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4808438 No.4808438[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

recommended reading on atheism?
religious- and euphoricfags, please be cool

>> No.4810423

dawkins

>> No.4810985

>>4808438
Christopher Hitchens was definitely the smartest and most well written contemporary atheist writer. Just be careful not to get caught up in annoying militant atheism. Being secular is a personal choice, and despite the rants from guys like Dawkins and Hitchens, religion is overwhelmingly a force for good in modern culture. For every rapey priest, Fred Phelps, cult, and suicide bomber, there are many more philanthropic theists, for whom religion is important. Also, keep in mind religion was absolutely fundamental in the formation of all western society. Anyone who says differently is lying or ignorant. Be respectful of other people's life choices, while you explore your own "enlightenment."

>> No.4811014

Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate from Terry Eagleton

Pretty level-headed lectures on religion from a marxist. Makes fun of Dawkins/Hitchens ("Ditchens") a lot, yet sometimes strangely Christian. Better reading than The God Delusion.

>> No.4811133

Jack London's Seawolf has some very interesting takes on the consequences of atheism.

>> No.4811162

>>4810985
>religion is overwhelmingly a force for good in modern culture
Their whole point against that idea is that there is no good act that a theist would do than an atheist wouldn't, while there are plenty of atrocities a theist would do that an atheist wouldn't. I agree that religion compells some people to be more generous, but you can't say they wouldn't have came to the same idea through a secular philosophy.

>keep in mind religion was absolutely fundamental in the formation of all western society
That's a pretty blatant tautology

>Be respectful of other people's life choices
That's a pretty blatantly stupid thing to say.


Anyway I didn't mean to get into a fedora-tier argument. After reading Dawkins and Hitchens I don't disagree with them but it's not exactly revelatory

>> No.4811175

>>4811162
>but you can't say they wouldn't have came to the same idea through a secular philosophy.
I am interested in this, and I think it is atleast possible to question this. Would an atheist be able to become a Francisus de Assisi? Give up his every wealth for the sake of a morally superior matter? Maybe. But as an atheist, and just intuitively guessing, I'd say a christian is, if anything, more likely to do so than an atheist.

>> No.4811185

>>4811133
It's a great book too

>> No.4811195

Seems kinda pointless to read about atheism, if you're doing it to get arguments for future euphoric debates. You either ascribe to a materialistic world view, or you don't.

>> No.4811205

>>4811185
It is, I'd call it one of my favourites, but the love story at the end is pretty hamfisted.

>>4811195
That's why I mentioned the Seawolf. It quickly pushes the question of god aside, by just answering it with a "He doesn't exist.", and focuses on what life in a world without a god is like.

>> No.4811219

>>4811162
How is it blantantly stupid? Considering the prevalance of conceited atheists who think they're smarter than religious people and the very nature of the "in this moment I am euphoric" meme, it's important to remain respectful of other people's lives. I mention it because when I was studying secularism myself the only other atheists I was exposed to were freedom from religion foundation types, and militant atheists with a superiority complex like Hitchens and Dawkins. It took me years to remember that most religious people are nice and most of their practices are constructive and in keeping with the culture and traditions of their family or region. I'm an atheist but I have no fucking patience for people that lobby to have a nativity removed from the local courthouse, or require the National Christmas tree to be referred to only as a holiday tree. Get a fucking life and remember that most of the legal precedence that you invoke in an attempt to remove "in God we trust" from money was established as part of a larger theological framework, and that without religion history and society are missing many of their greatest aspects. There's no way of knowing whether or not a religion free history would have produced a beyter modern society with the same values and morals, it's all just speculation. What we do know is that if the worst thing in your life is the dude at Walmart saing "have a merry Christmas" then you have definitely benifited from a religious past.

>> No.4811251

>>4811219
"Respect everyone's choices" is just banal nonsense. Yes I respect a person's choice to become a protestant or to read the horoscopes. Most people in Western society fall into that category. It does no real harm. But I don't respect the choices of people who picket funerals with homophobic abuse, or giving creationism equal weighting with evolution in schools. I too hate the pedantic view of getting rid of all religious references and imagery, they're missing the point of antitheism. It's not about eradicating every tiny detail.

>> No.4811263

I miss those times when the religion board was /b/

>> No.4811266

>ctrl+f Hume
>0 results
>ctrl+f Dawkins or Hitchens
>5 results each
...

>> No.4811299

>>4811266
Tell me about Hume then, I never had any contact with him other than the name.

>> No.4811304

>>4811299
True baller shot caller, only good british empiricist, everything prior to him from political theory to epistemology and metaphysics gets btfo pretty hard.

>> No.4811323

>>4811299
He's one of them British Empiricists, liked writing in what were at the time (and still are now really) older forms of writing like dialogues that had seen interest at the start of the enlightenment as more people had access to the Greeks again, but had fallen out of fashion. Nietzsche loved him. As did Bentham and JS Mill, a lot of utilitarianism ultimately derives from Hume. And a lot of economists love(d) him, again a lot of modern economics having a start with him. Darwin read heavily from him, and there's a lot of similarity between evolution and some processes Hume writes about, and it's very arguable the stage wouldn't have been set at all for something like evolution without Hume.

Kant's lovely critiques and prolegomena are in response to Hume, he said Hume awakened him from his dogmatic slumber. And I think the problem with a lot of new atheists is that they just want to go deeper and deeper into their dogmatic slumbers.

>> No.4811397

>>4811251
You're missing the context. I also pointed out Fred Phelps as an example of crazy theology not deserving of respect. More importantly, I reccomended Hitchens and added as a caveat that one needs to be respectful if others while reading him. He doesn't just attack the zealots, he creates an atmosphere, in which all theists are portrayed as at best "dogmatic sheeple" and at worst dangerous morons that need to be enlightened through the immediate expulsion of thousands of years of religious history. He was an incredibly intelligent and eloquently writer and every atheist should be exposed to his work, again though go into it with a respectful mindframe.