God Is Not Great
Chapter One
Putting It Mildly
If the intended reader of this book should want to go beyond
disagreement with its author and try to identify the sins and
deformities that animated him to write it (and I have certainly
noticed that those who publicly affirm charity and compassion and
forgiveness are often inclined to take this course), then he or she
will not just be quarreling with the unknowable and ineffable
creator who-presumably-opted to make me this way. They will be
defiling the memory of a good, sincere, simple woman, of stable and
decent faith, named Mrs. Jean Watts.
It was Mrs. Watts's task, when I was a boy of about nine and
attending a school on the edge of Dartmoor, in southwestern England,
to instruct me in lessons about nature, and also about scripture.
She would take me and my fellows on walks, in an especially lovely
part of my beautiful country of birth, and teach us to tell the
different birds, trees, and plants from one another. The amazing
variety to be found in a hedgerow; the wonder of a clutch of eggs
found in an i ... read full excerpt from: God Is Not Great ebook
