Chapter One

FIRST COMMANDMENT
God–Consciousness


I am the Lord your God,
who has taken you out of the land of Egypt,
from the house of slavery.
(Exodus 20:2)


On a damp winter night in Seattle, I attended a protest rally against the first commandment. The Oxford biologist and best–selling author Richard Dawkins had come to address a crowd at Town Hall, a cavernous defunct church now used for cultural events. The suave Brit, a type for which Americans swoon, roused and delighted his listeners. Ostensibly, Dawkins’s subject was Darwinian evolution, of which he is the English–speaking world’s boldest and most charming advocate. But the mostly middle–aged, flannel–bundled Seattlites, packed tightly in the curving wooden pews of the old vaulted sanctuary, seemed less fired up by scientific details than by what the author had to say about modern life and values.

Dawkins set the evening’s tone by declaring himself “hostile to all forms of religion.” Over and over, he stuck his thumb in the eye of religionists by referring to the Darwinist belief that, far from being God’s children, humans are no more than animals. “We are all glorified lungfish,” he said with relish, exhaling contempt for any contrary opinion, “cousins of kangaroos and bacteria,” “fellow apes.”

He warned that with an evangelical Christian like George W. Bush in the White House, “People need to understand what they are up against in a society which is ruled by religious bigotry.” The audience clapped and guffawed. When Dawkins reflected on the fact that “My publishers are