Despite the prevalence of religious belief in the United States (nearly 200 million Americans belong to 350,000 congregations), a growing minority (14 percent) of U.S. adults identify with no religion whatsoever. Journalist James A. Haught addresses the secular segment of American society in this interesting collection of incisive essays that give voice to honest doubts about religious beliefs. Taken together, Haught's essays endorse the idea that freedom of religion must include freedom to doubt as well as to believe. Individually, the articles present many different reasons to doubt: * Intellectual integrity demands that we express doubts about beliefs for which there is no scientific evidence. * The historical record, past and present, shows that religion is often the cause of evils, from the Inquisition and the burning of witches to current terrorist violence committed in the name of religion. * Natural evils, such as the 2004 Asian tsunami and devastating diseases, should make any thoughtful person question whether an all-powerful and all-merciful God governs the universe. * The sheer number and diversity of often-conflicting belief systems raise serious doubts about the philosophical coherence of religion as an approach to finding the truth. * Scandals among the clergy undermine the credibility of religion as a sound basis for morality. Written in a straightforward conversational style that makes clear the many scientific, philosophical, and ethical difficulties that plague religion, Haught's thought-provoking essays will appeal to atheists, agnostics, and anyone with questions about religion.

Uses a question and answer format, with illustrations, to explain why the sky is blue, what a rainbow is, what atoms are, how gravity works, and many other scientific facts and events.

In 1583 in Vienna, a 16-year-old girl suffered stomach cramps. A team of Jesuits exorcized her for eight weeks. The priests announced that they had expelled 12,652 demons from her, demons that her grandmother had kept as flies in glass jars. The grandmother was tortured into confessing that she was a witch who had engaged in sex with Satan. She was then burned at the stake. This was one of perhaps one million such executions during three centuries of witch-hunts.

In 1989 in Moradabad, India, a pig caused hundreds of people to kill one another when the animal walked through a Muslim holy ground. Muslims, who think pigs are an embodiment of Satan, accused Hindus of driving the pig into the sacred spot. Members of both faiths went on a rampage, stabbing and clubbing. The pig riot spread to a dozen cities and left two hundred dead.

A squad of armed Islamic zealots raided a Christian church at Behawalpur, Pakistan, on October 28, 2001, killing the minister, fourteen worshipers, and the church's police guard.

It is said that there is never enough religion in the world to make people love one another--just enough to make them hate one another. Incendiary blends of fundamentalist religion, politics, nationalism, and ethnic zealotry engender countless examples of atrocity in the name of faith and orthodoxy. If anything, religious persecution is more savage now than everbefore in the history of mankind.

HOLY HORRORS chronicles the grim spectrum of religious persecution from ancient times to the present. Fully illustrated with drawings, woodcuts, and photographs, the book recounts such historic religious persecution as the Crusades, the Islamic jihads, the Catholic wars against heretics, the Inquisition, witch-hunts, and the Reformation. It also chronicles modern-day atrocities, including the Holocaust, the seemingly insoluble Catholic-Protestant schism in Northern Ireland, religious tribalism in in Lebanon, and the barbaric cruelty of the theocracy in Iran.

Chronicles the grim spectrum of religious persecution from ancient times to the present.

"Centuries of religious madness packed into one finely crafted, all-too-true horror story".