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ATHEIST

UNIVERSE

The Thinking Person's Answer to

Christian Fundamentalism

DAVID MILLS

To all freethinkers, past and present, whose independence of mind isolates them from the sympathy and understanding of their community, but whose courageous and unwavering devotion to the scientific method has liberated their community from the Dark Ages

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Copyright © 2006 David Mills. Foreword copyright © 2006 Dorion Sagan. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Published in the U. S. by Ulysses Press

P. O. Box 3440

Berkeley, CA 94703

ISBN10: 1-56975-567-1

ISBN 13: 978-1-56975-567-9

Library of Congress Control Number 2006903812

Editor: Lily Chou

Indexer: Sayre Van Young

Printed in Canada by Transcontinental Printing

1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

Distributed by Publishers Group West

Contents

Foreword: Paper Cut Stigmata 7

Preface 13

Introduction: Is This Book an Outrage? 16

1 Interview with an Atheist 25

2 Origin of the Universe: Natural or Supernatural? 65

3 God of the Gaps: Does the Universe

Show Evidence of Design? 82

4 The "Miracle" of Planetary Clockwork 87

5 The "Miracle" of Life on Earth 105

6 Can Genesis Be Reconciled with Modern Science? 136

7 "Miracles" of Christian Perception 156

8 The Myth of Hell 170

9 Christian Fundamentalists and

10 Was America Really Founded upon

Christian Principles? 204

11 "Intelligent Design": Christianity's Newest Cult 208

A Final Thought 255

Chapter Notes 256

Bibliography 260

Index 265

About the Author 272

Foreword:

Paper Cut Stigmata

by Dorion Sagan

When I got a paper cut, slicing my thumb while reading the uncorrected proofs of this edition of Atheist Universe, I thought it might be a sign—not as dramatic, perhaps, as being struck by a lightning bolt in a sensitive part of the anatomy during an extremely arduous act of premarital lovemaking, but a sign nevertheless.

Creationists are funny. They want to be taken seriously as scientific and have their or their comrades' writings taught as science to our children in schools. But their attitude is unscientific.

Rather than engaging in open-minded investigation to figure out how things are done, at the first glimmer of mystery they throw up their hands and say it is beyond science. This is like not knowing how a magic trick is done and thinking no one else can know, either. We can give up trying to understand because God—who in their view is like a 2000-year-old petty Middle Eastern tyrant, quick to anger and condemn to the eternal prison of Hell those who don't obey Him—must have done it. As soon as they (to sound scientific) ascribe the phenomenon to irreducible complexity, Intelligent Design, the Flying Spaghetti Monster,1 or something else, they have abandoned the search. Needless to say, suggesting 7