Books on Atheism

[PeterJ]

Yes. If you mean that the argument gets lost in a flurry of emotion and fear, and proceeds by an Hegelian process of semi-conscious action and reaction, I'm with you all the way iNow.

 

But this is an excuse for laymen. A professional should not be falling, or should I say leaping, into all these traps, and where they do we should all be pointing out the problem. Maybe we needn't be dwelling on it though in a thread asking for book recommendations. We ought to stick to talking about the scholarly books that make a reasoned case.

[MonDie]

Regarding Dawkins, it's pertinent that non-believers score lower on the Agreeableness personality dimension. I don't know the exact figures. Wow! Wikipedia gives a scathing description of low Agreeableness! Is there nothing positive to say?

I've tried to provoke Christians in online debates since I myself like being provoked. Alas, it usually ends rather than perpetuates the debate.

Edited August 29, 2014 by MonDie

[s1eep]

 

Atheism isn't the opposite of belief in god(s), it's the absence of belief in god(s). It's not a religion, any more than not-collecting dolls is a hobby.

It's also the opposite.

 

It's just one of the beautiful symmetries abound in the world.

 

Cold and Hot may be centred around energy, but in essence they are opposite; they feel opposite, they act opposite, they have reactions with each other that oppose each other. In the sense of, you believing in God, you are without God, it's absence of, but in the case of you being Atheist, you are "as-oppose-to" Theist.

[iNow]

a*theist

 

It literally means "not theist." That is all.

[pears]

It's also the opposite.

 

It's just one of the beautiful symmetries abound in the world.

 

Cold and Hot may be centred around energy, but in essence they are opposite; they feel opposite, they act opposite, they have reactions with each other that oppose each other. In the sense of, you believing in God, you are without God, it's absence of, but in the case of you being Atheist, you are "as-oppose-to" Theist.

 

Well there are atheists and anti-theists. Not necessarily the same thing, though one is mostly a subset of the other.

[PeterJ]

It's also my impression, Mondie, that on average fervent believers can be more disagreeable than fervent atheists. However, I must say, with complete honesty, that as a student of comparative religion I have never come across a more ignorant or poisonous book than the one we are discussing. I really cannot think of anything that compares to it. This is just one reader's reaction, but I have never before had to give up on a book before getting through the introduction. After sampling a few pages, checking the index to see how many important topics were missing, I gave up all hope for the entire debate.

 

Strangely, though, the extreme stupidity of this book seems to have lent some impetus to a sensible discussion. I think many atheists are worried about being associated with this approach to the issues, and may be more willing to be involved in a serious debate in order to make this obvious. At the same time, people with profound and subtle religious beliefs have become very keen to disassociate religion from the author's idea of it. This is task long overdue.

 

The Buddha told us that God was a delusion before paper was invented, and this claim is thoroughly proved by a later Buddhist philosopher in a very famous metaphysical text. Any well-informed attempt to falsify theism would make use of the same argument. If we know Nagarjuna's argument, then we can logically prove that God is a delusion.

 

We would not have put a dent in religion, just placed a difficult constraint on our interpretation of the literature. Now we have to make sense of it even though God is a delusion. This is not a insurmountable problem, but it is not something that can be done without opening our minds to some extremely ancient and weird ideas about the nature of Reality and the possibility of their verification in our own experience.

 

My recommendation would be not bother reading any books on atheism before reading Keith Ward's God: A Guide for the Perplexed. He explains how it is possible to be a Christian yet believe that God is a delusion. Indeed, he explains that this idea may once have been the orthodoxy in Christianity, before it became a religion of the book. You might not think much of it, but he explains the potential subtlety of the idea of God and the meaning of religion, and this may put any book on atheism in its proper context, as a disbelief in what many would say is a naïve interpretation of the scriptures. . .

Edited August 29, 2014 by PeterJ

[MonDie]

Poisonous how so? Dawkins' documentaries, though too basic for my taste, do not seem poisonous. He doesn't vilify religious people or promote intolerance.

Edited August 30, 2014 by MonDie

[PeterJ]

Most I people I know find him a poisonous writer and speaker. His dogmatism and ignorance, coupled with an apparent desire to offend people wherever possible, and his focus on the worst aspects of all the most naive religious views, make him simply a trouble-maker. I would have thought that even those who agree with him would be able to see the unhelpfulness, offensiveness and hatefulness of his approach. He is a fanatic and it shows.

 

But please, I didn't mean to start arguing about Dawkins. I was just suggesting this is one book that is not worth putting on the list. There are many good ones, but this contirbutes nothing.