READING etc: particular recommendations







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READING


     
   
 

Bob Carroll - Becoming a Critical Thinker: The philosophy and practice of thinking.  Carl Sagan - The Demon-Haunted World: The best-distilled worldview.  Michael Shermer - Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, superstition and other confusions of our time. Top skeptic [sic] explains it all in a worthy parallel to Sagan's fine book.  Christopher Hitchens - the Portable Atheist: The most effective route into the literature.  Edward O. Wilson - The Creation - An appeal to save life on Earth: One of our wisest ecologists explains why we should look after our planet. (E.O. is not a 'creationist')           CLICK HERE for related DVDs         CLICK HERE for EVOLUTION BOOKS (portrait: Charles Darwin) - Celebrate it or deny it, everybody should know what evolution is about BEFORE expressing an opinion! How can any self-respecting adult believe in or attempt to refute something about which they have insufficient knowledge? Our friends the creationists do!  CLICK HERE for CREATIONISM BOOKS (mugshot: Ken Ham) - No matter how preposterous their ravings, we need to know how the creationists think, or how can we argue with them? There's not a lot to know and, being highly repetitive and printed in big type, their books are easy to read if an affront to one's academic dignity! N.B. Refutation requires evidence, a factor entirely lacking here. Click here to discover infantile, petulant denials that don't bother with such trivialities as evidence (= reality). 

ESSENTIAL READING (right) - Eleven (and rising) modern atheists and one honest agnostic speak out.  Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion: The book that caused the first 21st century ripples (or was it a tsunami?) A biologist's viewpoint.  Daniel Dennett - Breaking the Spell: A gentle philosopher's analysis of man's weirdest ideas.  Christopher Hitchens - God is Not Great: A pugilistic journalist's mighty polemic.  Sam Harris - Letter to a Christian Nation: A young philosopher's passionate plea to his people to see sense.  Victor Stenger - God, the Failed Hypothesis: A physicist dares to speculate that God is not only vanishingly unlikely, but he can be disproved and dispatched.  John Allen Paulos - Irreligion: A mathematician calculates God out of the equation with a humourous slant.  A.C. Grayling - Against All Gods: A British philosopher's concise, pithy essays.  Nick Harding - How to be a Good Atheist: Don't be put off by the silly portrait of Einstein. This is a serious work and, as far as I'm concerned, an excellent distillation of the atheist approach to life, but it doesn't extend the hand of reconciliation to believers!  Bertrand Russell - Why I am not a Christian. Essays, speeches and a memorable dialogue from the first half of the 20th century, collected and published in 1957 and as fresh today as when first written. The preface and chapters 1-3 summarise atheism as concisely as one could want.  John Humphrys - In God We Doubt: confessions of a failed atheist. Alongside the belligerent polemicists, methodical philosophers and intellectual pugilists, here is an ordinary(!) chap like me and thee, trying to work it all out according to his own life experiences. Honest and true, informative and moving, this really brings us down to earth because, depite being unconvinced by atheism, Humphrys speaks the language of rational scepticism and provokes instinctive respect. 
David Mills - Atheist Universe: The thinking person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism. This is the ideal primer for the instinctive atheist wishing to become better informed. At last I've begun to get a proper grip of the physics of universal origins. And I've determined that the first response to pious threats of Hell is to ask 'What's it for?' and let the discussion develop naturally from there. They'll instantly shoot their own foot, repeatedly.   Guy P. Harrison - 50 reasons people give for believing in a god: A journalist who has travelled the world observing religions in action and interviewing the faithful. No matter what believers believe, Harrison has at least fifty good reasons why are wrong. His message is as powerful as that of Dawkins, Hitchens et al., but every time he shows how foolish believers can be, he doth protest a great deal that they are not fools. Intelligent, perhaps but sensible, no.
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