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Author: Tim Covell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781450267533
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
A "BORN ATHEIST" EXPLAINS HIS POINT OF VIEW The term "born atheist" is not new, but it is used increasingly by today's atheist activists. Tim Covell has chosen "Born Atheist" as the title of his new book. "On one hand," Covell explains, "the phrase born atheist' is fun because it enrages religionists who would want to deny the truth of the statement. However, atheist' means without deities, so the argument can be won simply by pulling out a dictionary." "But on the other hand," Covell continues, " born atheist' includes the concept that atheism is a natural state and religion is a social virus. To some degree," he claims, "the term refers to a world view that is broader than religion. Atheism existed before religion and will continue after religion fades." Covell relates that he wrote his book out of frustration with popular texts that require an advanced degree to understand. Covell says he would like to be the Michael Moore of atheism. He points out that thousands of journalists wrote about the 9/11 attacks, but it took Moore's common sense to ask for the videotape of George W. Bush's blank reaction to the news that the nation was under attack that Moore used so effectively in Fahrenheit 9/11. Covell attempts to bring the same down-to-earth style and common sense approach to atheism. For example, he obtains federal statistics to show that atheists appear in prison at 1/20th of the expected rate. He demonstrates that the rates of crime are significantly higher in religious states. Similarly, raising the question of whether religion is bad for your health, he shows that the most religious states are also the most obese. Covell spends considerable time analyzing problems with religion. He builds incrementally, starting with small "miracles" like the image of Jesus on a tortilla, and building to more serious matters such as religion's harmful prejudices against women and gays. He ends his analysis with a look at murders committed in the name of religion and the potential danger of religious end time myths. In exploring how religion is used to justify illegal acts such as the 9/11 attacks, Covell coins the term "superlegal," to refer to supernaturally justified illegal acts and points to the dangers of religious scriptures bringing ancient tribalism into the modern world. "For example," Covell says, "the Christian and Muslim scriptures condemn non-believers to an eternity in hell. This makes it easier for religious zealots to kill "others," since the believers think the others will spend eternity in hell, killing them now only gives them a little head start. These beliefs are particularly dangerous in the today's world," Covell says, "when modern weapons can be used to bring about mass destruction." Covell concludes by suggesting that atheists learn from the gay rights movement about how to organize and pursue their agenda. He suggests action steps atheists may wish to consider, but concludes that atheism is a rising tide that will wash away the stain of religion.
Author: Tim Covell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781450267533
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Get Book Here
Book Description
A "BORN ATHEIST" EXPLAINS HIS POINT OF VIEW The term "born atheist" is not new, but it is used increasingly by today's atheist activists. Tim Covell has chosen "Born Atheist" as the title of his new book. "On one hand," Covell explains, "the phrase born atheist' is fun because it enrages religionists who would want to deny the truth of the statement. However, atheist' means without deities, so the argument can be won simply by pulling out a dictionary." "But on the other hand," Covell continues, " born atheist' includes the concept that atheism is a natural state and religion is a social virus. To some degree," he claims, "the term refers to a world view that is broader than religion. Atheism existed before religion and will continue after religion fades." Covell relates that he wrote his book out of frustration with popular texts that require an advanced degree to understand. Covell says he would like to be the Michael Moore of atheism. He points out that thousands of journalists wrote about the 9/11 attacks, but it took Moore's common sense to ask for the videotape of George W. Bush's blank reaction to the news that the nation was under attack that Moore used so effectively in Fahrenheit 9/11. Covell attempts to bring the same down-to-earth style and common sense approach to atheism. For example, he obtains federal statistics to show that atheists appear in prison at 1/20th of the expected rate. He demonstrates that the rates of crime are significantly higher in religious states. Similarly, raising the question of whether religion is bad for your health, he shows that the most religious states are also the most obese. Covell spends considerable time analyzing problems with religion. He builds incrementally, starting with small "miracles" like the image of Jesus on a tortilla, and building to more serious matters such as religion's harmful prejudices against women and gays. He ends his analysis with a look at murders committed in the name of religion and the potential danger of religious end time myths. In exploring how religion is used to justify illegal acts such as the 9/11 attacks, Covell coins the term "superlegal," to refer to supernaturally justified illegal acts and points to the dangers of religious scriptures bringing ancient tribalism into the modern world. "For example," Covell says, "the Christian and Muslim scriptures condemn non-believers to an eternity in hell. This makes it easier for religious zealots to kill "others," since the believers think the others will spend eternity in hell, killing them now only gives them a little head start. These beliefs are particularly dangerous in the today's world," Covell says, "when modern weapons can be used to bring about mass destruction." Covell concludes by suggesting that atheists learn from the gay rights movement about how to organize and pursue their agenda. He suggests action steps atheists may wish to consider, but concludes that atheism is a rising tide that will wash away the stain of religion.
Author: Lance Gregorchuk
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1300230460
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
There is an old saying that invention is the mother of necessity and this book is a result of that idea. There would never be a need for such a book if the religions and religious authority would practice their traditions like Native Americans or the Australian aborigines. We know they have their gods, costumes, and traditions and just about everyone (bar a few religious fanatics) respects cultural heritage and wants them to revel in their anthropological significance. In the same token, the likelihood that a Native American or aborigine is going to show up at your door preaching that Bahloo, the sun god, is the reason man hates snakes and if you do not accept Bahloo as your savior, you will be walking the desert forever, is essentially non-existent. Your author, Lance Gregorchuk, designed this book to give the free thinker, agnostic, atheist, fence sitter and even believer the facts for the arguments that there can be no god or gods.
Author: Frank Schaeffer
Publisher: Regina Orthodox Press,Csi
ISBN: 9781928653998
Category : Belief and doubt
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Caught between the beauty of his grandchildren and grief over a friend's death, Frank Schaeffer finds himself simultaneously believing and not believing in God--an atheist who prays. Schaeffer wrestles with faith and disbelief, sharing his innermost thoughts. He writes as an imperfect son, husband and grandfather whose love for his family, art and life trumps the ugly theologies of an angry God and the atheist vision of a cold, meaningless universe.
Author: Justin L. Barrett
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439196575
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
Infants have a lot to make sense of in the world: Why does the sun shine and night fall; why do some objects move in response to words, while others won’t budge; who is it that looks over them and cares for them? How the developing brain grapples with these and other questions leads children, across cultures, to naturally develop a belief in a divine power of remarkably consistent traits––a god that is a powerful creator, knowing, immortal, and good—explains noted developmental psychologist and anthropologist Justin L. Barrett in this enlightening and provocative book. In short, we are all born believers. Belief begins in the brain. Under the sway of powerful internal and external influences, children understand their environments by imagining at least one creative and intelligent agent, a grand creator and controller that brings order and purpose to the world. Further, these beliefs in unseen super beings help organize children’s intuitions about morality and surprising life events, making life meaningful. Summarizing scientific experiments conducted with children across the globe, Professor Barrett illustrates the ways human beings have come to develop complex belief systems about God’s omniscience, the afterlife, and the immortality of deities. He shows how the science of childhood religiosity reveals, across humanity, a “natural religion,” the organization of those beliefs that humans gravitate to organically, and how it underlies all of the world’s major religions, uniting them under one common source. For believers and nonbelievers alike, Barrett offers a compelling argument for the human instinct for religion, as he guides all parents in how to effectively encourage children in developing a healthy constellation of beliefs about the world around them.
Author: Terry Grant
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1532069308
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 41
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Book Description
We often hear about people who find themselves drawn to another religion as they go through life. Perhaps not as often are stories about those who found atheism, especially later in life. Author Terry Grant’s Reasoning—Born-Again Christian to Atheist is his explanation of his path to congenial atheism. Raised in a mildly Christian family, he became an agnostic after finishing college. He then became a born-again Christian before marrying a Catholic. But his journey wasn’t complete. He shares how, on retirement, his experiences brought him to evaluate the phases of life and the lifetime of questions that keep appearing and the importance of reasoning. Grant explains his transition to a place of clarity, peace, and contentment for the first time in his life. He walks through the reasoning process of his findings, suppositions, and conclusions that reasoned his transition to congenial atheist. In Reasoning—Born-Again Christian to Atheist you’ll discover how his transition brought the author peace, contentment, and a clear understanding of how this process fits in today’s world and events.
Author: Tim Whitmarsh
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307958337
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities. Homer’s epic poems of human striving, journeying, and passion were ancient Greece’s only “sacred texts,” but no ancient Greek thought twice about questioning or mocking his stories of the gods. Priests were functionaries rather than sources of moral or cosmological wisdom. The absence of centralized religious authority made for an extraordinary variety of perspectives on sacred matters, from the devotional to the atheos, or “godless.” Whitmarsh explores this kaleidoscopic range of ideas about the gods, focusing on the colorful individuals who challenged their existence. Among these were some of the greatest ancient poets and philosophers and writers, as well as the less well known: Diagoras of Melos, perhaps the first self-professed atheist; Democritus, the first materialist; Socrates, executed for rejecting the gods of the Athenian state; Epicurus and his followers, who thought gods could not intervene in human affairs; the brilliantly mischievous satirist Lucian of Samosata. Before the revolutions of late antiquity, which saw the scriptural religions of Christianity and Islam enforced by imperial might, there were few constraints on belief. Everything changed, however, in the millennium between the appearance of the Homeric poems and Christianity’s establishment as Rome’s state religion in the fourth century AD. As successive Greco-Roman empires grew in size and complexity, and power was increasingly concentrated in central capitals, states sought to impose collective religious adherence, first to cults devoted to individual rulers, and ultimately to monotheism. In this new world, there was no room for outright disbelief: the label “atheist” was used now to demonize anyone who merely disagreed with the orthodoxy—and so it would remain for centuries. As the twenty-first century shapes up into a time of mass information, but also, paradoxically, of collective amnesia concerning the tangled histories of religions, Whitmarsh provides a bracing antidote to our assumptions about the roots of freethinking. By shining a light on atheism’s first thousand years, Battling the Gods offers a timely reminder that nonbelief has a wealth of tradition of its own, and, indeed, its own heroes.
Author: John W. Loftus
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1616145781
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 1047
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Book Description
For about two decades John W. Loftus was a devout evangelical Christian, an ordained minister of the Church of Christ, and an ardent apologist for Christianity. With three degrees--in philosophy, theology, and philosophy of religion--he was adept at using rational argumentation to defend the faith. But over the years, doubts about the credibility of key Christian tenets began to creep into his thinking. By the late 1990s he experienced a full-blown crisis of faith. In this honest appraisal of his journey from believer to atheist, the author carefully explains the experiences and the reasoning process that led him to reject religious belief. The original edition of this book was published in 2006 and reissued in 2008. Since that time, Loftus has received a good deal of critical feedback from Christians and skeptics alike. In this revised and expanded edition, the author addresses criticisms of the original, adds new argumentation and references, and refines his presentation. For every issue he succinctly summarizes the various points of view and provides references for further reading. In conclusion, he describes the implications of life without belief in God, some liberating, some sobering. This frank critique of Christian belief from a former insider will interest freethinkers as well as anyone with doubts about the claims of religion.
Author: Carolyn Hyppolite
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN: 9781497511262
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
There is growing dissatisfaction with traditional Christianity, especially among millennials, who are increasingly discovering that the Bible and the Church offers inadequate answers to individual and collective challenges. A year ago, Carolyn Hyppolite was organizing street evangelism groups for her Church and working on a Master's Thesis on Old Testament. It was in the midst of a life packed with service to the Lord that she became increasingly aware of her emotional and intellectual dissatisfaction with the faith that she professed.Still Small Voices is a frank, personal account of a young woman's struggle to have a personal relationship with Jesus and the freedom she discovered when she gave up on God. This book is a mixture of personal testimony, analysis and arguments. In her reflection, she recounts stories of particular moments during her eight year experience as a Christian when she found herself hearing another “still small voice,” the voice of reason, which constantly whispered that something about the Biblical worldview does not add up. Throughout the book, she records her efforts to ignore and suppress that voice and how ultimately, she had to relent.In addition, Carolyn regularly takes off the gloves for some sharp and witty atheist apologia. In the chapter, “the Cross of Christ,” she argues that Christ's sacrifice on the cross—a minor inconvenience for an eternal being—is insufficient to compel humanity to sacrifice their very finite life on Earth in service to him; assuming the unlikely possibility that Christ actually did die for our sins, it was the least he could do.Believers, questioners, and rabid atheists alike will find this a moving and challenging exploration through the world of faith and reason.
Author: Ali A. Rizvi
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250094445
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
In much of the Muslim world, religion is the central foundation upon which family, community, morality, and identity are built. The inextricable embedment of religion in Muslim culture has forced a new generation of non-believing Muslims to face the heavy costs of abandoning their parents’ religion: disowned by their families, marginalized from their communities, imprisoned, or even sentenced to death by their governments. Struggling to reconcile the Muslim society he was living in as a scientist and physician and the religion he was being raised in, Ali A. Rizvi eventually loses his faith. Discovering that he is not alone, he moves to North America and promises to use his new freedom of speech to represent the voices that are usually quashed before reaching the mainstream media—the Atheist Muslim. In The Atheist Muslim, we follow Rizvi as he finds himself caught between two narrative voices he cannot relate to: extreme Islam and anti-Muslim bigotry in a post-9/11 world. The Atheist Muslim recounts the journey that allows Rizvi to criticize Islam—as one should be able to criticize any set of ideas—without demonizing his entire people. Emotionally and intellectually compelling, his personal story outlines the challenges of modern Islam and the factors that could help lead it toward a substantive, progressive reformation.
Author: Victor J. Stenger
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615923446
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
In recent years a number of bestselling books have forcefully argued that belief in God can no longer be defended on rational or empirical grounds, and that the scientific worldview has rendered obsolete the traditional beliefs held by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The authors of these books—Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Victor J. Stenger—have come to be known as the "New Atheists." Predictably, their works have been controversial and attracted a good deal of critical reaction. In this new book, Victor J. Stenger, whose God: The Failed Hypothesis was on the New York Times bestseller list in 2007, reviews and expands upon the principles of New Atheism and answers many of its critics. He demonstrates in detail that naturalism—the view that all of reality is reducible to matter and nothing else—is sufficient to explain everything we observe in the universe, from the most distant galaxies to the inner workings of the brain that result in the phenomenon of mind. Stenger disputes the claim of many critics that the question of whether God exists is beyond the ken of science. On the contrary, he argues that absence of evidence for God is, indeed, evidence of absence when the evidence should be there and is not. Turning from scientific to historical evidence, Stenger then points out the many examples of evil perpetrated in the name of religion. He also notes that the Bible, which is still taken to be divine revelation by millions, fails as a basis for morality and is unable to account for the problem of unnecessary suffering throughout the world. Finally, he discusses the teachings of ancient nontheist sages such as Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Confucius, whose guidelines for coping with the problems of life and death did not depend upon a supernatural metaphysics. Stenger argues that this "way of nature" is far superior to the traditional supernatural monotheisms, which history shows can lead to a host of evils. The New Atheism is a well-argued defense of the atheist position and a strong rebuttal of its critics.
