Target

The seeds of this article have been on my mind for a while, but its timing is a reaction to an article I saw yesterday in the Chicago Sun Times titled “Meaty fad diet goes back to Stone Age“. Here we go… Back to the 3.4 million year “fad”. The author added to the fad rhetoric by calling the paleo diet “silly”. That sort of title is pretty common in the anti-paleo polemics that circulate in the blogosphere. However, this was from what I presumed to be a nominally significant traditional media outlet. It was clearly written by a non-journalist, which is fine I guess, but it struck me as particularly poorly researched. There were no online responses when I read it, so I fired off a hasty, but I think accurate, comment. At the time of this writing, it’s the first of a few comments, but who knows what whims might change that.

Semi-Irrelevant Backstory

When I first read the article, I read every word, but stopped at the 2nd to last sentence of the piece: “Cornell McClellan is the owner of Naturally Fit… a personal training and wellness facility.” Maybe it’s not fair nor accurate, but when I think gym owner / personal trainer, I envision a wall of supplements and meal replacement bars and powders… you know…. merchandise that needs to be “moved”. Thus, I tend to take their advice on nutrition with a grain of yeah, right. In missing the last sentence, I missed something that would have changed my comment somewhat. Here’s that non-trivial sentence: “He is also the fitness trainer for the President of the United States and the First Lady.” Yes, you may {insert scratching record sound here}.

Let it be known that I am was in no way hostile to the Obama administration when I read the article. Sure, I could work up a reasonable critique of a dozen or so things I think were bad policy decisions, but my critiques of the Bush Jr. administration would be measured in hundreds or thousands. For reasons mentioned by neither Democrats nor Republicans, I find the health care bill to be flawed. It also strikes me as unconstitutional, but I went to the law school of James Spader and William Shatner. To the Presiden’ts credit, as a non-theist, the following may be my favorite quote by any U.S. President since James Madison:

“I’m somebody who deeply believes that the bedrock strength of this country is that it embraces people of many faiths and no faith. This is a country that is still predominantly Christian, but we have… atheists, agnostics… that we have to revere and respect….” Barack Obama, September 28, 2010.<

The only reason I’m writing this article is that I got curious and googled Cornell McClellan. It was then that I found out he’s 1 of 16 official members of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition. It was only after finding that page that I went back to the article and connected all of the dots. I remain skeptical of its claim that Mr. McClellan has an “extensive knowledge of the human body and nutrition.”

The Meat of It

Cornell McClellan’s article really is garbage. I do encourage you to read the whole thing to take in the totality of its emptiness. The portrait of the paleo diet that he paints is more a cartoonish mischaracterization of the Atkins diet than paleo. And to be fair to the Atkins folks, it’s not a fair representation of them either.

The problem with this sort of article is that the average person sincerely looking for a way to improve their health is not likely to see through the unsupported assertions made by someone who’s a professional personal trainer backed by the President and officially promoted as an outstanding exemplar by the United States government. My thoughts and references follow each of the quoted snippets.

“a recent study has come out that refutes some of [the paleo diet’s] basic tenets. Findings from archeological digs in Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic suggest that cavemen did not only rely on meat for sustenance, as evidenced by traces of starch grains found on stones used for grinding and preparing food.”

Well at least Mr. McClellan did go so far as to read the Reuters blurb on this and maybe even the NYT piece [“page not found” error as of this writing]. However, the actual study did not reveal evidence of “grains” in the sense that would be appropriate for a paleo diet discussion of grains… namely, cereal grains such as wheat, barley, amaranth, millet, et cetera. The grains being referred to are grains in the sense that they are particulates; that is, the result of grinding. The popular science media misconstrued this research ad nauseum when it was first published. Its implications for paleo dieters are approximately zero. It’s been refuted many times, but Melissa McEwen provides my favorite critique thus far. It’s based on the actual study, not the other journalists’ general audience pieces, and she even bothered to include a relevant chart from the study that shows the non-grain plants in question.

Not trivial in the media coverage of this study was the post-publishing opining by some of the article’s authors. At least one made a wild and unsubstantiated guess that they used the ground plant material to make bread. I ask again, who among you thinks mashed potatoes are the same as bread? Perhaps we have to be scientists to make such a determination?

Archeologists were shocked to discover that our carnivorous ancestors actually were making and preparing foods such as roots, vegetables and perhaps even cracker-like foods.

Now this is just ridiculous. First of all, no serious scientist currently thinks our ancestors were “carnivores”. It is widely accepted by archaeologists and anthropologists that humans evolved as omnivores. I’d let laymen off the hook on this distinction, but Mr. McClellan knows better and is exaggerating for effect. The paleo diet approach simply echoes a range of foods our omnivorous ancestors would have had access to. Second, there are longstanding hypotheses and evidence of hominid “preparation” of roots and vegetables. The rest of us know that crackers were invented by the Keebler elves, no earlier than the First Age of Middle-Earth. Proving that humans made crackers in the paleolithic is about as likely as leading us to a magical elven forest.

These recent findings suggest that man cannot live on meat alone, but that hasn’t stopped thousands of people from signing up for the Paleo Diet.

Now we’re getting ridiculous-er. The paleolithic diet doesn’t suggest that anyone could, should, or would survive on meat alone.  I’m sure someone could make a case that humans could survive on meat alone, but it would remain a question of how long and how well. Scientists do hypothesize that Neanderthals were mostly carnivorous, but they’re a separate species and that argument is beside the point.

a meat-heavy diet isn’t recommended for most people. Not only do I discourage any diet that disallows entire food groups, but cholesterol levels are directly linked to the ingestion of animal products.

Meat-heavy is vague, unhelpful, and pejorative in a way the author clearly intended. Here we also have a legitimate disagreement on what constitutes a food group. Grain might be a Food Group, but it is not a group of foods or nutrients required for human health. There are no essential nutrients found in grains that are not found in dramatically higher concentrations in the other “food groups”. Yes, grains, as a practical matter, are necessary to sustain the massive current global population of Homo sapiens with the current agribusiness-dominated farming system, but they are by no means necessary for individual people. Please examine your assumptions, Mr. McClellan.

The final claim about cholesterol and animal products is too big to discuss here. I’ll blindly assert his unsupported claim has been sufficiently refuted and address references should they be provided at some future time.

Eating a steak three times a day can potentially whittle your waistline, but the impact it’s having on your insides might not be as attractive. Sadly, Paleo dieters also are encouraged to limit fruit to small helpings, as it believed that our ancestors didn’t have access to the amazing produce offerings that we now do.

Until I see a citation for the “steak three times a day” charge, I’m going to assume that it’s again made up for dramatization of the author’s non-point. While our ancestors did eat a lot of meat when it was available, it wasn’t available in steak form three times a day. Such is life when you don’t have refrigeration and a pantry.

Paleo dieters are encouraged to adjust fruit consumption based on their current body composition and how much exercise they’re getting. Fruit generally has naturally high levels of sugar. Is it really sad to suggest that obese, sedentary individuals throttle back on their intake of sugar, while marathon runners shovel it down as needed?

Not only are these diet choices somewhat questionable, it’s also worth pointing out that our Stone Age ancestors were not eating factory-farmed meat, which is full of chemicals and hormones. Unless you have a spear handy and access to unlimited buffalo, you are going to have a hard time truly eating like a caveman.

Yes, the mythical all meat diet that excludes spuriously essential food groups and bans fruit would definitely be questionable. Unfortunately for the arguments of Mr. McClellan, that isn’t the paleo diet. The paleolithic dieters are fully aware of the problems with factory farmed, chemically-treated meat and make it a point to eat naturally fed (typically grass or pastured) meats. And yes, such meats are difficult to find at a fast food window, but they are often available at standard grocery stores. And as I’ve said before, paleo is a logical framework applied to modern humans, not a historical reenactment.

Finally, any diet that is as restrictive as the Paleo Diet is problematic because it requires cavemen-sized willpower, which means many people will soon abandon their hunks of meat for a modern-day helping of lasagna.

The willpower problem is a modern diet carbohydrate addiction problem, not a paleolithic problem. Direct links have been demonstrated between carbohydrate cravings and obesity (Spring 2008). In effect, suggesting that sufficient willpower is too difficult implies that we should all simply give up and submit to an unbreakable cycle of carbohydrate addiction. The cool thing about paleolithic diets is that most people find the addiction and cravings go away. Indeed, you find yourself quite full if you eat ample amounts of meat, fruit, and vegetables.

After discovering the naive nutritional understanding of “The First Trainer”, I’m a little worried for the President. I hope his doctors aren’t using similarly anachronistic, post-medieval methods. Nobody likes leeches and bloodletting.

McClellan’s sagelike advice? Don’t eat “Big Macs”. Deet deeeet deeet deet deeeet… This just in off the news wire.

Dear President Obama, myself and many others in the paleo community would be happy to update your nutrition regime. P.S. Please tell President Clinton he could probably use a bit more protein these days. Bonus: Many of us have a natural immune system resistance to TV and radio pundits. Which brings me to my next point…

Religion

Religion (in some forms) is fundamentally anti-paleo. Obvious culprits in this regard are Creationists. While I formally and warmly invite them to apply paleolithic ideas to their eating and exercise habits, it’s also pretty obvious that the paleo diet relies on the logic of Darwinian evolution. Some folks who believe in “intelligent” design may also be inclined to reject the logic of the paleo diet. The adaptive power of natural selection in evolutionary theory is a foundation of the paleo diet. If a divine force was guiding the process, adaptation would be irrelevant. It could be claimed that the “intelligence” knew all along that humans would need grain to force an artificially large population explosion, and therefore, paleolithic habits would be irrelevant.

I personally know Creationists who have been quite successful on the paleo diet. I wonder how they ignore the implications there. If their holy books tell them eating bread is a good thing, how do they reconcile that unhealthy advice with reality?

Corporate Interests

I don’t want to get all conspiratorial, but I think it’s at least worth considering financial influence in politics as it relates to pushback against paleolithic dieting. As the famous quote from the 1976 film All the President’s Men says, “Follow the money”. And lookey here, we just happen to be talking about one of the President’s men. The list below highlights a few publicly traded companies with direct financial interest in producing, fertilizing, transporting, and/or distributing paleo-unfriendly wheat & corn products for human consumption [2010 Fortune 500 Rank, $Revenue]. Major direct producers in bold.

• Wal-Mart [1]
• Exxon Mobil [2]
• Chevron [3]
• ConocoPhillips [6]
• CVS Caremark [18]
• Procter & Gamble [22]
• Kroger [23]
• Costco Wholesale [25]
• Walgreen [32]
• Marathon Oil [41]
• PepsiCo [50, $43 billion]
• Safeway [52]
• Kraft Foods [53, $40 billion]
• Sysco [55, $37 billion]
• Coca-Cola [72, $31 billion]
• Tyson Foods [87, $27 billion]
• Rite Aid [89]
• Publix Super Markets [99]
• Deere [107]
• McDonald’s [108, $23 billion]
• Coca-Cola Enterprises [113, $22 billion]
• Tesoro [139]
• General Mills [155 $15 billion]
• Smithfield Foods [163, $14 billion]
• Pepsi Bottling [174, $13 billion]
• ConAgra Foods [178, $13 billion]
• Sara Lee [180, $13 billion]
• Kellog [184, $13 billion]
• Monsanto [197]

I’ll just leave it at that for now. Government subsidies of the crops in question raises an entirely different, yet equally important level of questioning. If I get requests to flesh this out further, maybe I’ll put some more work into it.

Vegan / Vegetarian

Noooooo… Not again! There are a lot of veg*ans out there. They’re politically active, they like to team up, and they [some] hate that other people eat meat.

Guilt by Association / Ad Hominem

We see this time and again in propagandists rallying against those of unknown motives trying to quash the idea that eating grains is bad (see the reference to Gwyneth Paltrow in the intro here). This is true in attacks on anti-gluten folks and anti-paleo folks.  Indeed Cornell McClellan injects this approach into his piece, “celebrities such as Megan Fox are rumored to owe their hot bodies to this ancient diet plan… there is no secret behind the body of your favorite celebrity”. Dismissing something as a celebrity fad is itself a fad and it carries with it a very real sign (in the semiotic sense) value. Its cultural meaning instantly evokes mental images of superficiality, imminent expiration, and flakiness. Thus, accusing something of being a celebrity fad associates the idea of hollow vapidity to whatever is linked to it. Propaganda 101, baby.

Conclusion

We have good reason to question the personal business motivations, political motivations, and religious motivations of individuals launching derisive attacks at paleo. The financial stakes alone are in the hundreds of billions (more likely trillions) annually. The perceived religious stakes are just as powerful and perhaps more, if slightly less lucrative and less…um… what’s the word I’m looking for here? The stakes for vegetarians can be just as powerful and personal.

There are reasonable arguments within the scientific community that are worth having. However, when pieces such as McClellan’s hit the media with such a gaping chasm between the known science and the claims, red flags should go off and alarm bells should ring.

Yes, our knowledge of the paleolithic environment in which humans evolved is less than 100% complete. However, we know a lot more about it than Mr. McClellan and other politically motivated paleo haters would lead you to believe. We know enough to help people in a very real and immediate way. I’ll link up a couple books below, and feel free to ask me questions if you’re not sure about where to start or where to go next.

Slainte,

Andrew

UPDATE: Cornell McClellan is a vegan advocate!

References

Spring, B., Schneider, K., Smith, M., Kendzor, D., Appelhans, B., Hedeker, D., et al. (2008). Abuse potential of carbohydrates for overweight carbohydrate cravers. Psychopharmacology, 197(4), 637-647.

And yeah… disclaimer… qualification… yada yada yada… the protagonists linked above aren’t necessarily explicit participants in a vegan vs. paleo battle. But let’s face it, paleo’s pro-animals are nutritious position makes it a logical target for anti-carnivory prophets pundits… despite the fact that it’s possible to be paleo and vegan, but not vice versa. And yes, referring to all veg*ans as a monolith would be an error. This is not about segregating everyone into two sides of a false dichotomy, but looking at the potential range of two non-opposite generalities.

A more accurate title for this piece may have been: “Why Veganism Can Be a Religion, and Paleo Can Not”

“Religion” as a Smoke Screen

Titles such as, “The Paleo Diet: Fad, Religion, or Solution?”, are meant to imply religion in its pejorative colloquial usage and induce a hyperbolic guilt-by-association. Essentially, it’s being used as a synonym for dogma. This tactic ignores that while religion (in the strict sense of the word) relies on dogma, dogma does not imply religion. It’s nothing more than a cutesy linguistic trick playing on flawed logic. Translation: Bullshit. Fortunately for propagandists, human brains are inherently non-logical.

Casting aside the red herring of dogma, there are two human biases and a resulting rationalization that allow religion to infiltrate human minds:

1. Agency
2. Anthropomorphism
3. Dualism, Spirits, or “Energy”

Bonus Point: Fundamentalism

I’ll flesh out those ideas in a second, but it’s useful to step out of the blog echo chamber for a moment to gain some perspective. Wouldn’t you know it? The conversation about the religiosity of veganism has taken place many times. In fact, there’s even U.S. legal precedent!

What do the Courts Say?

In Friedman v. Southern Cal. Permanente Medical Group (2002), the plaintiff argued that his own veganism was a religious belief. Friedman was denied employment by a medical group because he refused to accept a required vaccine based on the fact that chicken embryos are used in its production. The Court ruled against Friedman, essentially viewing his belief as being too rational to qualify as a religion. Other courts had indicated that  “decisions point away from a strictly theistic definition of religion. A belief in a supreme being is not required. . . .But, something more than a philosophy or way of life is required.”^[1]

Indeed, there is an important difference between philosophy and religion. From this point of view, veganism and paleo seem to be on similar footing.

The U.S. Supreme Court expressed similar interpretations in the distinction between philosophy and religion in United States v. Seeger,^[2]Welsh v. United States,^[3] and Wisconsin v. Yoder^[4]. From these cases courts reached the conclusion that Constitutional protection is not afforded to merely philosophical and personal belief. Put another way, religion is more than a “way of life.”

I tend to agree with the courts in these cases… both in their definition of religion and the ruling that Mr. Friedman’s veganism was not a religious belief. The problem is, Mr. Friedman simply isn’t a good representative of a religious vegan. I’ve endured breathless pleas from vegans insisting that consuming animal products infects one with the spirit or negative energy of the dead creature (curiously, the corrolary of getting power from good spirits from animals would be just as likely, and has been more popular throughout history). This has come to me by way of personal contact and regarded books that detract from their value by the author’s relentless mysticism. Had these people been in court instead of Mr. Friedman, veganism would probably have some narrow legal precedent as a religion.

So how does one make the transition from a philosophical belief to a religion?

Agency

Here’s a bit of irony: Religion is chronologically paleo in the sense that it thrived after human language developed sometime in the late Paleolithic era. This coincidence is irrelevant to the question of whether or not the current “paleo” movement has anything to do with religion, but I find it amusing nonetheless.

The initial seed of religion is agency, or the assumption that events are caused by something. This isn’t a claim about thermodynamics or anything else within the realm of physics, but a claim of purpose and/or meaning. In the Paleolithic, this would take the form of something like… “Oh damn, why did the sun disappear and what does it mean? Why is our light being taken away? Did we break something? What can we do to fix it?” We enlightened apes simply refer to it as an eclipse or the earth rotating on its axis. Remarkably, modern religions make the same type of mistakes as our paleo ancestors… “Oh damn, Why is the ground shaking violently? This must be punishment for using the wrong orifices during sex”.

Humans simply have a bias toward assigning agency. Since primates evolved in a world where most knowledge was first-hand observation of other primates and other animals, this sort of bias is easy to predict. But agency by itself isn’t enough.

Spirits and “energy” and gods (Oh My!)

If you live in a world that predates math, physics, astronomy, and geology by tens or hundreds of thousands of years, figuring out the “agent” behind the agency is basically impossible. It’s one thing to observe the path of rocks thrown by others in your social circle; it’s quite another to explain where the wind comes from, why the sun comes and goes, how the seasons change (but remain unreliable), why glaciers are encroaching upon your habitat, et cetera. The magnitude of human confusion is dramatically compounded when considering that spoken language has only been around for tens of thousands of the millions of years encapsulating hominid evolution. We couldn’t hash out our ideas under chemical influence on long college nights.

When the basics of your physics is the folk physics of hyper-local observation, it’s easy to assume these same principles are at play on a larger scale. If I can make a little wind by blowing out through my mouth, simple extrapolation assumes the existence of a bigger, stronger something to make a storm. “I can’t see it, but it must be somewhere over the horizon. If it’s not over the horizon, it must be invisible. There must be a god or spirit making things happen. There must be an energy I can’t see. There has to be an explanation for everything going on around me. If energy can exist apart from bodies, maybe my spirit energy exists apart from my body. Maybe all animals are animated (eh hem, the bias is deep enough to underpin language) by a spirit apart from their bodies. Golly gee whiz! Wouldn’t that be cool?”

Out of agency, folk physics, and rationalized explanations of cause and effect, the insidious concept of dualism is imagined. Something sacred apart from biology emerges in the explanatory framework of the human mind. Once the soul has broken free of the body, we are free to assign sacred souls to anything with a body. But we still haven’t completed the descent to pure mysticism. For that, we need one more important bias of the human mind.

Anthropomorphism

Humans, being the arrogant primates that we are, tend to assume that we’re pretty much the coolest in every category we can invent. However, we’re not very creative as isolated individuals. That results in imagining that the agents behind the agency are probably just creatures like humans, but with superhuman humanness. You know, just like us, but a little more or a little bigger. Given the chance, we’ll attribute just about any unknown to humanness. For example, we’re quick to mistake a human shadow for a human, but we never mistake a human for a shadow. Our instinctive first response: Assume human, act accordingly, reevaluate (last step optional!).

It’s no coincidence that humans invariably described humans as being created in the image of gods. This is the obvious prediction to make of an egocentric and naive being lacking sufficient spontaneous creativity who makes up stories about gods.

Our default assumption of agency is always human… unless…

Tying it all back to animals

“Mommy… will Fido go to heaven when he dies?”

The only other agents our visually biased selves saw over evolutionary time were animals. Unlike inhabitants of the supermarket era, our ancestors would have seen more animals than other humans. There was no abstraction between cow and beef or pork and pig. There were only animals… some elusive, some scary, some much more powerful than us, and some… well… dinner.

Humans have been attributing agency to animals for longer than there have been humans. Dualism allows us to imagine the sacred souls of animals and anthropomorphic arrogance allows us to attribute characteristics of our own imagined souls to those of other biological machines. Thus, animals attain sacred sentience. Thus, animals are spiritually similar to humans. Thus, speciesism is a reprehensible moral error with inherent normative evils similar to those of racism and sexism. Thus, veganism can now, neigh… must now break free from philosophy to float into the realm of mystical religion.

Beware the human imagination after it has imagined dualism.

Bonus: Vegan Fundamentalism

One of the less savory characteristics of fundamentalist religion is its incessant doublespeak and intellectual dishonesty. With religious fundamentalists, all conversations relating to science or reality are conducted behind a proxy layer of intellectual facade. It’s impossible to have an honest discussion. Debates about evolution are abstracted by a veneer of intelligent design or absurd truth claims that space-time fluctuates to accommodate for inconsistencies in carbon dating and fossil evidence. After that, the very meaning of “7 days” inevitably comes into question. And all of this just to prevent direct analysis of the underlying beliefs based on nothing but social reinforcement.  Meaningful discussions of abortion are precluded by a mind-numbing dance around baseless speculation regarding the moment the soul attaches to DNA. Nevermind that the sacred souls survive the destruction of biological bodies, because the biological cells are more important while the souls cling to them, but the soul is really actually the sacred part. Say wha? The endless construction of quasi-scientifical arguments deflects the conversation from the real disconnect: reality is not important to the fundamentalist.

Such are conversations typical of fundamental vegans. Religious beliefs about the spirit energy of animals are subjugated by the very same denials of anthropology and biology that Creationists invoke to defend their beliefs.

The next indicator of a vegan fundamentalist religion is the proselytizing. Being vegan isn’t good enough for vegans. Like Christopher Hitchens observes of Christians: their beliefs do not suffice to make them happy. They can only be happy if you everyone adopts their beliefs as well. And hey… talking about it is fine for a while, but if you don’t comply, violence is an option.

Sure, paleo diet adherents are often excited to spread their beliefs, but their concern is for the person they’re trying to share the belief with; there is no imaginary third party benefactor. Christians may be about saving souls on the surface, but the ultimate concern is for protecting their god’s ego from having his feelings hurt by the sins of an unintentionally, but totally intentional botched creation that has the audacity to sin exactly as intelligently designed. Vegan religious fundamentalists play the same shell-game when they pretend to be concerned for health, but are ultimately concerned with protecting animals from having their feelings hurt being eaten in the same way virii and bacteria constantly seek to devour us.

The Christians and Muslims certainly have a better chance of success. Have you ever seen your local vegan priest successfully convert an eagle to veganism? If you think human culture has duped us all into a nefarious speciesarchical belief that it’s okay to eat animals, don’t watch the true crime stories of misguided feline hunger perpetrated against the wildebeest on Animal Planet. It’s going to take more than the resurrection of Pavlov and Skinner to train those morally debauched deviants to eat a banana.

Paleo Religion?

Paleo, as a guiding principle for diet and health, can be a philosophy, a logical framework, a way of life, true, false, and even complete wishful thinking, AND still not be a religion. Paleo does not, and simply cannot, make claims about agency, spirits, spirits, and other dualistic concepts; it does not operate in the realm of invisible superheroes. At it’s worst, paleo can be dogmatic. Dogma is bad, but the dogma + unsubstantiated spiritual claims + proselytism of spirit cults is bad and dangerous.

Religion is for people who think some people will go to heaven. Religious Veganism is for people who think some people and all pets will to go to heaven. I would love for them to be right about that, but wanting, hoping, and believing are inferior to understanding

The defense rests.

Now can we get back to work on ending CAFOs, sustainable farming, ditching Frankencrops, chemical free agriculture, and a diet over drugs philosophy? Jesus fruiting mice!

References

^[1] ___ Cal. App. 2d at ___, ___ P.2d at ___ (citing, St. Germain Found. v. County of Siskiyou, 212 Cal. App.2d 911, 916 (1963); Fellowship of Humanity v. Co. Alameda, 153 Cal. Ap.2d 673, 692 (1957); and Smith v. Fair Employment & Housing Com., 12 Cal.4th 1143, 1166 (1996).

^[2] 380 U.S. 163 (1965).

^[3] 398 U.S. 333 (1970).

^[4] 406 U.S. 205 (1972).

Until recently, Professor Dawkins held the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is the author of many books, including The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design, and Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder. His first book, The Selfish Gene, was an instant international bestseller, and has become an established classic work of modern evolutionary biology.

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Richard Dawkins is also the author of The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, A Devil’s Chaplain, The Ancestor’s Tale, The God Delusion, and most recently, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.

Professor Dawkins’s awards have included the Silver Medal of the Zoological Society of London (1989), the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday Award (1990), the Nakayama Prize for Achievement in Human Science (1990), The International Cosmos Prize (1997) and the Kistler Prize (2001).

He has Honorary Doctorates in both literature and science, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Hitchens, an always colorful and sometimes outrageous commentator, now takes aim at God. Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have tried, but that hard-to-hit Fellow keeps popping back up. Worse still are the violent ways of his flock: waging religious warfare, keeping women enslaved, fomenting universal hatreds. Hitchens makes a powerful case for atheism – Politics and Prose

Christopher Hitchens was born in Portsmouth, England and worked in Britain as book reviewer for the Times, and chief foreign correspondent for the Daily Express. After emigrating to the United States in 1981, he wrote the “Minority Report” column for The Nation. Since 1992, he has been columnist and contributing editor at Vanity Fair and, at different times, Washington editor and columnist for Harper’s magazine, American columnist and correspondent for the Spectator, the New Statesman, the Times Literary Supplement, Sunday Today, and the Sunday Correspondent. Hitchens writes regularly for the Atlantic Monthly and Slate, and is the author of God is Not Great, Letters to a Young Contrarian and Why Orwell Matters.

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Topics

• Hitchens Opening: American Citizenship
• Beginnings of Religion
• N. Korea
• Manmade Falsification
• Child Mutilation
• Crimes Committed in the Name of Faith
• Resistance

Q & A

• Waiting for Armageddon
• Any Good in Religion?
• Origin of Love
• Materialism
• Existence of Jesus
• Spiritual Experience
• Personal Belief System?
• In Defense of Atheism

Some of the most inspired and provocative thinkers, writers, artists, business people, teachers and other leaders drawn from myriad fields and from across the country and around the world all gathered in a single place – to teach, speak, lead, question, and answer at the 2006 Aspen Ideas Festival. Throughout the week, they all interacted with an audience of thoughtful people who stepped back from their day-to-day routines to delve deeply into a world of ideas, thought, and discussion.

Three Typical Attempts to Mount a Defense of Religion

1. A specific religion is true
2. Religion is useful… to the point of being necessary.
3. Atheism is essentially another religion

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Topics

• Harris Opening Religion
• Truthfulness of Religion
• Problems with Miracle Stories
• Usefulness of Religion
• Morality
• History of Slavery
• Unequal Treatment of Women
• Dogma of Atheism
• Misunderstandings of Atheism
• Legacy of History
• Q & A