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I wanted to start a thread to talk about literature that has shaped my life, and would like to find out about works that have changed your lives as atheists as well.
One book had a particularly large impact on me, and helped give me the courage to give up my faith altogether.
Why I Believed was written by a former missionary, and documents his logic and arguments as he grew away from the faith. I found this book particularly helpful as it was targeted towards people who grew up as christians but were looking to take a leap away from it. The book is VERY well written, and for .99 cents for the kindle edition, WELL worth the change it invoked in my life.
The author also kept a blog for several years, and even answered my email I wrote to him. Definitely an amazing guy and an amazing writer!
Another amazing book is a collection of speeches by Robert Ingersoll.
This was an amazing read. It's free on the kindle and I highlighted so much of it. The way he presents his arguments just click perfectly with my moral and logical views. I HIGHLY recommend this one was well!
So what atheist/agnostic literature has shaped your lives?
I read "The God Delusion" and "God is not Great" as part of the 4 books I read for the theological discussion. God is not Great really helped put down in words some key feelings I had about faith and beliefs, so it was a really nice and engaging book.
At one point, I actually read through a chapter of Why I Believed, and from what I cna tell it was fairly interesting.
I am looking for a new book for sure. Would you say 'God is not Great' is better than 'The God Delusion'? I haven't read either.
I think that generally being well-read and well educated tends to disabuse one of religious notions.
Paschendale said:I think that generally being well-read and well educated tends to disabuse one of religious notions.
I hope you don't mean "no degree" with that list. Asimov had a PhD in Chemistry. Clarke had a degree in mathematics/physics from King's College. Heinlein graduated from Annapolis, but I'm not sure they handed out academic degrees at the time. I happen to know about those in particular because of my passion for SF. I almost grew up on those three, followed by Frank Herbert and others later.Finally, you have the non-Academics (I guess that'd be a good name for them). People like Hitchens, George Carlin, Camus, Stephen Fry, Asimov, Thoreau, Arthur C. Clarke, Heinlein, Graham Greene, Rushdie, Thomas Pynchon, HG Wells, Shermer, George Bernard Shaw, Ayn Rand (ugh!), Marx (hehe right next to Rand), Vonnegut, Jimmy Carr, and Hemingway.
On the contrary, the more one understands the world around them the less easy it becomes to maintain the certainu of atheism. Atheism is such a wonderfully naive, childlike state. It is sweet and pure, but ultimately cannot withstand the hard philosophical questions.I think that generally being well-read and well educated tends to disabuse one of religious notions.
I forgot Sam Harris but I haven't read his atheistic works any more than I have Dawkin's works in that field. Their works in their own fields is plenty for me.Everyone who has listed Hitchens or Harris or Rand or some other pseudo intellectual would be well advised to read Spinoza's Ethics.
I hope you don't mean "no degree" with that list. Asimov had a PhD in Chemistry. Clarke had a degree in mathematics/physics from King's College. Heinlein graduated from Annapolis, but I'm not sure they handed out academic degrees at the time. I happen to know about those in particular because of my passion for SF. I almost grew up on those three, followed by Frank Herbert and others later.
I also was influenced by many of the other scientists you listed: Richard Dawkins (though I've never read his atheism books the same logic and some of the ideas were first mentioned in his Darwinian/genetics books), Carl Sagan, Lawrence Krauss, Stephen Pinker, Feynman, Hawking, Penrose, Oppenheimer, and even Pauling.
I also add Weinberg to my list. Though he's said little directly about it I always laugh at one of his quotes:
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it 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."
On the contrary, the more one understands the world around them the less easy it becomes to maintain the certainu of atheism. Atheism is such a wonderfully naive, childlike state. It is sweet and pure, but ultimately cannot withstand the hard philosophical questions.
That's why there are no truly grea writers listed in this thread; just pop schlock like hitchens and Dawkins, who are superficial thinkers at best. The great philosophers who reject organized religion are uniformly deistic or pantheistic.
I suppose that whether I'm well-read or not is not for me to decide, but I suspect I spend a fair amount of time reading when compared to most of my fellow Americans, anyway. My reading has had the opposite effect on me. I started out relatively neutral about religion, and have gradually acquired a religious mindset. I do agree that becoming well-read leads one to abandon some notions that seem common in religion. But it's a complicated theater of problems. I don't know that it's so easy to overlook the issues that could be raised here.
Perhaps not, but I'd argue differently if you want. In lieu of this, religion (even deism / pantheism) is bitter and impure, and cannot withstand the basic scientific questions.
Who are these enlightened souls, Guy? Are you sure they aren't the Russell-esque atheist agnostics? You're going to say Mill, Nietzsche, Foucault, Mackie, Schopenhauer, Singer, and even Sartre weren't (or aren't) great philosophers who reject organized and who aren't deistic or pantheistic?
German guy said:Same for me. I used to be atheist for most of my life, but the more I read and learnt, the more I felt a need for religion.
Now I'm far from being a student of philosophy, but the more I debated with an open mind, the more I found that even people I strongly disagreed with often have very good arguments, and that opposing worldviews often have their merits. And I realized that reason alone won't allow me to find the truth; I have learnt enough to know how much there is I'll never learn or know.
German guy said:I simply don't have the time and patience to study different philosophies so deeply that I can claim I really understand them -- hell, even thoroughly studying Marx, Sartre or Heidegger probably each takes more than a lifetime. And when it comes to political disagreements, you'll hardly ever have enough empirical data to really think a decision through to the end, or enough time to do that.
So I felt than unless I want to be unable to have *any* opinion at all, I just need a mental anchor. Could be any, important is that I have one. Political ideologies are usually unsuited, IMO, no matter if Marxism, libertarianism or any other -- we all know that extremely smart and well-read people can still err deeply, when they cling to such ideologies. So I felt religion is attractive. It offers room not to view everything rationally, but to just accept some truths, which means it can serve well as anchor. It's "field-tested" over centuries and has proven it can help many people a lot, despite all bad flipsides (which still are harmless compared to the flipsides of radical political ideologies, IMO).
On the contrary, the more one understands the world around them the less easy it becomes to maintain the certainu of atheism. Atheism is such a wonderfully naive, childlike state. It is sweet and pure, but ultimately cannot withstand the hard philosophical questions.
Perhaps not, but I'd argue differently if you want. In lieu of this, religion (even deism / pantheism) is bitter and impure, and cannot withstand the basic scientific questions.
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