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Richard Dawkins is the noted biologist who has held the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His book, The God Delusion, appears to the untrained eye to be a devastating attack on theism as well as an ironclad defense of atheism. But not everything is as it seems.

This audio tutor (designed for owners of the iPod and similar MP3 players) consisting of a User Guide and over 200 companion audio tracks, carefully dissects Dawkins’s argument and exposes its numerous logical fallacies and factual errors, and demonstrates that Dawkins’ primary argument is itself a faith-based construction. Those interested in improving their ability to think critically will find reading Dawkins’ book along with this audio companion an essential intellectual exercise!

Note — to use this learning program, you must have all of the following:

• A copy of The God Delusion, and
• An iPod (or other MP3 player), and
• A broadband connection (to download the MP3 files).

A Project of The Intelligent Community Initiative.

The ancient Jews never heard of Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, they never heard of Nazareth either. That is the startling conclusion of a comprehensive investigation of Jewish records surviving from antiquity. Every literary source ever advanced by serious scholars as being a reference to the historical Jesus is examined and found to be nothing of the sort -- except for the latest layers of the Babylonian Talmud. Clearly, those references were reactions to Christianity, not to Christ.

But what of the "Sepher Toldoth Yeshu" ("The Book of the Genealogy of Jesus")? Does that Jewish satirical antigospel reflect echoes of ancient arguments between Jesus of Nazareth and his Jewish brethren? Can the Jesus of that tale -- a man portrayed as the bastard son of a soldier named Panther, a magician, and the aerially sodomized victim of a flying Judas -- provide information about a historical Jesus? Of course not, but it does provide a fascinating insight into the world in which the gospels were invented.

The book sheds light on the important role of fraud and forgery in the advancement of Christianity even in its earliest periods. It shows, for example, that there was much more Christian interpolation into the works of Josephus than even most Atheist scholars have realized.

In Opposites: Side by Side, Turkish authors Sanar Yurdatapan and Abdurrahman Dilipak—one an atheist and the other a devout Islamic theologian—present their opposing views side by side in the spirit of freedom of expression. Rather than allowing themselves to be isolated by their fundamental disagreement, they've achieved a genuine respect for each other's differing views: "We wanted to show that we could live together with our differences, holding onto them."