worst I might even have commited suicide in a crisis of depresion).

Keep going with your message. We can still save the world from fundamentalism yet,

Emma Quigley (a 17 year old lower sixth form student)

Ps. I'm currently doing an arts mix Philosophy, English, French and History for A-Levels, but thanks to the message of 'Unweaving the Rainbow', I may switch to sciences for my careers. My dream in university would be to get into Oxbridge and at the moment is the chances of my grades being As are good.

94

The religious coccoon just dropped off by the age of 19. I'm now 66 and have no regrets. The "line" is separation of church and state, and it's "being crossed" by dogmatic religions. RD is playing defense. Let's not give Catholicism a free pass when debating fundamentalism.

E.K.

95

I am a bedraggled refugee from the "Holy" Roman Catholic Church, now a Card Carrying Atheist. Like Prof. Dawkins said about poor little kids like me, I Was born a "Wee Catholic" and as a baby baptized into it against my will. I Showed my displeasure by biting the priests's thumb regardless of the fact That, as I had no teeth, I could not draw blood. At the tender age of six I Was bundled off to the Nuns for brainwashing. That was achieved with the aid Of the cane. Two years later I was sent to a Roman Catholic College run by The dreaded Jesuit Fathers. They come third to the Christian Brothers and The Marist Brothers as sadists. Sunday Mass of course was the "cross" I had To endure. I lasted 30 years until I could stand no more. In the meantime Any faith I had in Roman Catholicisn was dashed by the Second Vatican Council when the Tridentine Mass was banned and replaced by the heretical Novis Ordo Missae accompanied by guitars and whacky hillbilly "hymns". I am An organist though never a church organist.

In the meantime I took a keen interest in Astronomy and Astrophysics thus Realizing that Genesis was all crap as is all the bible. In the last few Years with the aid of the Internet, I have seeked out the truth about Religion and it's origins and found that Judeo/Christianity is based on two Religions in the Middle East: Egyptology and the myths of Sumer. The bible Badly rehashes many of the Egyptian myths. I am now proud to be an Atheist And very content as one.

Robert Tobin

96

Professor Dawkins,

I wish I could say that your books converted me, that they opened my eyes to the world such as it is, a world full of wonder and mystery that is to be revered, not feared. I was fortunate enough to have come to this conclusion independently years ago in, of all places, the church my Grandmother took my brother and I to every Sunday. To me it seemed, and still does, an incredible waste of time, effort, resources, and human potential.

I thank you most sincerely, instead, for what your book gave to me instead, and that is the courage to stand behind my beliefs. I don't say lack of beliefs, as so many do, because I feel I believe more strongly in the principles of science, the philosophy of law, and in the principles upon which America was founded than I see most theists feel about their precious gods and rituals.

Being an atheist in America is incredibly isolating. I go to school in Melbourne, Florida, right in the heart of one of the reddest, most pious states in the south. My school is flanked on either side by a Baptist Church and the campus ministry/All-Faiths Center (what a joke that title is). Down the road is a Seventh Day Adventist temple thing (if that's a church it's the most bizarre one I've seen in my life), and to the east is another Baptist church. There are dozens of such locations within only five miles of the school.

Until last semester, I kept my atheism quiet, and simply avoided religious debate except within a very small group of friends. I'd learned the hard way what "coming out" can do to my social, romantic, and professional life. I've been ostracized by friends who found out, and turned down by girls who said, "One day I want to get married in a church and raise nice, Catholic children," as if my involvement, even in the distant past if I'm not around, would poison her children's minds against her own brainwashing. I've been isolated in jobs because of it, and subsequently quit to avoid the uncomfortably tense atmosphere.

Then I found your book, The God Delusion, and that all changed. I've come to realize how many atheists there really are out there in the same situation that I am, quietly trying to live a lie and fly under the radar, so to speak. After reading that I bought your entire published library (save for The Selfish Gene, that one always seems to be sold out around here and I end up getting something else in the meantime). I noticed when I went back for The Blind Watchmaker that The God Delusion was consistently sold out. That gave me hope that there were other rational people out there.

I'm proud to say now that I'm an atheist. I've chosen a rational life, and that's nothing I should feel ashamed of. I refuse to shade my view of nature with the supernatural and divine. I'm now president of an organization I co-founded here on campus, Students for a Secular Society, which should have University sanction in the next couple of weeks pending the processing of some paperwork, and we have close to two dozen students on the mailing list and a very enthusiastic staff adviser.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for inspiring this change in my life. Thank you for being the one to get out there in the trenches and take on this battle in the limelight. Thank you for letting me know I'm not alone.

With more gratitude that can be expressed in words,

Scott Johnson

97

Well what a revelation! Not so much on conversion to atheism, as being an atheist already I had privately developed many of the thoughts presented in The God Delusion. But to hear such ideas trumpeted from the platform of the mass media so succinctly and eloquently. Incredibly liberating is all I can say.now where is that closet door!

I have up until recently tried to respect the (moderate) religious beliefs of others, but have grown increasingly concerned about where blind faith was leading society as a whole. Seeing creationism/ID creep into classrooms. Meeting intelligent people and finding them confused and bamboozled by some fundamentalist tradition or other. Seeing the hateful things done in the name of this god or that god. Watching the rise of pseudoscience and superstition. Observing religious organizations work their way into the political systems of secular societies. The real eye-opener for me was moving from a relatively secular country to the USA and witnessing first hand the pervasiveness of religion (both moderate and fundamental) throughout the social, political and cultural system here.

I used to rationalize that religion in the past had played a useful role, at least for some tribes, in developing behaviors and attitudes that helped them flourish. But that in more recent times religion has outgrown our social and intellectual progress and is holding us back as a species. The "natural evolution" of religion through animism, polytheism, deism and (penultimately) monotheism, along with the shrinking of the world via increased population and improved communication/transport, brings us to a point where fundamentalism again is on the rise. It is time to release ourselves from the shackles of blind faith and embrace the best tool we have for understanding us, our fellow organisms, the planet and the universe.science, born of rational thoug