The GOD Delusion Read Online Free PDF

ever, is the trump card. Imagine members of an art appreciation
society pleading in court that they 'believe' they need a
hallucinogenic drug in order to enhance their understanding of
Impressionist or Surrealist paintings. Yet, when a church claims an
equivalent need, it is backed by the highest court in the land. Such is
the power of religion as a talisman.
    Seventeen
years ago, I was one of thirty-six writers and artists commissioned by
the magazine New Statesman to write in support of
the distinguished author Salman Rushdie, 9 then
under sentence of death for writing a novel. Incensed by the 'sympathy'
for Muslim 'hurt' and 'offence' expressed by Christian leaders and even
some secular opinion-formers, I drew the following parallel:
    If
the advocates of apartheid had their wits about them they would claim -
for all I know truthfully - that allowing mixed races is against their
religion. A good part of the
opposition would respectfully tiptoe away. And it is no use claiming
that this is an unfair parallel because apartheid has no rational
justification. The whole point of religious faith, its strength and
chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The
rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious
person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'.
    Little
did I know that something pretty similar would come to pass in the
twenty-first century. The Los Angeles Times (10
April 2006) reported that numerous Christian groups on campuses around
the United States were suing their universities for enforcing
anti-discrimination rules, including prohibitions against harassing or
abusing homosexuals. As a typical example, in 2004 James Nixon, a
twelve-year-old boy in Ohio, won the right in court to wear a T-shirt
to school bearing the words 'Homosexuality is a sin, Islam is a lie,
abortion is murder. Some issues are just black and white!' 10 The school told him not to wear the T-shirt - and the boy's parents
sued the school. The parents might have had a conscionable case if they
had based it on the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech.
But they didn't: indeed, they couldn't, because free speech is deemed
not to include 'hate speech'. But hate only has to prove it is religious, and it no longer counts as hate. So, instead of freedom of
speech, the Nixons' lawyers appealed to the constitutional right to
freedom of religion. Their victorious lawsuit was
supported by the Alliance Defense Fund of Arizona, whose business it is
to 'press the legal battle for religious freedom'.
    The
Reverend Rick Scarborough, supporting the wave of similar Christian
lawsuits brought to establish religion as a legal justification for
discrimination against homosexuals and other groups, has named it the
civil rights struggle of the twenty-first century: 'Christians are
going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian.' 11 Once again, if such people took their stand on the right to free
speech, one might reluctantly sympathize. But that isn't what it is
about. The legal case in favour of discrimination against homosexuals
is being mounted as a counter-suit against alleged religious
discrimination! And the law seems to respect this. You can't
get away with saying, 'If you try to stop me from insulting homosexuals
it violates my freedom of prejudice.' But you can get away with saying,
'It violates my freedom of religion.' What, when you think about it, is
the difference? Yet again, religion trumps all.
    I'll
end the chapter with a particular case study, which tellingly
illuminates society's exaggerated respect for religion, over and above
ordinary human respect. The case flared up in February 2006 - a
ludicrous episode, which veered wildly between the extremes of comedy
and tragedy. The previous September, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.
Over the next three months, indignation was carefully and
systematically