Who is Reading What - And What's On Your Wish List?
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Just finished Copleston's first book in his flood of confirmation bias, The History of Philosophy. I can see now why the god people love Plato and Aristotle - light on facts and heavy on a nebulous asserted theory about the 'true' nature of the universe. You can also see, reading this stuff, why the West was held in thrall to these guys and their follies about the nature of spirit and physick in many cases to its detriment, during the 15th, 16th and even the 17th centuries. Thank gaia Da Vinci did not get a 'classical' education and Galileo saw through his. You can also see why the godly love philosophers like Plato, who held the immaterial was self evident through some apparent necessity.
I've also just finished Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, the story of a priest running away from revolutionary anti-theists in Mexico. This is a good book, thanks to Greene's characterisation. I am always fascinated to find that the greatest moral heights a churchman can attain always wind up being the final acceptance of human weakness and the living of a flawed but honest human life involving putting others first. Morality it seems, is inevitably human. It would be valueless without the life lessons that earned it.
Meanwhile, my wish list includes The Clockwork Universe, Hypatia of Alexandria and Freud's Antichrist, along with heaps of Evelyn Waugh, who I have discovered recently and in whom I take great delight. I really loved Decline and Fall. Hilarious and so prophetic considering it was written back in 1928. So much of his satirisation is now true.
What about you other folks? Anything good?
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
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I just recently picked up Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves.
Touches upon determinism, indeterminism, compatibilism, incompatibilism and even if free will exists.
DEEP, DEEP, COMPLEX STUFF !
One of those books where I have to read a paragraph, stop and think about the paragraph, and then jot down a note or two for a later reference.
Hell, to be honest, I am not even so sure what I believe when it comes to free will and stuff like that any longer
He does touch upon one really good point about the Life World game on the internet, that shows how evolution could truly work and how in a determinate world, inevitability is not always predictable.
Definitely not one that I am going to be able to get through in a weekend to say the least.
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
C++ Programming by DS Malik
Discrete Structures, Logic and Computability by Hein
Ooooohhhhhh, you meant for fun! Maybe after finals.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
I don't read much literature anymore. Mostly industry and trade science and technology periodicals that come to my office. Stuff that you can't find at Barnes and Noble.
I've been really interested in the emerging nanotech and biotech stuff, and anything to do with the Large Hadron Collider.
A woman I met last year, who I got onto the topic of religions with, who used to be a former theist, gave me a book she read, as a gift, called "The Pagan Christ" by theologian Tom Harpur, who is a proponent of the Christ Myth Theory.
She told me that he was also an ordained priest, but later denounced religion. She told me the book really helped her finally decide that religion was a complete fairy tale.
I've never gotten around to reading the book. I'm not that motivated, TBH.
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
I am reading "the Character of Consciousness" by David Chalmers, Sam Harris's, "The Moral Landscape", Daniel Dennett's, "Consciousness Explained" and someone's 19th century work on Philo of Alexandria. Chalmers presents consciousness as non-reducible and a fundamental aspect of the natural world ( a modified dualism). I am reading through Dennett to refresh myself on his multiple frames model of consciousness. Sam Harris simply because I like Harris and he may well have grounded morality as a natural and physical item of reality. I am refreshing myself on Philo because of all the theists around here lurking about whose theology is based upon a barely historical Galilean Jew that they claim the Logos manifested as. Philo probably introduced the Stoic idea into Judaism which the Christians quickly stole. I've got around 30,000 volumes so I really can't think of anything for a wish list unless it is an original addition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone or some original papyri of the Nag Hammadi library.
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
The last book I read was Talking To The Enemy [my review here]
Next on my list is God Virus and the Religion Virus
I am reading Victer Stinger's "New Atheists" book right now. It really vindicates all the stuff I thought and suspected and learned over the years. But that is one book in a long line of books so far over the past 9 years.
I thought I'd like "The Greatest Show on Earth", but Dawkins needs to write a comic book version for me. One with pretty colors and pop ups.
Books I have read:
The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens
Portable Atheist(PORTABLE MY ASS, IT IS AS HUGE AS A FUCKING PHONE BOOK) Christopher Hitchens
Letter To a Christian Nation. Sam Harris
End of Faith, Sam Harris(Lose the Buddhist woo dude)Bob Spence will get that joke
Infidel. Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Not to sound like a Halmark card here, but 10 years ago I was standing in front of my apartment when my former boss passed by in his car, stopped to chat. At that time I had only put opinions about Falwell in the local paper and was an open atheist, but not a very educated one(meaning not knowing much about what atheists know). Anyway, we were chatting, and the last thing he said to me was, "Brian, give up that atheist thing".
Boy how things have changed. Back then people looked at me like a despot. I'd love to talk to him now that atheists are more high profile in society and that we can no longer be seated at the back of the bus.
I'll tell you, all those books above, would not have done as well, if had not been for ALL of the trailblazers who started all the mom and pop shop atheist websites. And every poster who has posted here, and on all the other atheist websites. Because off all the people doing this all these books above are doing well.
All these authors above are a testimony to the atheists before them who made it possible for them to be where they are at. Even if you cant be an open atheist in daily life, you can post on line. You can send your opinion to local papers and elected officials.
FROM the big voice to the individual poster, we can and are making a difference.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
I am reading Rollback By Thomas E. Woods, an economic book that every American should read and that is it right now. Things have been pretty busy for me.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
I'm attempting to read The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics by James Kakalios. Since I couldn't comprehend the subject at all, I decided to give this a try. It is touted as "Math-Free" which is why I chose it over other books. However, there are some simple mathematics in it that aren't too hard to follow. He's a real comic book nerd, and has a ton of references to them within the book. I'm about half way through and I definitely have a better understanding. It will probably take a 2nd read to really sink in.
I was really excited about The God Delusion when it was being hyped, but I haven't gotten around to it. I'm afraid that Dawkins will attempt to convince the reader God doesn't exist, but I already believe God doesn't exist. I feel like it will do nothing more than just solidify my position. Did anyone give it a read and have a different opinion?
I was impressed with what an easy read it was for me. I don't consider myself a high brow reader. I am average about the level of news papers. BUT The God Delusion was an easy read for me. So I was a bit disappointed with "The Greatest Show On Earth, it is far too technical for me. But how can it be "dumbed down'? The details are too important to skip over.
Hitchens on the other hand, you need the Roseta Stone and a thesaurus. If he spoke at any higher a pitch dogs would bark. I do get most of what he says, but it takes several reads over the same paragraph and a dictionary sometimes. He would slap the shit out of me if I asked him to make pop up books for me.
I loved the God Delusion. It made me feel like I wasn't so dumb.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
I'm reading three extremely dry technical manuals, two on HFC networks and one on data structure BS, I'm also reading Stephen Kings's 'Full Dark, No stars", I think he's lost it, probably his worst book yet. And I have "Modern Classics of Science Fiction" Edited by Gardner Dozois that I picked up about 2 weeks ago. It has a few interesting stories in it, but nothing mindblowing. I've been meaning to pick up some books more on the atheist theme but just don't have the time for it at the moment with school, work, and three little ones running around. This website is where I spend most of my very limited spare time because I can read it at work in between tasks. I also have about ten new Nova episodes on my DVR that I haven't gotten around to. All of my TV time is taken up with Tree-House and The Disney Channel.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
Well, I just finished reading “The Hidden Reality” by Brian Greene. Basically it is a prose work of the physics that may underlie parallel universes. Interestingly, it seems that there are at least eleven ways that they could make sense.
Now I am working on “Towers of Midnight” by Robert Jordan and Brian Sanderson. The thirteenth novel in the “Wheel of Time” series.
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Recently bought the God delusion and the Selfish gene (Dawkins).
Also bought conversation with a christian proselytizer (Todd Allen Gates).
And I have the classic a brief history of time from Hawking.
Don't have a lot of time to read them, though. Gotta read literature for school -.-
The first thing I learned from Quantum Mechanics was through What the Bleep do we know?. Still an innocent child (I was like 16 or something, so I should have known better), I believed most of it. I can kind of grasp how things work, from seeing and reading things on the internet.
Signature ? How ?
Speaking of Richard Feynman, one of the other books that I have in progress but on hold for the moment is “Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun”. It comes with a CD of the actual lecture, so at some point, I will be able to hear him directly.
Actually, I have a number of books under that status. “The Road to Reality” by sir Roger Penrose is fully about modern physics and it does not skip any of the math. Which is probably why I have it on semi-permanent hold. In the chapter on relativity, he uses techniques that were not even developed a century ago. I suppose that one could say they are more modern but I don't know if that is a good thing.
Another is “On the Shoulders of Giants” If you look it up, I believe that Stephen Hawking is credited for the book. However, that would be misleading. He only wrote the wraparound material. The real authors are Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Einstein, being the collected works of all five men. Hawking adds no science but does tell the back stories to the various works. Also, for the record, I find the works of Einstein much easier to grasp as written by the man himself than I do trying to get the same info out of the Penrose book above.
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