This logical problem illustrates something that Onfray’s persistent sarcasm batters home: his guiding principle is not science or knowledge or reason, but rather indiscriminate-and often unresearched and irrational-opposition to religion. But why should the scientist’s motives for research-religious or not-matter? What’s wrong with an astronomer who, seeking God with his telescope, discovers a star? Onfray’s argument is a Catch-22: religion is bad because it does not embrace science but when religion does embrace science, that science doesn’t count precisely because religion has embraced it. “Clearly Islam embraces astronomy, algebra, mathematics, geometry, optics,” he adds, “ but only to calculate the direction of Mecca more accurately by means of the stars, to establish religious calendars, to decree prayer hours” (his italics).

For example, he charges repeatedly that monotheism opposes science, citing such obvious examples as the Catholic Church’s long denial of heliocentrism. To combat monotheism, Onfray writes, we must employ “sound use of our understanding, rational ordering of our minds, implementation of a true critical will.” But it quickly becomes clear that reason is not what motivates this philosopher. A glance at history is enough to confirm the misery and the rivers of blood shed in the name of the one God.” it foments contempt, wickedness, the forms of intolerance that produce racism, xenophobia, colonialism, wars, social injustice. Monotheism, Onfray argues, “seeks to promote self-hatred to the detriment of the body, to discredit the intelligence, to despise the flesh. Atheist Manifesto takes aim at the three great Western religions, making a case for atheism strictly on the basis of the alternatives’ demerits. The founder of a free university in Caen and a household name in France, the 48-year-old Onfray has written some 30 books, of which this is the first to be translated into English. That may seem an unlikely epithet to apply to the leftist French philosopher whose Atheist Manifesto, a Number One best seller in his native country, calls for “more and more Enlightenment!” in order to debunk religion. Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, by Michel Onfray (Arcade Publishing, 240 pp., $25.00)

Atheist Manifesto by Michel Onfray