Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Who are your favorite authors and books? who are your least favorite authors and least favorite books.
My favorite theist books:
Creaton out of nothing- William Lane Craig and Paul Copan
Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology- William Lane Craig and J.P Moreland
Perceiving God- William Alston
Favorite Athiest books:
arguing about gods -Graham Oppy
Atheism: a philosophical justification- Michael Martin
those are few. I really don't have any books i hate with respect to the debate as i tend stay away from popular stuff. On the Atheist side, this means avoiding Dawkins and the like and on the theist side avoiding authors like Kent Hovind.
Good thoughts, but I would interject that Dawkins has valid credentials while Hovind is a convicted felon, liar, cheat and swindler. And the purpetrator of a big old set of obvious lies.
So I don't give Hovind quite the same credibility as Dr. Dawkins.... whose ideas cannot so easily be debunked or dismissed!
Carl Sagan's stuff on space, or any presentations by Dr's Neil DeGrasse Tyson or David Suzuki (he from the University of British Columbia in Western Canada) are all intriguing & usually secular presentations at a technical level perhaps more easily understandable to the general public. They are all good reads.
All the arguments i've seen from Dawkins can be easily debunked. He is credentialed, but he knows jacksquat on the field of philosophy of religion, just like Hovind. I've heard a bit a about Sagan's arguments, nothing to interesting. I'll check out the other author you mention... what book?
I am interested meep, in which arguments Dawkins has that can be debunked?
I have found two solid books from him, The God Delusion and The Blind Watchmaker. Both are excellent reads.
I was disappointed with Hitchen's God is Not Great because the subtitle insinuates that it is more of a deistic commentary of religion when it is in effect a more angry version of atheism, and I try to avoid the more emotionally charged (angry) works. Not that there is anything wrong with atheism. I support it 100%. Or Deism, which I support 50% or Christianity which I support 0.0000034%..........
Getting back to the books, I like so many I suggest Evolution of God by Wright, Why we believe what we believe by Newberg and Walden and The Inner Reaches of Outer Space by Campbell. My kids are nito Stephen Hawking, but he has kind of dropped in influence as his "theory for everything" ended up being somewhat of a bust, and I respect him even more for being a true scientist and intellectual and moving on, as opposed to someone who still ,for example, holds to bronze-age theories that have been long disproven and refuses to let go.....(Maybe it was 0.0000033...I'll have to realculate it)
I am still on the asthetic read, and I am slowly throwing ideas on the other board under FINE ARTS and there are two threads I invite anyone to discuss/debate with us there, it has been slow going, either because so few of us are interested or because no one wants to hear what I have to say.
No good read, no education and nothing which interests or inspires the reader is a waste of time. It would take hours to list the things I have read, and when I compare myself to what others here have read, like Rifleman,Arequipa, Heuff and Others (Sorry if I forget names) Then what what I have read is a literal drop in the 5 gallon bucket of what they have read already !
So what do I not like? The aforementioned propoganda, emotionally driven works.
Two come to mind A friend gave me a copy of More than A Carpenter when he saw me making a formal and final break with Christianity and Theism, and tthe book is nothing more than page after page of "Jesus is God" in varying sentences. Sorry, but saying something over and over may be ok for someone to convince himself that something is true, but it does not make it true without solid proof. The other one was a propaganda book the ex father in law gave me which was supposed to convince me of why I had to join HIS church and was 52 pages of "We are right and that is it" and I won't even mention the title because I do not want to encourage anyone to waste a half an hour of their lives, especially when we have too many who do just that on this board already. I prefer a more academic and scholarly read, but imagination and creativity are also appreciated. I shy away from pop/sensationalist writings which hold no intellectual value.
But Yes, OP I have been following this debate and it does interest me to no end. And I think it is a very important issue, because as I said, I have a vested interest in atheism, and I am of the strong beief that Christianity is NOT the answer and cannot solve mankind's problems. I do not believe for one nanosecond that Jesus was "god incarnate" any more or less than any of us are, and that same said Jesus is never coming back to fix everything like I was told as a kid. I believe that over time, morals and charity operated by the Christian institution have at times been helpful and useful to the human condition, but now these acts of kindness can exist without the ecclesiastic administration. And the overall impact of religion vs science (most recently exhibited by the church vs stem cell research fiasco of a few years ago) just proves that Christianity is more of a hindrence to the human experince than a help.
Which leads finally to that late great book the Bible. I encourage everyone on here who engages in this debate to read it, understand it, and not just what it says about such and such but rather where it came from how it came to be. I have done this and personally it has shown me that it is NOT "divine" or "gods word" and it I believe it was never intended as anything more than an allegoric hero myth for early Romans. That being said it is influential in Christian mythology and to understand Christians and their beliefs we need to understand that much of it is based on these writings. And no, reading it will not make you a believer, in fact, from my experience, it will have the opposite effect. But many people here in America do accept it, some literally, some out of fear and desperation, some out of a sense that they have accepted it as children and do nto want any change form day to day in their lives. When dealing with serious issues in life, like curing people's ills for example, it helps to have an understanding of the barriers and limits that Christians may subscribe, especially the Biblians and the Paulines. Such insight aids in the communication and goes a long way towards helping them.
I totally second "Doubt:A History". A wonderful book although it requires a lot of thought, and possibly some side reading, if you have as little exposure to the greek philosophers as I did.
"Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism", by Susan Jacoby was also interesting. Both of these books give overviews, but have a lot of good places to dig in to the arguments surrounding non-theism vs theism.
It is less of a philosophical work, but I thought Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" was a good layman's read on the way evolution appears to operate, as well as dealing with the Argument from Design objection.
As far as older works, I enjoyed reading Thomas Paine and Robert Ingersoll, although both may be a bit more polemical than what you are looking for, and both have obvious shortcomings due to the limited knowledge of certain topics compared to now.
You can start a new thread on the two Dawkin's arguments you find convincing, then i will respond there. I kind of want to keep this thread centered around literature.
It seems the Atheists here have read semi-technical atheist books, but not sound theistic literature. It now makes sense why some of you find theism laughable. I try to read the best of both sides and it seems theism is currently edging out atheism, this can be seen in debate books, such as:
Theism, Atheism and the Big Bang Cosmology- William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith
Knowledge of God(I think this is it)- Michael Tooley and Alvin Plantinga
God?- Walter Sinnot-Armstrong and William Lane Craig
Will the Real Jesus please stand up- Jon Dominic Crossan and William Lane Craig
Jesus resurrection: fact or figment? - Gerd Luddeman and William Lane Craig
These are just a few that show both sides of the debate. You really aren't being charitable to theist side if you pressupose that people like kirk cameron, kent hovind and other non-scholars are representative of the best defense theism has to offer.
The more I read and expose myself to scholarship, the closer I get to theism( at least respecting it more). I just say read the best from both sides, not just one and pick crappy authors from the other side.
Favorite authors? ancient Buddhist monks and Enlightenment authors like Paine, Jefferson, and Voltaire
Least Favorite? ancient Christian "saints" and Hindu "yogi's or Bramans" and Plato's The Republic... I like the Gnostic writing though, you can read how they use intelligence to think about their writing. I don't bother to give money to LaneCreig, but his debates show the fruits of his labor. The new atheists work mostly on physicalism, so they fail because even metaphysics can destroy the theist arguments and philosophy can show fallacy in almost all thoughts, and most theist and religionist inclined thinkers dance within the metaphysics of the transcendantal, but as Lord Siddhartha Gautama said, not even this abode can spare them from reality and it is easy to show to fallacy of transcendentalism.
Last edited by LuminousTruth; 06-28-2012 at 11:38 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
