Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts
Friday, December 16, 2011
Christopher Hitchens 1949 - 2011
The British author and prominent atheist Christopher Hitchens died yesterday, leaving the world a little less interesting and brutally honest. I didn't always like what he wrote, but he will be missed.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of the Bible by CJ Werleman
I downloaded this book mostly on the merits of the title; it sounded like it ought to be pretty damn funny. I was also interested in the author’s idea of using the Bible as evidence against its own God. The purpose of the book was to show, using the actual text of the Holy Bible, that God is rather a horrible person to be worshipping. The author’s strategy was to go through each book of the Bible, summarizing the general ideas and discussing particularly horrifying scriptures.
Unfortunately, this book was not nearly as entertaining as the title would suggest. The author started out by throwing in a lot of jokes, some of which were even funny, but many of which were just sort of lame. As he gets into the middle of the book, he kind of forgets to make any jokes or commentary and just summarizes each book of the Bible. Which gets pretty boring. I might not have even bothered finishing the book if it weren’t for the fact that I wanted to review it.
I think the author did a good job of picking out the specific scriptures that most Christians either aren’t aware of or deliberately choose to ignore. He makes a number of good points about them. However, sometimes I think his arguments could’ve been more persuasive if they had been better written. While I agreed with nearly everything he was saying, I don’t think his writing could convince anyone who started out even the least bit critical of his viewpoint. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it for anyone religious, since most of his jokes are very deliberately offensive and his writing isn’t especially persuasive. It would be handy for pissing people off, but not necessarily for making them think twice about their beliefs.
Overall, I probably wouldn’t recommend this book. Some of the content is good, but it’s not all that enjoyable to read. Maybe the best parts of the book are the quotations at the start of each chapter. One that particularly cracked me up was this: “Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.” – Butch Hancock. Anyhow, to get back on topic, I’m quite certain that you could find this information from much more interesting and well-written sources. I’d give it 2 stars.
Friday, June 10, 2011
The Myth of American Religious Freedom by David Sehat
I am pretty much dancing with joy right now for having finally finished this book. It took me forever to get through! While it was interesting and very relevant, it was slow, slow going for me.
The Myth of American Religious Freedom is an incredibly thorough look at religion's intersection with politics since America was formed. It is sort of a history of the "war" in American between the non-religious left and the religious right. At least, that's how most of it was framed. The book has long sections regarding slavery, abolition, equal rights and women's liberation and how those debates and political changes were affected by religion. Court cases and supreme court decisions were an important part of the book as well. While the book goes right up to 2010, everything since Roe v. Wade seems pretty rushed and cursory.
The Myth of American Religious Freedom is an incredibly thorough look at religion's intersection with politics since America was formed. It is sort of a history of the "war" in American between the non-religious left and the religious right. At least, that's how most of it was framed. The book has long sections regarding slavery, abolition, equal rights and women's liberation and how those debates and political changes were affected by religion. Court cases and supreme court decisions were an important part of the book as well. While the book goes right up to 2010, everything since Roe v. Wade seems pretty rushed and cursory.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett
I don't even know what to say about this book. It took me a month to read, and just almost put me off reading in general for ever. I had wanted to read Dennett for a while, as he was the only one of the "four horsemen" that I hadn't read. This book was my book club's selection for February, I didn't even come close to finishing in time. So here we are.
Breaking the Spell is supposed to be an examination of religion, including its causes and results, maybe looking at whether overall religion is a negative or positive impact. Dennett is a notable atheist, but in Breaking the Spell he sort of tries not to write in a pro-atheism manner. It's not very convincing. He pretended to be unbiased, but it was abundantly clear throughout that the book was not a disinterested analysis of religion, but largely for its demise.
The audience Dennett thought he was writing for is incredibly unclear. It certainly wasn't for well-read atheists or anyone who has read more relevant things about the origins and effects associated with religion. Dennett claims that the book is written towards religious people, hoping they will read it and step back and really look at their religion. Somehow I don't see this happening. You wouldn't even have to be very dogmatic to automatically reject Dennett's ideas in this book, his writing makes it almost necessary to reject what he says, somehow! A typical, "unbiased" passage from Breaking the Spell:
This book was also very rambling, repetitive and boring. It never really got anywhere, it mostly just kept saying, "this is what I'll show" without showing much. This was not a conclusive, persuasive treatise on why atheism is better than religion, although maybe that's what Dennett wanted it to be. There were many, many times I finished a paragraph (or page, or chapter...) and realized I didn't remember the point of what I had just read. It was written in such a way that the point of many parts of the book was really unclear.
In summary, this book is a big meh. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, religious, atheist, or whatever. It's just an epic waste of time that would probably really irritate a religious person for no good reason!
Breaking the Spell is supposed to be an examination of religion, including its causes and results, maybe looking at whether overall religion is a negative or positive impact. Dennett is a notable atheist, but in Breaking the Spell he sort of tries not to write in a pro-atheism manner. It's not very convincing. He pretended to be unbiased, but it was abundantly clear throughout that the book was not a disinterested analysis of religion, but largely for its demise.
The audience Dennett thought he was writing for is incredibly unclear. It certainly wasn't for well-read atheists or anyone who has read more relevant things about the origins and effects associated with religion. Dennett claims that the book is written towards religious people, hoping they will read it and step back and really look at their religion. Somehow I don't see this happening. You wouldn't even have to be very dogmatic to automatically reject Dennett's ideas in this book, his writing makes it almost necessary to reject what he says, somehow! A typical, "unbiased" passage from Breaking the Spell:
It might be that the best that can be said for religion is that it helps some people achieve the level of citizenship and morality typically found in brights (atheists)." (page 55)His little hypothetical judgments were not very helpful, and certainly reflected his views, regardless of how disinterested he was trying to come off. So many things in this book are well suited to driving away anyone not already in his camp.
This book was also very rambling, repetitive and boring. It never really got anywhere, it mostly just kept saying, "this is what I'll show" without showing much. This was not a conclusive, persuasive treatise on why atheism is better than religion, although maybe that's what Dennett wanted it to be. There were many, many times I finished a paragraph (or page, or chapter...) and realized I didn't remember the point of what I had just read. It was written in such a way that the point of many parts of the book was really unclear.
In summary, this book is a big meh. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, religious, atheist, or whatever. It's just an epic waste of time that would probably really irritate a religious person for no good reason!
Friday, November 26, 2010
Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer
Emily has already reviewed this book, and written a great summary of it here. I think I had a slightly different take on the book than she did, so this will definitely not be a repetition of what Emily already wrote! This review contains heavy spoilers because I feel like I have to get into the ending events of the book to review it to my satisfaction. Skip to the last paragraph if you don't want stuff given away!
Calculating God follows a Canadian paleontologist who I will refer to as Straw Man Atheist or SMA. SMA is one of the first humans to interact with aliens who visit earth to learn about the planet in their quest to make sense of the universe. SMA is an atheist, who reads like he was written by someone who has never spoken with an actual atheist. Most of what he believes is shallow, and his reasons for his beliefs are flawed. He doesn't read like an atheist would be, he reads like someone's characture of an atheist. He has beliefs he should be able to defend with good arguments, but lets them fall down like a house of cards when questioned. Hence, Straw Man Atheist.
I have an aversion to books that blend science and fiction in unclear ways with an apparent agenda. I know Emily probably will disagree, but I felt like this book had a very clear agenda in that everything turns out to be the work of a god and everything SMA believed turns out to be false. I am not super knowledgeable in physics, astronomy or biology, and the way that Calculating God was written sort of made the boundary between real science and what the author was making up unclear. To me at least. Maybe I am just ignorant though. I just felt like this book would be a very convincing argument for intelligent design, or the presence of an impersonal god, if you knew a little bit less about the science at stake than I do. That seems like a less than ethical way of doing fiction to me.
Being slightly educated in physics and biology, I was aware of several flaws in the evidence for god presented by the spider aliens to SMA. For example, it jumps on punctuated equilibria as creationists and intelligent design enthusiasts love to. Which is really, incredibly meaningless. Of course the fossil record is incomplete and jumpy, we are lucky anything gets preserved in the unlikely process of fossilization. Even if the earth had no fossils, there would be sufficient evidence for (not divinely guided) evolution within our genetics. Another flawed argument that is central to Calculating God is that because the fundamental constants of the universe are so dang perfect for human life, god must have caused them. It is certainly not clear that life couldn't be formed under different parameters. I recently read in a book or article (that I am struggling to find again...) that some scientists modeled different combinations of variables and found that if you varied different ones simultaneously you could get all kinds of suitable universes, in theory. For example if the fundamental constants are 1, 2, and 3 and say that for life to exist they have to sum to equal six, you might say that if you changed any one constant the universe would be unsuitable for life. BUT you could change two or three at once and still sum to six and be suitable, like changing them to 1, 1, and 4. All of the arguments for a god's existence in Calculating God that are based on reality and not the fictional worlds in the book's setting are ones that are easily refuted, and have been refuted soundly. By scientists, not fiction writers. Calculating God makes it seem like science needs a god-entity to have started the universe and bumped along evolution. Neither is true. Science does just fine without some entity having survived from a previous universe and set up ours, in reality.
One section in the book that made it abundantly clear what the author really thinks of atheists was when SMA and his alien friend were discussing morality and religion. SMA asks the alien how his or any race could have morality without god. So apparently even Sawyer's SMA thinks that there can be no morality without god. I, and the atheists I know, think otherwise. It seems clear that morality based on after-death rewards and punishments alone is no morality at all. If you are only good for the sake of getting rewarded after death, how is that morality? If the only thing that stops you from killing, raping and stealing is the assumption that such behavior will send you to hell, is that morality? Further, a quote from Steven Weinburg: "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." The SMA character ceased to be believable when he said that morality had to come from god, and I lost any faith I had that Sawyer was unbiased.
Towards the end of the book, when the inhabited planets are nearly destroyed by a proximate supernova and then miraculously saved, the book got a lot less subtle. I found it strange that everyone leaped to the conclusion that life from another planet had caused (or accelerated) the 'nova and the god entity stopped it from killing the universe's sentient life. It seemed strange to me that the characters never even considered the (more obvious and plausible) explanation that the star went 'nova because that's just what stars do and it was the aliens who stopped it. You can't tell me that it's impossible for the aliens to have blocked the supernova if you are assuming it's ok for them to have freaking caused it!!
The end of the book was less interesting, because it was written hurriedly and at a high level, but it also made me a lot less uncomfortable because it was clearly based on fiction rather than something science has actually dealt with. It was really nice that there was a reason for cancer after all, and that all of what the (non-SMA) characters believed all along was true.
This book is interesting and thought provoking. It did make me think about my assumptions about the world, but certainly not change them. I found most of the discussions between the main characters to be interesting. My main complaint is just that the author has an agenda and uses what I consider to be dirty fictional tricks to push it. I don't know that I would necessarily recommend this book because of its agenda and the aspects that frustrated me about it, but I did more or less enjoy reading it.
Calculating God follows a Canadian paleontologist who I will refer to as Straw Man Atheist or SMA. SMA is one of the first humans to interact with aliens who visit earth to learn about the planet in their quest to make sense of the universe. SMA is an atheist, who reads like he was written by someone who has never spoken with an actual atheist. Most of what he believes is shallow, and his reasons for his beliefs are flawed. He doesn't read like an atheist would be, he reads like someone's characture of an atheist. He has beliefs he should be able to defend with good arguments, but lets them fall down like a house of cards when questioned. Hence, Straw Man Atheist.
I have an aversion to books that blend science and fiction in unclear ways with an apparent agenda. I know Emily probably will disagree, but I felt like this book had a very clear agenda in that everything turns out to be the work of a god and everything SMA believed turns out to be false. I am not super knowledgeable in physics, astronomy or biology, and the way that Calculating God was written sort of made the boundary between real science and what the author was making up unclear. To me at least. Maybe I am just ignorant though. I just felt like this book would be a very convincing argument for intelligent design, or the presence of an impersonal god, if you knew a little bit less about the science at stake than I do. That seems like a less than ethical way of doing fiction to me.
Being slightly educated in physics and biology, I was aware of several flaws in the evidence for god presented by the spider aliens to SMA. For example, it jumps on punctuated equilibria as creationists and intelligent design enthusiasts love to. Which is really, incredibly meaningless. Of course the fossil record is incomplete and jumpy, we are lucky anything gets preserved in the unlikely process of fossilization. Even if the earth had no fossils, there would be sufficient evidence for (not divinely guided) evolution within our genetics. Another flawed argument that is central to Calculating God is that because the fundamental constants of the universe are so dang perfect for human life, god must have caused them. It is certainly not clear that life couldn't be formed under different parameters. I recently read in a book or article (that I am struggling to find again...) that some scientists modeled different combinations of variables and found that if you varied different ones simultaneously you could get all kinds of suitable universes, in theory. For example if the fundamental constants are 1, 2, and 3 and say that for life to exist they have to sum to equal six, you might say that if you changed any one constant the universe would be unsuitable for life. BUT you could change two or three at once and still sum to six and be suitable, like changing them to 1, 1, and 4. All of the arguments for a god's existence in Calculating God that are based on reality and not the fictional worlds in the book's setting are ones that are easily refuted, and have been refuted soundly. By scientists, not fiction writers. Calculating God makes it seem like science needs a god-entity to have started the universe and bumped along evolution. Neither is true. Science does just fine without some entity having survived from a previous universe and set up ours, in reality.
One section in the book that made it abundantly clear what the author really thinks of atheists was when SMA and his alien friend were discussing morality and religion. SMA asks the alien how his or any race could have morality without god. So apparently even Sawyer's SMA thinks that there can be no morality without god. I, and the atheists I know, think otherwise. It seems clear that morality based on after-death rewards and punishments alone is no morality at all. If you are only good for the sake of getting rewarded after death, how is that morality? If the only thing that stops you from killing, raping and stealing is the assumption that such behavior will send you to hell, is that morality? Further, a quote from Steven Weinburg: "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." The SMA character ceased to be believable when he said that morality had to come from god, and I lost any faith I had that Sawyer was unbiased.
Towards the end of the book, when the inhabited planets are nearly destroyed by a proximate supernova and then miraculously saved, the book got a lot less subtle. I found it strange that everyone leaped to the conclusion that life from another planet had caused (or accelerated) the 'nova and the god entity stopped it from killing the universe's sentient life. It seemed strange to me that the characters never even considered the (more obvious and plausible) explanation that the star went 'nova because that's just what stars do and it was the aliens who stopped it. You can't tell me that it's impossible for the aliens to have blocked the supernova if you are assuming it's ok for them to have freaking caused it!!
The end of the book was less interesting, because it was written hurriedly and at a high level, but it also made me a lot less uncomfortable because it was clearly based on fiction rather than something science has actually dealt with. It was really nice that there was a reason for cancer after all, and that all of what the (non-SMA) characters believed all along was true.
This book is interesting and thought provoking. It did make me think about my assumptions about the world, but certainly not change them. I found most of the discussions between the main characters to be interesting. My main complaint is just that the author has an agenda and uses what I consider to be dirty fictional tricks to push it. I don't know that I would necessarily recommend this book because of its agenda and the aspects that frustrated me about it, but I did more or less enjoy reading it.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Irreligion by John Allen Paulos
Irreligion is purported to be a summary of "why the arguments for god just don't add up" according to its cover. This is a fairly accurate summary of what the book contains.I bought this book because I had read a few of John Allen Paulos' columns and was entertained by him. The topic of Irreligion seemed interesting to me, and the book wasn't very expensive, long or intimidating.
I need to stop buying and reading books about atheism. Once you have read one, you have read them all. (I recommend "The God Delusion" as the best of the bunch) Richard Dawkins approaches atheism and religion through biology, Sam Harris through brain science, and Hitchens through philosophy and literature, for example. Paulos does it through statistics. I thought this would be a unique approach, but it somehow was not.
Irreligion is rebuttals to several (not new) arguments for the existence of god. The majority of the book is stuff I have read elsewhere. It is a nice (short, easy) summary of this stuff for people who haven't read all about it previously, but fails to say much new stuff. Most of it isn't even based on statistics, as touted. More logicy, proofy stuff. Meh.
Paulos does have one other thing going for him, as an atheist writer. He has tact. His arguments are very friendly and approachable, not condescending or sarcastic. I have heard some people are put off my the causticity of Dawkins and Harris. If so, Paulos might be your guy!
I would recommend this book to either someone who just can't get enough pro-atheist books, or to someone who was slightly curious about it but didn't want to commit to a longer, more intense (or insulting) book. I am sure Irreligion has its place in the atheism book ecosystem, but I personally didn't get a ton from it. To most people I would recommend The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins over Irreligion.
I need to stop buying and reading books about atheism. Once you have read one, you have read them all. (I recommend "The God Delusion" as the best of the bunch) Richard Dawkins approaches atheism and religion through biology, Sam Harris through brain science, and Hitchens through philosophy and literature, for example. Paulos does it through statistics. I thought this would be a unique approach, but it somehow was not.
Irreligion is rebuttals to several (not new) arguments for the existence of god. The majority of the book is stuff I have read elsewhere. It is a nice (short, easy) summary of this stuff for people who haven't read all about it previously, but fails to say much new stuff. Most of it isn't even based on statistics, as touted. More logicy, proofy stuff. Meh.
Paulos does have one other thing going for him, as an atheist writer. He has tact. His arguments are very friendly and approachable, not condescending or sarcastic. I have heard some people are put off my the causticity of Dawkins and Harris. If so, Paulos might be your guy!
I would recommend this book to either someone who just can't get enough pro-atheist books, or to someone who was slightly curious about it but didn't want to commit to a longer, more intense (or insulting) book. I am sure Irreligion has its place in the atheism book ecosystem, but I personally didn't get a ton from it. To most people I would recommend The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins over Irreligion.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Nomad by Ayaan Hirsi ali
This book is amazing. I think it appeals to be because of the beauty with which Hirsi Ali writes, and her openness and honesty about the incredible and horrifying events that have taken place in her life.
In Nomad, Hirsi Ali describes family members and some of her life experiences. The theme that held the book together, I felt, was her call to arms against the horrors of radical Islam and the ways in which she feels westerners ought to fight this cultural war that has already been started against us.
The stories are all discrete and short, more like anecdotes. She describes cousins, her grandmother, her siblings and parents. The one thing that they all share is the pain their Muslim religion brought them and their loved ones. I don't want to spoil the book, because everyone ought to read it, but the stories she recalls from her childhood in Africa and the Middle East are truly eye-opening and profoundly disturbing. Some of them make female genital mutilation seem innocuous. It isn't what you might expect, her account is far deeper than a list of complaints about gender inequality in the middle east, although it naturally comes up.
I must have closed the book and looked at her picture on the cover 50 times while reading the book. It continually amazed me that such an inwardly and outwardly beautiful person could grow out of so much abuse and depravity. At this point I should make it abundantly clear that she places the blame for the abuse she suffered during her life on Islam and the effects it has on its followers. She makes a highly convincing argument that we can't just stand back and watch Islam grow, watch it fight a cultural invasion against the west.
I think as soon as the term "cultural relativism" was defined for me back in college I realized it was a bad idea. I think that we can and should declare western culture and values to be superior to cultures in which rape is used as a weapon of war, children are prevented from obtaining and education or modern medicine is shunned, to name a few examples at random. If I had previously felt that different cultures ought to be respected even if I personally found their practices to be wrong, I am pretty sure this book would have convinced me otherwise. Despite the Hirsi Ali's remarkable success in life, no child should be subjected to the environment she was raised in.
In summary, read the book. It could change your life. It was a remarkable autobiography that was candid and beautifully written and its themes were ones which ought to be brought to America's attention. Now, if you will excuse me, I am off to make a donation to the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foundation and see about obtaining her other books, "Infidel" and "The Caged Virgin".
In Nomad, Hirsi Ali describes family members and some of her life experiences. The theme that held the book together, I felt, was her call to arms against the horrors of radical Islam and the ways in which she feels westerners ought to fight this cultural war that has already been started against us.
The stories are all discrete and short, more like anecdotes. She describes cousins, her grandmother, her siblings and parents. The one thing that they all share is the pain their Muslim religion brought them and their loved ones. I don't want to spoil the book, because everyone ought to read it, but the stories she recalls from her childhood in Africa and the Middle East are truly eye-opening and profoundly disturbing. Some of them make female genital mutilation seem innocuous. It isn't what you might expect, her account is far deeper than a list of complaints about gender inequality in the middle east, although it naturally comes up.
I must have closed the book and looked at her picture on the cover 50 times while reading the book. It continually amazed me that such an inwardly and outwardly beautiful person could grow out of so much abuse and depravity. At this point I should make it abundantly clear that she places the blame for the abuse she suffered during her life on Islam and the effects it has on its followers. She makes a highly convincing argument that we can't just stand back and watch Islam grow, watch it fight a cultural invasion against the west.
I think as soon as the term "cultural relativism" was defined for me back in college I realized it was a bad idea. I think that we can and should declare western culture and values to be superior to cultures in which rape is used as a weapon of war, children are prevented from obtaining and education or modern medicine is shunned, to name a few examples at random. If I had previously felt that different cultures ought to be respected even if I personally found their practices to be wrong, I am pretty sure this book would have convinced me otherwise. Despite the Hirsi Ali's remarkable success in life, no child should be subjected to the environment she was raised in.
In summary, read the book. It could change your life. It was a remarkable autobiography that was candid and beautifully written and its themes were ones which ought to be brought to America's attention. Now, if you will excuse me, I am off to make a donation to the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foundation and see about obtaining her other books, "Infidel" and "The Caged Virgin".
Monday, May 31, 2010
The New Atheism by Victor Stenger
This book would probably have been more interesting if I hadn't already read it all in several other books. Maybe if I had read "The New Atheism" first it would be my favorite. That said, here are my issues.
Problem 1:
Harris 14
Dawkins 13
Hitchens 10
Dennet 10
The list above is the number of pages/ranges in which Stenger cites that author. It understates the total since there are whole sections on Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens that are counted as one citation. He also cites his own books quite a bit. The book is incredibly derivative. He doesn't have his own ideas to discuss. The book is sort of an amalgamation of better books. It isn't even done in an appropriate way. I felt like the first half of the book was just a giant paraphrase of "Hey Dawkins! Hey Harris! Stop the bandwagon, I am getting on!"
Stenger seems to really want to have the definitive book on "New Atheism" belonging to him, but all he can do to achieve this is summarize what others have already said. His desire to be one of the Four Horsemen is apparent when he lists important atheists as Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Stenger. It was a little pathetic.
Problem 2:
Atheism isn't a religion. "New Atheists" are not a group of people that can be identified by anything other than a lack of belief in any god. Stenger seems to think that we all think, believe and, of all things, vote in a certain way. Stenger loves his Obama, but that does not mean that all atheists do! We are a diverse group of people. I object to him trying to classify us as all having the same political priorities and views on all kinds of things. Global warming? I don't care what Stenger, me or your mom believes, atheists do not all believe in or care about global warming. I do not believe that atheists in general share any trait other than a lack of belief in gods and the guts to be honest about that lack of belief.
In Summary
Just... don't bother. Read Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion" or Christopher Hitchens "God is Not Great" instead of getting Stenger's cliff notes version with his stupid opinions thrown in. Dawkins and Hitchens are a ton more entertaining too.
Problem 1:
Harris 14
Dawkins 13
Hitchens 10
Dennet 10
The list above is the number of pages/ranges in which Stenger cites that author. It understates the total since there are whole sections on Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens that are counted as one citation. He also cites his own books quite a bit. The book is incredibly derivative. He doesn't have his own ideas to discuss. The book is sort of an amalgamation of better books. It isn't even done in an appropriate way. I felt like the first half of the book was just a giant paraphrase of "Hey Dawkins! Hey Harris! Stop the bandwagon, I am getting on!"
Stenger seems to really want to have the definitive book on "New Atheism" belonging to him, but all he can do to achieve this is summarize what others have already said. His desire to be one of the Four Horsemen is apparent when he lists important atheists as Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Stenger. It was a little pathetic.
Problem 2:
Atheism isn't a religion. "New Atheists" are not a group of people that can be identified by anything other than a lack of belief in any god. Stenger seems to think that we all think, believe and, of all things, vote in a certain way. Stenger loves his Obama, but that does not mean that all atheists do! We are a diverse group of people. I object to him trying to classify us as all having the same political priorities and views on all kinds of things. Global warming? I don't care what Stenger, me or your mom believes, atheists do not all believe in or care about global warming. I do not believe that atheists in general share any trait other than a lack of belief in gods and the guts to be honest about that lack of belief.
In Summary
Just... don't bother. Read Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion" or Christopher Hitchens "God is Not Great" instead of getting Stenger's cliff notes version with his stupid opinions thrown in. Dawkins and Hitchens are a ton more entertaining too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
