Selected excerpts and Quotes from
The God Delusion

“...there are lots of people out there who have been brought up in some relgion or other, are unhappy in it, don't believe it, or are worried about the evils that are done in it's name; people who feel vague yearnings to leave their parents' religion and wish they could, but just don't realize that leaving is an option.” (preface, p. 1)

“Imagine, along with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as 'Christ-killers,' no Northern Ireland 'troubles,' no 'honour killings,' no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money ('God wants you to give till it hurts.')”
(preface, p. 1)

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” (Chapter 2, p. 31)

“It is conventional to assume that the Founding Fathers of the American Republic were deists. No doubt many of them were, although it has been argued that the greatest of them might have been atheists. Certainly their writings on religion in their own time leave me in no doubt that most of them would have been atheists in ours.” (Chapter 2, p. 38-39)

“...God, though not technically disprovable, is very, very improbable indeed.” (Chapter 3, p. 109)

“That scientifically savvy philosopher Daniel Dennett pointed out that evolution counters one of oldest ideas we have: ‘the idea that it takes a big fancy smart thing to make a lesser thing. I call that the trickle-down theory of creation. You'll never see a spear making a spear-maker. You'll never see a pot making a potter.’”
(Chapter 4, p. 117)

“...Darwinian evolution, specifically natural selection...shatters the illusion of design within the domain of biology, and teaches us to be suspicious of any kind of design hypothesis in physics and cosmology as well.”
(Chapter 4, p. 118)

“What is it that makes natural selection succeed as a solution to the problem of improbability...natural selection is a cumulative process, which breaks the problem of improbability up into small pieces. Each of the small pieces is slightly improbable, but not prohibitvely so. When large numbers of these slightly improbable events are stacked up in series, the end product of the accumulation is very very improbable indeed, improbable enough to be far beyond the reach of chance. It is these endproducts that form the subjects of the creationist's wearisomely recycled argument. The creationist completely misses the point, because he...insists on treating the genesis of statistical improbability as a single, one-off event. He doesn't understand the power of accumulation.” (Chapter 4, p. 121)

“Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it.” (Chapter 4, p. 125)

“...in the words of an eloquent blogger...‘Why is God considered an explanation to anything? It's not – it's a failure to explain, a shrug of the shoulders, an ‘I dunno’ dressed up in spirituality and ritual. If someone credits something to God, generaly what it means is that they haven't a clue, so they're attributing it to an unreachable, unknowable sky-fairy. Ask for an explanation of where that bloke came from, and odds are you'll get a vague, pseudo-philosophical reply about having always existed, or being outside nature. Which, of course, explains nothing.’” (Chapter 4, p. 134)

“Evolved organs, elegant and efficient as they often are, also demonstrate revealing flaws – exactly as you'd expect if they have an evolutionary history, and exactly as you would not expect if they were designed...our conciousness is also raised by the creulty and wastefulness of natural selection. Predators seem beautifully ‘designed’ to catch prey animals, while the prey animals seem equally beautifully ‘designed’ to escape them. Whose side is God on?”
(Chapter 4, p. 134)

"Irreducible complexity is not a new idea, but the phrase itself was invented by the creationist Michael Behe in 1996. He is credited (if credited is the word) with moving creationism into a new area of biology: biochemistry and cell biology, which he saw as perhaps a happier hunting ground for gaps than eyes or wings. His best approach to a good example (and still a bad one) was the bacterial flagellar motor.
The flagellar motor of bacteria is a prodigy of nature. It drives the only known example, outside human technology, of a freely rotating axle. Wheels for big animals would, I suspect, be genuine examples of irreducible complexity, and this is probably why they don't exist. How would the nerves and blood vessels get across the bearing? The flagellum is a thread-like propeller, with which the bacterium burrows its way through the water. I say 'burrows' rather than 'swims' because, on the bacterial scale of existence, a liquid such as water would not feel as liquid feels to us. It would feel more like a treacle, or jelly, or even sand, and the bacterium would seem to burrow or screw its way through the water rather than swim. Unlike the so-called flagellum of larger organisms like protozoans, the bacterial flagellum doesn't just wave about like a whip, or row like an oar. It has a true, freely rotating axle which turns continuously inside a bearing, driven by a remarkable little molecular motor. At the molecular level, the motor uses essentially the same principle as muscle, but in free rotation rather than in intermittent contraction. It has been happily described as a tiny outboard motor (although by engineering standards – and unusually for a biological mechanism – it is a spectacularly inefficient one.)
Without a word of justification, explanation or amplification, Behe simply proclaims the bacterial flagellar motor to be irreducibly complex. Since he offers no argument in favour of his assertion, we may begin by suspecting a failure of his imagination. He further alleges that specialist biological literature has ignored the problem. The falsehood of this allegation was massively and (to Behe) embarrassingly documented in the court of Judge John E. Jones in Pennsylvania in 2005, where Behe was testifying as an expert witness on behalf of a group of creationists who had tried to impose 'intelligent design' creationism on the science curriculum of a local public school – a move of 'breathtaking inanity', to quote Judge Jones (phrase and man surely destined for lasting fame). This wasn't the only embarrassment Behe suffered at the hearing, as we shall see.
The key to demonstrating irreducible complexity is to show that none of the parts could have been useful on its own. They all needed to be in place before any of them could do any good (Behe's favourite analogy is a mousetrap). In fact, molecular biologists have no difficulty in finding parts functioning outside the whole, both for the flagellar motor and for Behe's other alleged examples of irreducible complexity. The point is well put by Kenneth Miller of Brown University, for my money the most persuasive nemesis of 'intelligent design', not least because he is a devout Christian. I frequently recommend Miller's book, FInding Darwin's God, to religious people who write to me having been bamboozled by Behe.
In the case of the bacterial rotary engine, Miller calls our attention to a mechanism called the Type Three Secretory System, or TTSS. The TTSS is not used for rotary movement. It is one of several systems used by parasitic bacteria for pumping toxic substances through their cell walls to poison their host organism. On our human scale, we might think of pouring or squirting a liquid through a hole; but, once again, on the bacterial scale things look different. Each molecule of secreted substance is a large protein with a definite, three-dimensional structure on the same scale as the TTSS's own: more like a solid sculpture than a liquid. Each molecule is individually propelled through a carefully shaped mechanism, like an automated slot machine dispensing, say, toys or bottles, rather than a simple hole through which a substance might 'flow'. The goods-dispenser itself is made of a rather small number of protein molecules, each one comparable in size and complexity to the molecules being dispensed through it. Interestingly, these bacterial slot machines are often similar across bacteria: something that bacteria are remarkably adept at doing, and a fascinating topic in its own right, but I must press on.
The protein molecules that form the structure of the TTSS are very similar to components of the flagellar motor. To the evolutionist it is clear TTSS components were commandeered for a new, but not wholly unrelated, function when the flagellar motor evolved. Given that the TTSS is tugging molecules through itself, it is no surprise that it uses a rudimentary version of the principle used by the flagellar motor, which tugs the molecules of the axle round and round. Evidently, crucial components of the flagellar motor were already in place and working before the flagellar motor evolved. Commandeering existing mechanisms is an obvious way in which an apparently irreducibly complex piece of apparatus could climb Mount Improbable.
A lot more work needs to be done, of course, and I'm sure it will be. Such work would never be done if scientists were satisfied with a lazy default such as 'intelligent design theory' would encourage....
Another of Behe's favourite alleged examples of 'irreducible complexity' is the immune system . Let Jusde Jones himself take up the story:
'In fact, on cross-examination, Professor Behe was questioned concerning his 1996 claim that science would never find an evolutionary explanation for the immune system. He was presented with fifty-eight peer-reviewed publications, nine books, and several immunology textbook chapters about the evolution of the immune system; however, he simply insisted that this was still not sufficient evidence for evolution, and that it was not 'good enough.''
Behe, under cross-examination by Eric Rothschild, chief counsel for the plantiffs, was forced to admit that he hadn't read most of those fifty-eight peer-reviewed papers. Hardly surprising, for immunology is hard work. Less forgivable is that Behe dismissed such research an 'unfruitful'. It certainly is unfruitful if your aim is to make propaganda among gullible laypeople and politicians, rather than to discover important truths about the real world. After listening to Behe, Rothschild eloquently summed up what every honest person in that courtroom must have felt:
'Thankfully, there are scientists who do search for the answers to the question of the origin of the immune system...It's our defense against debilitating and fatal diseases. The scientists who wrote those books and articles toil in obscurity, without book royalties or speaking engagements. Their efforts help us combat and cure serious medical conditions. By contrast, Profexor Behe and the entire intelligent design movement are doing nothing to advance scientific or medical knowledge and are telling future generations of scientist, don't bother.'
(Chapter 4, p. 129)

The efforts of apologists to find genuinely distinguished modern scientists who are religious have an air of desperation, generating the unmistakably hollow sound of bottoms of barrells being scraped. [Gotta LOVE those language skills!] The only website I could find that claimed to list 'Nobel Prize-winning Scientific Christians' came up with six, out of a total of several hunderd scientific Nobelists. Of these six, it turned out that four were not Nobel Prize winners at all; and at least one, to my certian knowledge, is a non-believer who attends church for purely social reasons. A more systematic study by Benjamin BeitHallahmi 'found that among Nobel Prize laureates in the sciences, as well as those in literature, there was a remarkable degree of irreligiosity, as compared to the populations they came from.'

A study of the leading journal Nature by Larson and Witham in 1998 showed that of those American scientists considered eminent enough by their peers to have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (equivalent to being a Fellow of the Royal Society in Britain) only about 7 per cent are believe in a personal God. This overwhelming preponderance of atheists is almost the exact opposite of the profile of the American population at large, of whom more than 90 per cent are believers in some sort of supernatural being. The figure for less eminent scientists, not elected to the National Academy, is intermediate. As with the more distinguished sample, religious believers are in a minority, but a less dramatic minority of about 40 per cent. It is completely as I would expect that American scientists are less religious than the American public generally, and that the most distinguished scientists are the least religious at all. What is remarkable is the polar opposition between the religiosity of the American public at large and the atheism of the intellectual elite.
(Chapter 3, p. 100)

“If there is no God, why be good? Posed like that, the question sounds positively ignoble. When a religious person puts it to me in this way (and many of them do), my immediate temptation is to issue the following challenge: ‘Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, applepolishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base thought.’As Einstein said, ‘If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.’ Michael Shermer, in The Science of Good and Evil calls it a debate stopper. If you agree that, in the absence of God, you would ‘commit robbery, rape, and murder’, you reveal yourself as an immoral person, ‘and we would be well advised to steer a wide course around you.’ If, on the other hand, you admit that you would continue to be a good person even when not under divine surveillance, you have fatally undermined your claim that God is necessary for us to be good.” (Chapter 6, p. 226)

“Those who wish to base their morality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it...”
(Chapter 7, p.237)

“Of course, irritated theologians will protest that we don't take the book of Genesis literally anymore. But that is my whole point! We pick and choose which bits of scripture to believe, which bits to write off as symbols or allegories. Such picking and choosing is a matter of personal decision, just as much, or as little, as the atheist's decision to follow this moral precept or that was a personal decision, without an absolute foundation. If one of these is ‘morality flying by the seat of its pants’, so is the other.”
(Chapter 7, p. 238)

“I might retort that such hostility as I or other atheists occasionally voice towards religion is limited to words. I am not going to bomb anybody, behead them, stone them, burn them at the stake, crucify them, or fly planes into their skyscrapers, just because of a theological disagreement.”
(Chapter 8, p. 282)

“I thank my own parents for taking the view that children should be taught not so much what to think as how to think. If, having been fairly and properly exposed to all the scientific evidence, they grow up and decide that the Bible is literally true or that the movements of the planets rule their lives, that is their privilege. The important point is that it is their privilege to decide what they shall think, and not their parents' privilege to impose it by force majeure.”
(Chapter 9, p. 327)

“There is something breathtakingly condescending, as well as inhumane, about the sacrificing of anyone, especially children, on the altar of ‘diversity’ and the virtue of preserving a variety of religious traditions. The rest of us are happy with our cars and computers, vaccines and antibiotics. But you quaint little people with your bonnets and breeches, your horse buggies, your archaic dialect and your earth-closet privies, you enrich our lives. Of course you must be allowed to trap your children with you in your seventeenth-century time warp, otherwise something irretrievable would be lost to us: a part of the wonderful diversity of human culture. A small part of me can see something in this. But the larger part is made to feel very queasy indeed.”
(Chapter 9, p. 331)

“If the demise of God will leave a gap, different people will fill it in different ways. My way includes a good dose of science, the honest and systematic endeavour to find out the truth about the real world.” (Chapter 10, p. 361)

“Many people <i>define</i> 'come about by chance' as a synonym for 'come about in the absence of deliberate design'. Not surprisingly, therefore, they think improbability as is evidence of design. Darwinian natural selection shows how wrong this is in respect to biological improbability. And although Darwinism may not be directly relevant to the inanimate world – cosmology, for example – it raises our consciousness in areas outside its original territory of biology.
A deep understanding of Darwinism teaches us to be wary of the easy assumption that design is the only alternative to chance, and teaches us to seek out graded ramps of slowly increasing complexity. Before Darwin, philosophers such as Hume understood that the improbability of life did not mean it had to be designed, but they couldn't imagine the alternative. After Darwin, we all should feel, deep in our bones, suspicious of the very idea of design. The illusion of design is a trap that has caught us before, and Darwin should have immunized us by raising our consciousness. Would that he had succeeded with all
of us.”
(Chapter 4, p. 114)