A shortened version of this article, with garbled chronology, was published in The Observer on 27th May 2007:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2089308,00.html



It's been a time of nonstop travel. I had a long-standing engagement to lecture on a Galapagos cruise ship, but the trip grew and grew. Time Magazine invited me to New York for a posh celebration, and I built the diversion into my route to Galapagos. Then I was offered an unexpected lift to New York in the private jet of the entrepreneur Elon Musk, en route to Los Angeles.

Greatly looking forward to my trip with him and his wife Justine, I discovered a snag. British citizens can enter USA without a visa, but not if they arrive on a private plane. The prospect of queuing for a visa at the Grosvenor Square Embassy drove me to desperate lateral thinking. Canada, of course! Mr Musk might even prefer Toronto to New York as his refuelling stop, it being closer to the Great Circle from England to California. And I could please my Canadian publisher with a day of interviews. Everything fell into place. I could kill at least three birds with one stone.

Elon Musk and his wife Justine turned out to be delightful. One of the most remarkable men I have ever met, he had made his first fortune by devising Paypal. Then he invested it in two other enterprises, both of which made inspired use of his genius as a design engineer. His SpaceX company builds wholly re-usable spacecraft (the NASA Space Shuttle is only partially re-usable). And, coming down to earth, his Tesla company (http://www.teslamotors.com" target="_blank">Teslamotors.com) is about to market affordable electric cars with a running cost of one penny per mile and the potential (I devoutly hope, though Elon is more cautious) to kill the internal combustion engine stone dead. If only he could kill the oil trade too, and hence the undeserved power of infamous countries like Saudi Arabia! The first production model Teslas will be high performance sports cars with an acceleration of 0 to 60 mph in 4 seconds, assembled by Lotus in Britain but available, alas, only in America at first. Later models now in the development stage will broaden the range and the market. I'm putting my name down for one as soon as they appear over here.

My Toronto visit was strenuous: five television interviews and one radio, all in one day beginning before breakfast. I had never really believed in authors' publicity tours, and was astounded to be told that this one day of jetlagged freneticism boosted my book from Number 20 to Number 3 on Canadian Amazon's bestseller list. Next day before breakfast, off again to New York, this time on a commercial plane – no visa.

Time's Gala Dinner was to celebrate their '100 Most Influential People of the Year'. I don't know why I was chosen, because the other 99 were apparently celebs (to judge from the son-et-lumière of flashbulbs that greeted us wherever we turned during the evening). But I'm glad I went, and I met some interesting people including the inventor of Wikipedia, the democratically assembled on-line encyclopedia which, by any reasonable standards, ought to be a total failure but somehow, unaccountably, comes through with flying colours whenever you look up something you know about. The dinner tables were arranged on raked indoor terraces overlooking a gigantic picture window. Amplified music precluded conversation, but the view down Broadway was stunning. I left early, still jetlagged and facing yet another before-breakfast start for the airport.


* * * *

Whenever I suffer through an airport these days, I hear the mocking laughter of Osama bin Laden. Murdering three thousand innocent men and women with loved ones to weep for them (Allah be praised) was only the start (swamped by road accidents and domestic murders, 9/11 made no noticeable blip in the USA's violent death statistics for a typical September). No, bin Laden's lasting achievement, the one that has him sniggering daily into his beard, is to have created the Office of Homeland Security, risible monument to belated stable-door closure.

The payoff for bin Laden has been mayhem and chaos, costly delays and maddening inconvenience to millions of travellers, in every hour of every day, in every airport of every country (except some third world ones with the good sense to ignore the whole charade). Those useless plastic knives and forks were nothing but a signal to the home electorate: We're gonna kick some ass, and these plastic knives show it, you better believe it. And did some bearded loon once pack explosives into his shoes? Right then, we'll show those folks we mean business. We'll smoke 'em out and teach those terrists who rules this town, yessirree. From now on nobody – and ah mean nobody – boards a plane without first removing their shoes, whenever they board a plane anywhere – and ah mean anywhere – in God's own country.

And all we like sheep refuse to go astray. We follow the flock because we know that, if we so much as joke about exploding brassieres being the next scare, we risk being summarily locked up until rescued by a harassed British Consul. Better bite our tongue and endure the joke that Osama bin Laden is playing on all of us, through his Keystone-cops-like agents in the Office of Homeland Security.

Not that we here have anything to be proud of. In the Britain presided over by Bush's loyal friend and co-religionist, our security services were surfing the web when they spotted what looked to their fevered imaginations like a plot to make a 'binary' explosion on a plane by mixing two otherwise harmless liquids. For a hilarious explanation that this is, and always was, totally unrealistic (you need large quantities of ingredients and buckets and buckets of ice) see
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/flying_toilet_terror_labs/" target="_blank">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/flying_toilet_terror_labs/. Yet, as a direct consequence of what seems to have been an elementary misunderstanding of chemistry, we all have to dump even the tiniest bottles of liquid on our way through security.

Gateway to Galapagos is the infamous airport of Miami, and I had to pass through it going both ways. You might think a passenger in transit from Ecuador to Britain would be allowed to stay on the airside of the barrier and not formally enter the United States. But no, that would be much too simple and convenient: insufficient chest-beating by Homeland Security. Since 9/11 – universal American pretext for inconveniencing the public (over here, Health and Safety does the job) – the rules have changed. By decree of Homeland Security, the British passenger from Ecuador (me, in this case) has to pick up his luggage along with everybody else, queue to clear it through the Miami Customs, queue to enter the United States (fingerprints, photograph, passport stamp, green form and all), then immediately queue to leave the United States again, queue to remove shoes and laptop . . . and consequently (it happened to me last time I made the journey) miss the connection to London. This time I made it – only just, despite the two and a half hour changeover time.

But enough of moaning. No traveller should moan who has just visited the Galapagos archipelago. This week it was good to be alive as I swam among the marine iguanas and the breathtakingly tame Galapagos sealions, or walked among the flightless cormorants (also unique to Galapagos) hanging their useless stubby wings out to dry. This week I came within touching distance (I did not touch) of nesting Wave Albatrosses, and of Boobies, high-stepping their powder-blue feet in the slow-motion ballet of their surreal courtship. I have watched, spellbound, as the Boobies and Pelicans rained down from on high like arrows into the water, in a feeding frenzy that must strike the fish below with the fishy equivalent of shock and awe.

I went to Galapagos as guest lecturer of the Center for Inquiry (CFI), an admirable American charity devoted to Secular Humanism and critical thinking, whose members paid handsomely to enable the CFI to book a whole ship, the Santa Cruz, and explore Galapagos in Darwin's footsteps. As you'd expect, this was an intelligent crowd, who gave me a lively time in the questions after my three lectures. American atheists today walk with a spring in their step, a new confidence that they have not known since the lights went out on their Enlightened secular foundation. They are coming out of the closet in droves, and I like to credit the series of recent bestselling books, by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and others.

For a zoologist, Galapagos is an enchanted, near-sacred place. Partly because Darwin so momentously walked those lava fields in the springtime of his genius. But, too, because we all can see, as if through Darwin's deep-set eyes, life's difference-engine at its simplest. Then there is the ingenuous tameness of the animals, pursuing their evolved business in pre-Fall innocence of the gawping, camera-snapping human traffic in their midst. Mortally threatened by commerce and cheap aviation fuel, how long will it last in its pristine fragility, this Eden of the scientific real world?

It’s been an amazing trip. Really very encouraging. Especially the public readings and even more especially the long Q & A sessions. I have already told the story for the earlier stops, and it was the same for the later ones (Washington DC, Portland, Pasadena, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Charlottesville). All conformed to the same pattern, with gratifying predictability: very large crowds, very wam reception, constructive questions that assumed no relligion and went on from there, huge numbers of books signed. Maybe I was only preaching to the choir – but how large and how enthusiastic does a choir have to be before it counts as a congregation? On hearing of Hitler’s boast that he would wring England’s neck like a chicken, Winston Churchill memorably growled “Some chicken! Some neck!” I feel like growling, “Some choir!”

Also, I cannot resist mentioning again the many people at all venues, of all ages and both sexes, who repeated to me in the signing queues, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, for expressing what I have long felt, but was not able to articulate.” I was also greatly moved by the people who had driven long distances to get there. A typical example is the party of enthusiastic young students who drove to Virginia from Akron, Ohio, and attended both my speeches in Charlottesville. I spoke to Sam Harris later in San Diego, where we were both attending a conference on (this wasn’t its official title) ‘What are we going to do about religion?’, and he told me a similar story of large and enthusiastic audiences on his book tour promoting Letter from a Christian Nation. I really think something is going on.

The other thing that I get again and again in the signing lines is endlessly repeated praise for this website, and what a class act it is. Josh Timonen, its inspired creator and energetic dynamo was in the audience in the large lecture hall in Pasadena, and it was my great pleasure to recognize him and invite him to stand for a round of applause. Pasadena was also a welcome opportunity to catch up with my old friend Michael Shermer who, with his Skeptics, hosted the event. Michael and I have a slight disagreement over the right tactics to employ in dealing with religion. He thinks it is not just tactically unwise but actually irrational to be too confrontational, and it was good to discuss the matter with him. I disagreed, but I am still thinking about it.

In San Francisco, I didn’t do readings but was interviewed on the stage of the Palace of Fine Arts by Roy Eisenhardt, a deeply thoughtful man who clearly saw his role not as sparring with me but as coaxing me to give the book its best shot with the audience. This he did with the utmost sensitivity and intelligence. It was a real lesson in how effective ‘talking with’ can be as opposed to ‘fighting against’. I noticed the same thing some years ago, in a marvellous on-stage discussion between Steven Pinker and me, in a London theatre. When the BBC heard how the audience of 2000 had loved it, they wanted to get in on the act. Would Steve and I do it again in their studio? We agreed, and then the BBC producer rang me up to prepare for the broadcast: “Could you just summarise for me the core of your disagreement with Dr Pinker?” “Er”, I said, “I don’t think we do disagree, not much anyway.” “Don’t disagree?” she said, aghast, and promptly cancelled the show. I think the San Francisco audience appreciated Esidenhardt’s approach as much as I did, and the questions from them were also helpful and constructive.

During my time in San Francisco, I was driven down to Menlo Park by David Cowan and Dan Mendez for a reading in the much-loved Kepler’s Bookstore: loved enough to be saved by popular action when threatened, a couple of years ago, with bankruptcy. The ringleaders of this public-spirited philanthropy (philanthropy without the tax breaks that a church, but not a bookshop, can attract) were the same David Cowan and Daniel Mendez. David introduced me to the audience at Kepler’s, and I responded by describing his speech as one of the most interesting and thoughtful introductionsI had ever enjoyed. Josh has posted a video recording of the Menlo Park event, and several contributors have commented favourably on David’s speech. One perceptively remarked that it could only have been made in Silicon Valley.

Afterwards, David hosted a dinner for me with 50 guests in the garden of his splendid home, where I met such heroes as Bill Atkinson, programming genius behind the original Mac, now working on some fascinating ideas on neuroscience with his colleague Jeff Hawkins, inventor of the Palm Pilot. David’s generous hope in hosting this dinner was that the contacts I made might prove useful to our Foundation in the future.
While this hope must largely be put on hold until we achieve charitable tax status, we have already had generous promises of help, for example from George Phipps, and especially from Geoff Ralston whom I have gratefully put into contact with Josh to work out plans for getting us a faster and more powerful server for this web site. Volume of traffic has soared since our launch in September – which is gratifying, but also expensive.

In Philadelphia I had lunch at the Museum of Natural History with Ted Daeschler, and he showed off the recently described fossil Tiktaalik rosea, exquisite bridge between aquatic fish and terrestrial amphibians (Google it, and the first hit to come up is a creationist site, bleating that God made it only a few thousand years ago). Also at the lunch were Eric Rothschild and the other lawyers who won the famous Kitzmiller (‘breathtaking inanity’) case in Pennsylvania. Rothschild agreed with me that it was a good thing I didn’t testify: I’d have lost the case for them by admitting (no proclaiming) that my understanding of Darwinism led to to atheism.

Later that afternoon in Philadelphia, it was fun to meet the Rational Response Squad, and do a recording with them. I persuaded the Squad that, rather than interview me (after three weeks of book tour I’d been interviewed to death) it would be more interesting if we had a general conversation. At the end of the discussion, they presented me with a giant cardboard cheque: a generous donation to the Foundation. Thanks guys!

Charlottesville was special for me because of the ubiquitous presence of Thomas Jefferson, that extraordinary polymath and scientophile, founder of the University of Virginia and the original designer of its beautiful campus. I gave two talks at Jefferson’s university. The first, to a large audience with an overflow hall, was billed as a commemoration of 30 years of The Selfish Gene. Accordingly, I abandoned my usual act and substituted a program of readings from The God Delusion called ‘Morality and the Selfish Gene’. The next day I was honoured to speak in the Rotunda, a modification of Jefferson’s original design which was unfortunately destroyed in a terrible fire in 1895. Here, my readings included the section of Chapter 2 on Secularism and the Religion of America, which includes many quotations from Mr Jefferson (as they still call him at his university). The audience was a small one, largely limited to faculty and the elite Jefferson Scholars, whom it was a delight to meet.

The signing afterwards stands out in memory for the young atheist student from out of state, who told me a harrowing tale of ostracism, persecution and even death threats. What continually baffles me about such stories is the naked hatred shown towards atheists by followers of ‘gentle Jesus’. Aren’t these people supposed to derive some goodness from their religion? How, in any case, can a mere difference of opinion about the cosmos and morality generate such malignant venom? (This is not a peculiarly American phenomenon, by the way. My first public appearance in England, the day after my return, was in Barnstaple, a small town in the mainly rural county of Devon. When I arrived, I was told by representatives of the Devon Humanist Group – I have yet to see the transcript myself – that a local Vicar had gone on Devon Radio and said that I should be executed! Is religion unique in motivating murder for the sake of a mere difference of academic opinion? No, on reflection, disagreements in political science can do it too. But only, I suspect, in those cases where the political schools of thought are quasi-religious ideologies like the various factions of Marxism.)

Back in Charlottesville, the young man in the signing line said he was contemplating suicide, and he asked my advice. I’m afraid I was too shocked to say anything constructive. In Oxford I might have told him to go to his College Chaplain (many Anglican chaplains are very nice people, and some are even closet atheists). If he had been at Harvard, he could have gone to the Humanist Chaplain. As things were, I’m afraid all I could think was that he should write in to this web site in the hope of finding fellow victims of Christian bigotry. Not very helpful spur-of-the-moment advice, I fear, and I don’t know whether he followed it. Perhaps we need to set up some kind of internet counselling service? An Agony Aunt?

Finally, I have repeatedly been asked what I think of South Park and of Ted Haggard’s downfall. I won’t say much about either. Schadenfreude is not an appealing emotion so, on Haggard, I’ll say only that if it wasn’t for people of his religious persuasion, people of his sexual persuasion would be free to do what they like without shame and without fear of exposure. I share neither his religious nor his sexual persuasion (that’s an understatement), and I’m buggered if I like being portrayed as a cartoon character buggering a bald transvestite. I wouldn’t have minded so much if only it had been in the service of some serious point, but if there was a serious point in there I couldn’t discern it. And then there’s the matter of the accent they gave me. Now, if only I could be offered a cameo role in The Simpsons, I could show that actor how to do a real British accent.

Last night in Lynchburg, Virginia, home of the infamous Jerry Falwell, was memorable. The large hall at Randolph Macon Woman’s College was packed. I gave a fairly short program of readings from The God Delusion, and then the bulk of the evening was given over to much more than an hour of Q & A. The first questioner announced himself as coming from Liberty (Falwell’s 'University'), and he began by saying he had never been so insulted, yet simultaneously so amused, by any lecture. Many of the questioners announced themselves as either students or faculty from Liberty, rather than from Randolph Macon which was my host institution. One by one they tried to trip me up, and one by one their failure to do so was applauded by the audience. Finally, I said that my advice to all Liberty students was to resign immediately and apply to a proper university instead. That received thunderous applause, so that I almost began to feel slightly sorry for the Liberty people. Only almost and only slightly, however.

The most interesting question was from a young woman not from Liberty but from Randolph Macon itself, and it really startled me. She wanted to know whether people who deconverted from a religious upbringing felt ‘anger’. In my naivety, I went blank. Why should one feel anger? Anger towards what, or whom? I asked the audience whether they understood what she meant, and there was a great chorus of “Yes”. I asked them again, why anger, anger towards whom? Then they started shouting from all around the hall. It was anger towards their parents for bringing them up religious, anger towards teachers and pastors for indoctrinating them as children. One young man came up to me afterwards in the signing queue and reiterated with some passion the intense anger he felt. I gave him the url of this website and encouraged him to write in. Perhaps somebody will start a thread on the theme of anger felt by the recovered victims of childhood indoctrination.

Also in the signing queue, the young woman who asked the original question about anger handed me a letter. I didn’t have time to read it until afterwards, and when I did read it I was moved by it. I shall reply, suggesting that she might like to write a similar letter to our website, so others may read it.

I am now in Washington DC, after an amazing session at the Politics and Prose bookshop. Amazing because of the crowd. I guess a bookshop is not the ideal venue for a large crowd, but it certainly is impressive to see the sheer numbers sitting on the floor and standing all around the shop listening to the relaying loudspeakers. As usual, the questions were intelligent and sympathetic, and I hope I gave answers to match. And also as usual, the people in the signing queue were enthusiastic, charming, and above all grateful. It is a shame that the hand-cramping duty of signing detracts from the pleasure of meeting such nice people. This Washington signing was remarkable for the number who bought not just one copy of The God Delusion but up to half a dozen. ‘Christmas presents?’ I inquired of one man. ‘Winter solstice’, he instantly corrected me.

I was beautifully looked after in Montreal, and was sad that I had to leave so soon. After a night stop in Philadelphia I flew on to Lynchburg, Virginia, where I now am. The drive from Charlottesville airport to Lynchburg was beautiful, the autumn colours glowing against the backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The host institution here is the Randolph Macon Woman’s College -- a proper university, unlike the ill-named and ill-favoured “Liberty University”, founded by the infamous Jerry Falwell, which shares the same town. It seems that some official body, somewhere, has seen fit to grant accreditation to “Liberty University” -- a “University” which, in all seriousness, teaches its unfortunate students that the world is less than ten thousand years old. I briefly visited “Liberty University” this morning. Knowing how many tax-free dollars had been donated or tithed to this “University” I thought at least that it might have nice buildings. Remarkably, they are spectacularly ugly, an architectural disgrace on the outside to match the educational disgrace of what is taught inside.

Randolph Macon Woman’s College, by contrast, has a strikingly elegant campus, and the evidence suggests that the quality of the education, and of the students, lives up to its promise. A group of about twenty bright young women hosted a lunch for me with no faculty present, which was a great pleasure and an honour for me. These students were humorous, intelligent, enthusiastic . . . and well-mannered enough to let us all finish our lunch before they threw the meeting open for a lively discussion. They will go out into the world and influence it for the better.

Now I must upload this and prepare form my evening performance which, I understand, is to be televised by C-Span.

Since my last journal entry, I have spoken at Harvard, Maine and Montreal. I like the Charles Hotel in Harvard. Last time I stayed there, a couple of years ago when I gave the Tanner Lectures, one of the commissionaires was a delightful Kenyan whose whistles for taxis were brilliant imitations of African birds. Alas, he seems to have gone. But Harvard is a lovely place, and a place of pilgrimage for anybody who loves learning.

I hardly had time to walk into the Charles when I had a telephone interview from San Francisco by Kenneth Baker. His piece is due to run in the Chronicle during the time I am in the Bay Area, I think that’s around the end of October. Baker had read the book thoroughly and it showed in his questions. We laughed a lot during the interview, and it seems he had been amused by the book. I hope it shows in his article.

My Harvard reading, sponsored by the bookshop, was at the First Parish Church. It was completely full, and the audience seemed responsive. When the long signing queue had at last wound its way past me I was taken off by Harvard’s Humanist Chaplain to a meeting of humanist students. No, I didn’t know there was such a thing as as a Humanist Chaplain either, and I was delighted to discover it. The humanist students, as you would expect, were bright and interesting. I was pathetically grateful that they didn’t hang on my every word but allowed me to sit quietly and listen to them. Good luck to the Humanist Chaplain. May there be others like him at other universities.

From Boston I took a hopper to Maine, to speak at an unusual conference called Poptech at a dellightful little coastal town with wooden clapboard houses. The inducement for me accept the invitation was the organizers' promise to buy 500 copies of The God Delusion and give them to all the delegates. The conference seemed an excellent one (please invite me again) and I enjoyed meeting a couple of old friends, Carolyn Porco and Brian Eno, but then the pleasure ended because I had to get to Montreal the same day and you can’t fly from Maine to Montreal. Well, of course you can fly, but the connections are so poor that it would have taken longer than the five hours that the conference organizers estimated for doing the same journey by car. So, I had agreed to be driven all the way to Montreal.

Unfortunately, when Bill the driver plumbed Montreal into the Lexus Satnav system, the estimated time was not 5 hours but nearly 8 hours. So, Bill and I set off on our marathon journey (in Britain it is pretty hard to drive that far without falling into the sea), with me pretty disgruntled and wishing I had decided to fly after all. Things got worse when we ran into horizontal rain so dense it might as well have been fog. Then sleet, then snow, then a blizzard which settled and caused the car to start skidding (fortunately Bill was a former professional racing car driver, so he knew how to deal with skids – as I probably would not). At one point we stopped for petrol/gasoline and it shot back and soaked Bill’s trousers. So the inside of the car reeked of petrol for the rest of the journey.

Finally got to bed in Montreal at 1 am, then had to get up early to have breakfast with the Dean and two colleagues from McGill, my hosts for the day. Very interesting breakfast discussion about a problem Canadian scientists are having with a government granting agency, which seems to have been infected with creationist sympathizers or fellow-travellers. Interestingly, the problem seems to stem not from the religious sources that would be expected in the United States but from some kind of dopey ‘postmodernist’ or ‘cultural relativist’ liberalism: ‘science has no monopoly on the truth, and if it feels right for you it is true for you’ and that kind of daffy stupidity. The good guys in Canada are fighting the case with all the intellectual big guns on their side, and it remains to be seen what will happen. For details, see the excellent Canadian magazine Humanist Perspectives, Issue 157, Summer 2006.

Well, I call it an excellent magazine, but that particular Issue contains a disappointing review by Ian Johnston of Sam Harris’s brilliant The End of Faith. I am getting sick and tired of the sheer negativity of reviews of books like Sam’s which begin with the ominious words “I am an atheist but . . .” and then launch into a long, moaning, defeatist caterwaul about “preaching to the choir”, “religion is here to stay, accept it and give up the struggle”, “what’s the point of upsetting people’s most cherished beliefs”, “why be so disrespectful . . .” etc etc etc. We have a fight on our hands, Sam is a brave champion, please can’t we stop the defeatist negativity and get on with it? The other side will never give any quarter to us. Why be so eager to give, give, give to them? They won’t return the favour.

My talk at McGill was greeted, like several others, with a reassuringly wholehearted, and almost universal, standing ovation. I am under no illusions that I deserve these enthusiastic receptions personally, or that they reflect the quality of my own performance as a speaker. On the contrary, I am convinced that they represent an overflowing of bottled-up frustration, from masses of decent people pushed to breaking point and heartily sick of the sycophantic ‘respect’ that our society, even secular society, routinely and thoughtlessly accords religious faith. Time after time, people in the signing queues thank me for doing no more than say in public what they have, in private, long wanted to say, and probably could say more eloquently than I can. I think people are fed up to the gills with the near universal expectation that religious faith must be respected. Let us, by all means, respect what people say when it is well thought-out and makes sense. Let us not respect it just because it shelters behind a citadel of ‘faith’. Faith is nothing. Faith is empty. Beliefs that are worth respecting are beliefs that are defended with evidence and reason.

Montreal is officially French-speaking, but perhaps the message hasn’t reached all the plumbers in the city. I was amused to note that my bathroom taps (faucets) were reversed: C was cold and F was hot. One of my fellow breakfasters told me that this mistake is quite common and once caused him to sprinkle his lawn with hot water. His colleague told me that quite often you see both taps labelled C. C for Cold, and C for Chaud – makes sense except that presumably, somewhere else, someone else will be staring at the pairing F with F.

I'm writing this at Montreal Airport, on my way back to the USA. Again, it is not as bad as chewing gum, but the ever present television screens all over airports, with their barbarous noise, are a recurrent vexation of modern life. I don’t think I have ever seen anybody actually watching one of the televisions in an airport. What is so frightening about silence? I don’t think it would ever occur to any airline actually to ask their customers whether they want television or music wherever they go. You’d think they’d be eager to save the money. Oh good, my flight has been called early.

On the train from New York to Boston. I'll upload this when I arrive.

I travel by train whenever I can, rather than subject myself to the misery of airports. Every time I see obvious non-terrorists being made to remove their shoes while the queue backs up in chaos, I hear the mocking laughter of Bin Laden. We don’t need to perform any more terrorist acts. ‘Homeland Security’ now does our terrorist work for us, terrorizing its own citizens, doubtless for good homeland electoral reasons. What an ignominious crew of cowards those infidels are, forever shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, forever erecting ostentatious displays of ‘security’ all aimed at their own people, rather than at us, the soldiers of Allah.

I had a good time in New York. The Colbert show was fun, notwithstanding my misgivings before (which I have removed, because they now seem misplaced). While I was waiting, he came in to see me as himself, introduced himself and made sure that I understood his act: “You know I play a complete idiot?” I must say, when he is in character, he does it extremely well. The real Colbert is obviously highly intelligent and a very nice man. Aficionados seem divided about 50/50 over whether the real Colbert is religious. He is obviously too intelligent to be religious in any simple conventional sense. I suspect either that it amuses him to blur the distinction between his ‘character’ and the real Colbert. Or perhaps he is religious in the Einsteinian sense that all of us are, and goes to church because, like Martin Rees, he ‘believes in belief’ (Dan Dennett’s happy phrase).

Damn, when choosing to go by train, I forgot the Great Cellphone Menace. I recently read that some airlines are now talking about allowing cell phones. I shall remain a loyal customer of the last airline to allow the horrible things. At least they are not as bad as chewing gum, and I once was on a plane where the crew went so far as to hand the stuff out.

Yesterday, I had a really nice interview at my hotel with Robin Marantz Henig, for the New York Times Magazine, to be published some time in January I believe. Excellent interview, very nice and intelligent woman. Then a quick car ride to Air America, for a taped interview with Rachel Maddow, which I think was due to go out that evening. Very short interview, quirky but interesting style of loud questioning. Back to the hotel for a quick lunch, then an interview with an old favourite, the wonderful Dorian Devins (WFMU-FM). I have no idea when that one is to be broadcast. I was too tired to be on top form for it, which was a pity because she is a great interviewer.

Back to my hotel room to rev up for the big event of the evening, my speech at the New York Academy of Science in the new auditorium at 7 World Trade Center. The view from the huge picture windows of the auditorium is spectacular, but it didn’t seem to distract my audience too much. Several people remarked on how moving it was that I was speaking on religion, in a new building that had risen from the ashes of Ground Zero and one of the most despicable acts or religious barbarism in all the lamentable history of religions. I was pleased to see Dorian Devins and Robin Henig sitting together in the audience, and I had a brief word with them before the chairman began proceedings.

My act consisted of readings from The God Delusion for half an hour, followed by questions. The readings seemed to go OK. Somewhere around Chapter 2, I spotted Alan Alda in the audience. A wonderful actor, whom I have always admired, I hoped I’d get a chance to meet him afterwards. I noticed that he seemed to be laughing louder than anybody at the jokes, which was encouraging. I did meet him afterwards and exchanged e-mail addresses.

Q & A began bizarrely. A rather foolish looking man stood up and asked simply “Who are you?” I was completely nonplussed. The chairman hesitantly told him my name and turned to find another questioner, but I was not going to leave it at that. Obviously this man wasn’t really interested in learning my name. I insisted that he should explain himself. He repeated “Who are you?” and again the chairman tried to turn to another questioner. Again, I refused to go on until the man explained what he was up to. Eventually, he said “Why do you hate God so?” Presumably, in his inarticulate way, he meant to say something like “Who are you to be so presumptuous as to hate God?” I answered him rather inadequately (“God is a fictional character and you can’t really HATE a fictional character”) and we finally turned to the other questions which were all good and interesting, including an excellent one from Alan Alda about why people turn to religion.

During the signing there was food and wine, but it was very hard for me to get any, as I was fully occupied signing. Eventually, somebody kindly went and got me some food, but it is not easy trying to eat while you are supposed to be signing books. Anyway, the people in the signing queue were very nice, and I didn’t catch sight of the man who had asked the first question.

Back to the hotel for a late night phone interview with Alan Colmes on Fox Radio. This interview was live, and there were phone-ins at the end. Alan Colmes himself is said to be the only decent individual at Fox. I have no reason to doubt that, except that he seems to have picked up a Fox habit of asking the next question, a fixed number of seconds after the previous one, regardless of whatever may have been said in between.

I soon picked up the technique of how to handle this style of questioning, and the time passed quickly except for the commercial breaks which seemed INTERMINABLE, and were accompanied by a painful noise like crackling static which fortunately disappeared during the brief intervals of actual program. I swear that Fox station must devote more time to commercials than to actual content. Maybe the audience can’t tell the difference. The phone-in characters were pretty much as you might expect. One said that if he didn’t believe in God he would have no reason not to rape and kill. Alan Colmes bullied him into admitting that he actually WOULD go and kill his neighbour if he was persuaded that God didn’t exist. Not a good advertisement for religion. If Alan Colmes had let me, I would have made an attempt to explain patiently to the man that morals don’t have to come from religion, but I didn’t get the chance. Colmes was probably right: patient explanation would have been wasted on him. I wonder whether his neighbour was listening.

Most of the other questions were about evolutoin. I am sometimes accused of flogging a dead horse when I try to persuade people of Darwinian reasons to give up the Argument from Design. That ill-favoured old horse is not dead. It is quite amazing the sheer number of people who have swallowed, hook line and sinker, the assiduously propagated myth that there is no evidence in favour of evolution. One man literally HOWLED like a wolf when I tried to tell him evolution was the answer to his question of why living things are so elegant. I gave up, and told him to go away and read a book, any book, about evolution. Some hopes. I don’t suppose he has ever read a book in his life. I was too wound up by those aggressive phone-ins and shouted sound bites to sleep easily, so I resorted to taking a sleeping pill.

This morning, I arrived at Penn Station an hour early, and wandered into the station bookstore where I bought Alan Alda’s autobiography. Armed with the news that The God Delusion was now Number Two on Amazon.com (thank you Colbert) I timidly asked the bookseller whether, by any chance he had any copies. The front of the shop was piled high with the other books whose titles I recognized from further down the bestseller list -- John Grisham, etc. Piles of books by the cubic yard. Since this shop seemed to specialise in displaying bestsellers, did they, perhaps, have any copies of The God Delusion, which is, dare I mention it, Number Two on the Amazon list? The man had never heard of the book but he looked it up on his computer. Yes, they had three copies. In the Religion Department.

Dear reader, if you happen to be in a bookshop whose shopfront and tables are piled high with current bestsellers by the cubic yard, it might be interesting to make your own investigations of the obscurer reaches of Religion Department and perhaps, very politely, have a word with the shop’s management?

Oh good. It turns out that the train has a carriage where mobile phones are permitted, so I have moved and am now much more peaceful.

Onward to Harvard where I am to speak in the First Parish Church.

I've been too busy travelling, to update this journal since Stratford. Travelling a lot. The British tour consisted mostly of readings with Lalla, in London, Cambridge and Birmingham. The tour ended in Cheltenham, with an on-stage conversation with Robert Winston, he of the Groucho Marx moustache and glasses. Throughout, there were lots of interviews with radio, television and newspapers. Those went OK, except that there is a certain sameness about the questions and therefore -- inevitably -- about the answers.

I think the readings went reasonably well, and there were good questions in all three places. The format is the same whenever we do it, and it has been for several books now. Lalla and I read from the book. Then she sits down and I take questions. It seems to work, and people seem to like the two voice formula.

The first event, in London, was the best. Terrific audience, very responsive, lots of laughs. Cambridge was a little stickier. They seemed less ready to laugh, although they were very attentive, and the signing queue was friendly and enthusiastic. Perhaps we were spoiled by the experience the previous night with the London audience. Also there were no microphones in Cambridge. That's OK, we could be heard, but it is a bit more of a strain having to shout, and it means you can't indulge the occasional dramatic whisper, like you can with a good mike. The Birmingham audience was intermediate in responsiveness between London and Cambridge. I was delighted to see Jack Cohen (distinguished biologist and science fiction aficinado) in the signing queue afterwards, and I was immensely chuffed when he compared my style to Peter Medawar's. Great exaggeration, of course, but I am grateful to be so much as MENTIONED in the same sentence as as that great scientific hero.

Cheltenham with Robert Winston was nice. He is a delightful man, warm and friendly, intelligent and articulate. Claims to be religious although, whenever I try to get him to explain, he will talk about morality and rules for living, but never actually talks about whether God exists. Maybe he doesn't really care. Perhaps just being a Jew is what counts for him, rather than bothering about whether God actually exists. I suspect quite a lot of ostensibly religious people are like that. It is something I don't understand. If God existed, it would be the most important fact about the universe. Morals and rules for living are trivial by comparison.

Dinner afterwards in Cheltenham with my British publishers. They are also Robert's publishers, so it was a jolly occasion. The publishers were cock-a-hoop because the God Delusion had just gone straight onto the Sunday Times bestseller list at Number 2 (British publishers regard the Sunday Times list with the same awe as American publishers regard the New York Times list).

Back home for just one day to prepare for my US tour. Then Virgin Atlantic to Washington DC, where I had to change planes for Kansas City. Changing planes was a nightmare. Two hours just isn't enough, given the length of the queue to get through immigration. I made it onto the Kansas plane by the skin of my teeth, and only by dint of PLEADING with unwilling officials at two successive stages to break the rules and lead me, shamefacedly and apologetic, to the head of the line. Then, the last straw, I sprinted to the gate, only to discover that it had just closed. I sprinted to the next gate and pleaded with the man to let me through. He refused at first, but then relented. I was allowed to run across the tarmac and board the plane, with seconds to spare. Amazingly, my luggage made it too. Be warned. Two hours may be enough time to change planes normally. It is NOT enough time when you have to go through Immigration. It was nothing to do with my transatlantic flight being delayed. No, the Virgin flight was on time. You must allow much more than two hours when you are a non-American citizen trying to get through immigration.

Last night was my talk at the University of Kansas at Lawrence. It was not readings, but a lecture with a Keynote presentation. The audience was marvellous. Kansas has been unjustly maligned and traduced. Nearly 2000 people turned up and they were wonderfully enthusiastic, laughing and applauding throughout the lecture, then very good questions afterwards, and they stood to applaud at the end. Where does the myth come from that Kansas is full of religious wingnuts? This was a sophisticated, sceptical, intelligent, educated audience. Just about everybody in the signing queue thanked me for coming and for, implicitly, ignoring Kansas's unjust reputation. If last night was a sample of what the Bible Belt is like, things are much better than I had feared. I came away hugely encouraged. Hands off Kansas. Kansas is OK. No doubt there are religious wingnuts there, and they predictably didn't show up to my lecture. But there are good people there too, and all they need to do is to stand up, recognize each other, and get organized. As I told them last night, Fight the Good Fight.

Richard

To Stratford-upon-Avon on Thursday evening for a book-promotion event, 'In Conversation with David Freeman'. David is an old hand at interviewing authors since he used to do it on radio, and he now has his own business called 'Meet The Author' (www.meettheauthor.co.uk/) which sells to publishers one minute video-clips of their authors explaining their books. The idea is that the video-clips are available on computer screens in bookshops. Customers contemplating buying a book can click on it and get the author's one minute summing up. David has put several of my previous books up on Meet The Author, and I hope he will do the same with The God Delusion.

David Freeman is one of the two best book interviewers I have ever encountered in all my career as an author (the other is Dorian Devins, in New York). On the Stratford stage, David managed the audience (and me) with consummate skill. The first half was David interviewing me, which he did with a gentle and intelligent devil's advocate style, exactly calculated to bring out the best. At one point he expresed his transported feeling of delight when there was a power cut in the middle of the night and he went outside and saw the Milky Way and the stars as our ancestors would once have seen them. How did I respond to such quasi-religious experiences? This was a perfect cue for me to open The God Delusion and read aloud the first page, about me as a boy under the stars, "dazzled by Orion, Cassiopeia and Ursa Major, tearful with the unheard music of the Milky Way, heady with the night scents of frangipani and trumpet flowers in an African garden."

Half way through the interview, David gave me another perfect cue for a reading, this time pages 284-286, the tragic story of Kurt Wise. Then, after interviewing me for 45 minutes David announced the interval, during which I signed a ton of books for a gratifyingly long signing queue.

After the interval there were questions from the audience, with a roving mike. The local vicar had announced to the newspaper his intention to come and give me a hard time from the audience. David courteously recognized him in his clerical vestments and called him first ("Aha, I see a vested interest in the third row . . ."). The Vicar turned out to be a nice bloke (Anglican ones usually are) but I can't say he really got anywhere with his argument. The rest of the question session went well, if a little hurriedly as I had to get away for my next appointment, and it was getting late. Just before closing, David called for a vote from the audience of several hundred. How many believed in some sort of god? Only a sprinkling of people joined the Vicar in holding up their hands, including an obvious claque all sitting together at the back. How many people had no such belief? What seemed like a forest of hands shot up. Gratifying, but this was, of course, a self-selected audience: these were people who had come to hear me, so don't let's get too complacent.

I had to rush off to Somerset where, next morning, I joined the film crew of my new telelvision documentary,'The Rational Inquirer', to be broadcast in Britain next January. It is another two-part documentary, like 'Root of All Evil?' and made by the same team, also for Channel Four (the BBC has no connection with either documentary). This one is not about religion, but about most of the other kinds of irrationality: astrology, dowsing, psychic clairvoyance, crystal healing, palmistry and so on. Mostly, the day's filming was spent in Glastonbury, which is a Mecca for nonsense. Almost all the shops in the little town sell such things as Tarot cards, crystal balls, wands, angels and other spiritual tat. There is a legend that the child Jesus came to Glastonbury with Joseph of Arimathea. Many of the inhabitants believe it, along with their belief in Atlantis, crop circles made by aliens, and 'indigo' children colonizing our planet from distant stars. One professional 'healer' that I interviewed (300 pounds for a weekend of meditation, not including meals) could clearly see, with her intuition, that I have nine strands of DNA in each cell instead of the usual two, and she generously gave me another three strands, making twelve in all. She herself has so many strands of DNA in every cell, they are beyond counting. What amuses me about such people is the way they borrow from the language of science when they make up their lucrative legends. It is tempting to say that such people are nuts, so why bother to interview them. As with Root of All Evil? the answer is that they are influential and highly successful at the art of parting the gullible from their money.

After an amusing yet dispiriting day in Glastonbury (how can people so completely lack all critical intelligence and pay out good money for such stuff?) back to Oxford, where I had an evening appointment at the Radio Oxford studio for a live broadcast on American National Public Radio: 'Talk of the Nation'. I quite enjoyed the broadcast, which was about half interview and half phone-ins from around the USA. All the phoners were friendly and interested. I guess that says something about the kind of people who listen to NPR. A bit like the nice audience in Shakespeare's home town of Stratford: not a representative sample of the population.

Richard Dawkins