DeStefano - Inside the Atheist Mind Unmasking the Religion of Those Who Say There Is No God

CONTENTS

A nthony DeStefano is the bestselling author of more than fifteen Christian books for adults and children. He has hosted two television series on EWTN and has received many awards and honors from religious organizations throughout the world. A Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, he is an avid pilot, a successful businessman, and a longtime pro-life activist. He lives with his wife, Jordan, in New Jersey.

I would like to express my gratitude to all the good people at Thomas Nelson, especially Brigitta Nortker, Stephanie Tresner, Sara Broun, and my brilliant editor, Webster Younce, who has helped me in so many different ways and is the person most responsible for the publication of this book.

I would also like to thank my literary manager of fifteen years, Peter Miller; my colleague and best friend, Jerry Horn; my gifted research assistant, Jonathan Caulk; my personal assistant, the wonderful Danielle Malina-Jones; and the great man to whom this book is dedicated, Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life.

Finally, I want to thank the most important person in my lifemy wise, good, beautiful, and loving wife, Jordan.

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2018 by Anthony DeStefano, Inc.

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Epub Edition February 2018 9780718080594

ISBN 978-0-7180-8059-4 (eBook)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 978-0-7180-8056-3

Names: DeStefano, Anthony, author.

Title: Inside the atheist mind : unmasking the religion of those who say there is no God / Anthony DeStefano.

Description: Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017038905 | ISBN 9780718080563 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Atheism.

Classification: LCC BL2747.3 .D428 2018 | DDC 211/.8--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017038905

Printed in the United States of America

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This book is dedicated to

Father Frank Pavone

Chapter 1: The Arrogance of the Atheists

. Responding to Arrogant Children, Nobullying.com, last modified December 22, 2015, https://nobullying.com/arrogant/.

. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Parable of the Madman, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); Now that the Nietzsche Archive is open, the question is finally also open as to whether and how eastern Germans will confront the Nazification of Neitzsche.... Might eastern Germans begin to face the past by facing Nietzsche? It will be hard indeed to confront the last century of German intellectual history without addressing him.... In July 1934, Hitler and reigning Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg visited [Neitzsches sister] Elisabeth and presented her with a wreath for her brothers grave bearing the word To a Great Fighter. John Rodden, Repainting the Little Red Schoolhouse: A History of Eastern German Education, 19451995 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 28889; Thomas Mann, a German novelist, contemporary of Nietzsche, and the 1929 Nobel Laureate winner wrote that Nietzsche served the Germans as a model for those traits which made them a disaster and a terror to the world, and led them ultimately to ruin themselves: romantic passion; will which is free because it has no goal and aspires to the infinite. Thomas Mann, Nietzsches Philosophy in the Light of Recent History, in Last Essays, trans. Richard and Clara Winston and Tania and James Stern (New York: Knopf, 1959), 175. Quoted in Mark W. Clark, Beyond Catastrophe: German Intellectuals and Cultural Renewal After World War II, 19451995 (Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006), 112.

. Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 67, 51.

. Remarks come from a speech Richard Dawkins presented at the Edinburgh International Science Festival on April 15, 1992. Quoted in Alec Fisher, The Logic of Real Arguments, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 83.

. Bill Maher, Religulous, directed by Larry Charles (2008; Santa Monica, CA: Lionsgate, 2009), DVD.

. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve Books, 2007), 64.

. Now, our statement is thisthat the Deity is an animal that is everlasting and most excellent in nature; so that with the Deity life and duration are uninterrupted and eternal: for this constitutes the very essence of God. Aristotle, The Metaphysics, trans. John H. McMahon (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2007), 277.

. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. Francis Bacon, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francis-bacon.

. Francis Bacon, Theological Tracts, The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1841), 405.

. Leonardo da Vincis own words: That man becomes happy who follows Christ. The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, vol. 1, trans. Edward MacCurdy (New York: George Braziller, 1955), 86.

. Godliness consists in the knowledge love & worship of God, Humanity in love, righteousness & good offices towards man. Isaac Newton, A Short Schem of the True Religion, The Newton Project, February 2002, http://www.newtonproject. ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00007.

. While both religion and natural science require a belief in God for their activities, to the former He is the starting point, to the latter the goal of every thought process. Max Planck,