The Portable Atheist

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My warmest thanks are due to my agent, Steve Wasserman, and my publisher and editor, Ben Schafer, for the collaboration which initiated this volume. I’s safe to say that without the devoted skill of Lori Hobkirk as copy editor and project editor and Cliff Corcoran as copyright and permissions editor, the scope and range of the collection would have been considerably less than it is.

When accused—probably correctly—of scientific plagiarism, Sir Isaac Newton was careful to say (again plagiarizing from an ancient acknowledgement) that he had “stood on the shoulders of giants.” I am, in this effort as in all my other ones, immensely indebted to a small but growing group of devoted rationalists, who reject the absurd and wicked claims of the religious and who look for answers in the marvels and complexities of science, as well as in the higher and deeper reaches of literature. I am more proud than I can say that Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali contributed some hitherto unpublished work to this anthology. In the realm of the natural and physical sciences, the labors of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Michael Shermer, Steven Weinberg, Anthony Grayling, and Sam Harris have been at once courageous, witty, and original, and it is my dearest hope that anybody picking up this book of excerpts will be impelled to read all these distinguished authors at their full length and full strength.

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