CONTENTS & EPIGRAPHS

1----THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO WOLF

2----KINDRED SPIRITS

3----THE ANTI-CHRISTS

4----THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JEZEBEL

5----OPERATION SHYLOCK

6----THE MESSIAH OF MIDDLE-MUDDLE

7----THE AYATOLLAH OF SECULAR HUMANISM

8----THE ECO ECHO CHAMBER

9----THE GREAT SATAN

10----SATANIC VERSES

11----DEVILS' ISLANDS

12----THE RELIGION OF THE MAN WHO HATES RELIGION

13----IN WHICH MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE, AND JOHN

TAKE OVER THE NARRATION

14----THE REVELATION OF ST. WOLF THE DIVIDED

15----THE CONVERSION OF THE JEWS

On page vii of the novel appears a number of epigraphs for the novel,

which the author pretends have been culled out of a book called Holy Wars

written by Wolf Berlin, the novel's protagonist.

Of course they do represent the way Berlin thinks.

Contemplate them for yourself. Are they true?

"The Ebola virus of religious ideas is the notion that some are saved and most are damned, and especially virulent is the apocalyptic version that imagines a time when the sheep will be separated from the goats, the "pure" from the "impure," once and for all. Zoroaster may have been the first infected, but Jews, Christians, and Moslems are the principal carriers."

"The Great Satan is theocracy, the most tyrannical form of government. Because it tends to be the most wrong about reality, theocracy always needs coercion to gain assent. The Grand Inquisitor and the most totalitarian pope, priest, pastor, rabbi, or ayatollah are not aberrations of theocracy but its epitome."

"The fatal flaw in American democracy in its protection of religious freedom, for many of the religions it tolerates are sworn to replace democracy with theocracy at the earliest opportunity and in the meantime to at least weaken democracy by any means necessary."

"Have we at last come to the end of tolerating ignorant belief? The great majority of True Believers may still be relatively harmless, but the wealthy and powerful and shrewd among them can now get their hands on weapons of mass destruction, and a handful of fanatics can now impose their insanity upon the entire globe."

"If in the short run the fundamentalist fanatics don't do us in, the religious establishment will in the long run. In the next hundred years, religious authorities out of desperation will pretend all the harder that their "eternal verities" are still true, will insist all the more on the literal application of the old truths by their followers, will become increasingly coercive and persecutory toward non-believers, and, after largely routing secularism, will ultimately launch a dangerous arms race with rival religions that will inevitably lead to 'holy war,' in which 'martyrs' will die gladly. The religious wars of the 21st Century will make those of the 16th and 17th Centuries look positively ecumenical."

·"Religion is going to be the death of us, if the lack of it doesn't get us first."