The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever Paperback Author: Visit Amazon's Christopher Hitchens Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0306816083 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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From Publishers Weekly
Hitchens, an avowed atheist and author of the bestseller
God Is Not Great, is a formidable intellectual who finds the notion of belief in God to be utter nonsense. The author is clear in his introduction that religion has caused more than its fair share of world problems. "Religion invents a problem where none exists by describing the wicked as also made in the image of god and the sexually nonconformist as existing in a state of incurable mortal sin that can incidentally cause floods and earthquakes." The readings Hitchens chooses to bolster his atheist argument are indeed engaging and important. Hobbes, Spinoza, Mill and Marx are some of the heavyweights representing a philosophical viewpoint. From the world of literature the author assembles excerpts from Shelley, Twain, Conrad, Orwell and Updike. All are enjoyable to read and will make even religious believers envious of the talent gathered for this anthology. What these dynamic writers are railing against often enough, however, is a strawman: an immature, fundamentalist, outdated, and even embarrassing style of religion that many intelligent believers have long since cast off. It could be that Hitchens and his cast of nonbelievers are preaching to the choir and their message is tired and spent. However, this remains a fascinating collection of readings from some of the West’s greatest thinkers.
Review
"Hitchens has returned to the Belief Wars backed by a full army...the Godless Warrior marshals in an Atheist A-Team...to buttress his own arguments...Hitchens is the guide as well as the commentartor linking it all together."--"San Diego Tribune"
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Books with free ebook downloads available Download The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever Paperback
- Paperback: 528 pages
- Publisher: Da Capo Press; 1 edition (November 6, 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0306816083
- ISBN-13: 978-0306816086
- Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Hitchens prefaces his book by telling us that the prehistory of our species is ridden with episodes of nightmarish ignorance and calamity, for which religion is used to identify not just the wrong explanation but the wrong culprit as well. The few men of science and reason and medicine had all they could do to keep their libraries and laboratories intact, or their very lives safe from harm.
Today's typical "justification" for religion involves charitable or humanitarian work - obviously this says nothing about the veracity of the belief systems involved. All religions must, at their core, look forward to the end of this world; atheists, on the other hand argue that this world is all we have and that it is our duty to make the most of it.
It is one thing, per Hitchens, to believe that the magnificence of the natural order strongly implies an ordering force; quite another to say this creative force cares for our human affairs, and it is interested in with whom we have sex and how, as well as the outcome of battles and wars (and even athletic contests). Even accepting Jesus' birth, it still does not prove he was more than one among many shamans and magicians of the day.
Einstein took the view that the miracle is that there are no miracles.
Everybody is an atheist in saying that there is a god in which he does not believe - atheists simply go one step further and add another god to not believe in.
Sadly, there are the seemingly endless wars and persecutions that go on in the name of religion.
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