Cross-X arrived late last week and it’s at the top of my reading pile, right under The God Delusion. Confession: I took some time out to read the new Stephanie Plum silliness, Janet Evanovich’s Twelve Sharp.

Truth be told, I’m enjoying Dawkins as much as I enjoyed Evanovich. My atheism is ad hoc, a by-product perhaps of a stoned reading of Being and Nothingness combined with a common sense understanding of my consciousness bookended by the darkness before my life and the darkness after my death. Dawkins hasn’t gotten that deep or maudlin, rather he’s giving me a good humored ride through the territory where ever so many earnest people wrestle with this stuff as if it matters in a larger sense than raw international institutional power struggles, Vatican turf battles and the occasional pogrom, genocide or crusade.

If my mockery of the blighted ignorance of those whose god is more than metaphoric sparks a simple conversation or two, I’ll be pleased. The whole “leap of faith” thing has been an arrow in my quiver since Norman Mailer bandied the phrase about as explanation for his need to explore other forms. I never thought a generation later would be mired in christian evangelical nonsense giving that commonplace phrase more weight than, say, “spirited venture.” I love Mailer in all his mawkish adolescent hostility and aggressiveness. Every mirror is flawed, but few writers are unafraid to live, to grasp the authenticity of their own experience and reflect it back to the world.

I’m looking forward to getting into Joe Miller’s book soon. And maybe Dickey’s Chasing Destiny while I’m at it.

I’ve read a hundred pages or so of Dawkins’ new book and it just keeps on rocking me with fundamental truth. You can get your copy through this link:
The God Delusion

Thanks to Norm Jenson at One Good Move for turning me on to it early. If you buy through the above link, you are supporting One Good Move.

The God Delusion arrived today! In a fit of bibliomancy, I opened it up and found on page 104 the assertion that “Pascal’s wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God.” I’m going to like this book! In fact I intend to read some tonight right after I check out the video clips at One Good Move. Thank’s to Norm Jenson for all of this.

Irony or conspiracy? How likely is it that an organic food company named Natural Selection would deliver e coli 0157:H to the dining tables of millions of Americans at precisely the same time that the Pope was defaming muslims worldwide? Not likely. No, these seemingly unrelated events are obviously part of a vast global christian conspiracy digging in to protect what remains of their tattered empire in the face of challenges from science, competing superstitions, and health food nuts.

The Armies of God are on the march and we had better watch out!

Enter Richard Dawkins. The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science has brought online a web site aimed squarely at encountering religious superstition just at this critical moment when God’s rottweiler is barking loudest and the domestic religious fundies are spreading cow poop in our spinach.

Dawkins’ latest book, The God Delusion, is just out. The book is a profoundly intolerant look at god, a book that treats theocentric superstitions the same, be they baptist, catholic, or shiite. If I was him I’d duck and cover before the Papal scourging and the fatwas start flying.

The God Delusion may be one ray of light shining into the xtian darkness that has fallen on America. I’m looking forward to reading it.