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The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

January 3, 2009


 

The antireligion wars started by Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris will heat up even more with this salvo from celebrated Oxford biologist Dawkins.

For a scientist who criticizes religion for its intolerance, Dawkins has written a surprisingly intolerant book, full of scorn for religion and those who believe. But Dawkins, who gave us the selfish gene, anticipates this criticism.

He says it's the scientist and humanist in him that makes him hostile to religions—fundamentalist Christianity and Islam come in for the most opprobrium—that close people's minds to scientific truth, oppress women and abuse children psychologically with the notion of eternal damnation. While Dawkins can be witty, even confirmed atheists who agree with his advocacy of science and vigorous rationalism may have trouble stomaching some of the rhetoric: the biblical Yahweh is "psychotic," Aquinas's proofs of God's existence are "fatuous" and religion generally is "nonsense." The most effective chapters are those in which Dawkins calms down, for instance, drawing on evolution to disprove the ideas behind intelligent design. In other chapters, he attempts to construct a scientific scaffolding for atheism, such as using evolution again to rebut the notion that without God there can be no morality. He insists that religion is a divisive and oppressive force, but he is less convincing in arguing that the world would be better and more peaceful without it.

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God Is Not Great - Christoper Hitchens

January 3, 2009


 

Hitchens, one of our great political pugilists, delivers the best of the recent rash of atheist manifestos. The same contrarian spirit that makes him delightful reading as a political commentator, even (or especially) when he's completely wrong, makes him an entertaining huckster prosecutor once he has God placed in the dock. And can he turn a phrase!: "monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents."

Hitchens's one-liners bear the marks of considerable sparring practice with believers. Yet few believers will recognize themselves as Hitchens associates all of them for all time with the worst of history's theocratic and inquisitional moments. All the same, this is salutary reading as a means of culling believers' weaker arguments: that faith offers comfort (false comfort is none at all), or has provided a historical hedge against fascism (it mostly hasn't), or that "Eastern" religions are better (nope).

The book's real strength is Hitchens's on-the-ground glimpses of religion's worst face in various war zones and isolated despotic regimes. But its weakness is its almost fanatical insistence that religion poisons "everything," which tips over into barely disguised misanthropy.

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Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam - Michel Onfray

January 3, 2009


 

"In this era of warring religions, with Almighty God being invoked as the key ally by all sides, it was with gratitude and relief that I read Michel Onfray's In Defense of Atheism. It is both a passionate and coolly reasoned advocacy of atheism, setting the positive values of secularity squarely against the three great monotheisms and their multitudes of hate... A wonderful, invigorating blast of sanity delivered against the fog of high-toned mumbo-jumbo we have to endure everywhere today." William Boyd

"His book has a sweep, an energy and intensity, that seems all but forgotten on either side of the Atlantic; for this reason alone it deserves to be translated." Bookforum

Religion: history of destruction. Torture and pain in the name of God since the beginning of the civilization. It is ironic that this power of hate still influences the whole world isn't it?

Atheist Manifesto or In Defense of Atheism is a controversial work against three dominant monotheistic religions Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. It demonstrates how these religions prevented reaching the knowledge, destroyed the reason for their purposes and controlled the mass like a flock.

Atheist Manifesto is bold, not for faint-hearted! But if you want to witness the dark and bloody past of religions, dare to read "In this era of warring religions, with Almighty God being invoked as the key ally by all sides, it was with gratitude and relief that I read Michel Onfray's In Defense of Atheism. It is both a passionate and coolly reasoned advocacy of atheism, setting the positive values of secularity squarely against the three great monotheisms and their multitudes of hate... A wonderful, invigorating blast of sanity delivered against the fog of high-toned mumbo-jumbo we have to endure everywhere today." William Boyd

"His book has a sweep, an energy and intensity, that seems all but forgotten on either side of the Atlantic; for this reason alone it deserves to be translated." Bookforum

Religion: history of destruction. Torture and pain in the name of God since the beginning of the civilization. It is ironic that this power of hate still influences the whole world isn't it?

Atheist Manifesto or In Defense of Atheism is a controversial work against three dominant monotheistic religions Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. It demonstrates how these religions prevented reaching the knowledge, destroyed the reason for their purposes and controlled the mass like a flock.

Atheist Manifesto is bold, not for faint-hearted! But if you want to witness the dark and bloody past of religions, dare to read

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