I recently finished Dawkins The God Delusion and enjoyed the read. He did a nice job covering a lot of old arguments against the existence of God in a fresh way that made it worth-the-while despite that I’ve read many others that essentially cover the same ground.
Check out Dawkins Web Site for video clips from personal appearances and other goodies.
An easy, but interesting book I recently read is Is God good, bad, or irrelevant? by Preston Jones (Intervarsity Press). It’s an e-mail exchange between a Christian college professor and Greg Graffin the lead singer of the punk bad Bad Religion who just so happens to have a PhD in evolution from Cornell.
Consider putting a list together of your favorite books and send them to info@freethoughtassociation.org to get them posted as recommended reading in our Book Store.
I am currently reading The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay. Very good read.
My favorite quote so far:
“I still sometimes got a bit scared about going to hell, and I used to think quite a lot about being born again. But my heart didn’t want to open up and receive the Lord. All the people I knew who had opened up their hearts to Jesus struck me as a pretty pathetic lot, not bad, not good, just nothing...I guess my mother was right when she said if I kept rejecting the Lord and hardening my heart one day He might just go a way and leave me to it. That’s what must have happened, because after a while it got a lot easier and I didn’t worry as much.” --PeeKay (7 year old main character), The Power of One, Bryce Courtenay.
I just finished reading a remarkable book: “Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith,” by Philip Kitcher, the John Dewey professor of philosophy at Columbia. He takes a novel approach, and demolishes the intelligent design arguments. But then he goes on and considers are there values in churches or fellowships after you filter out the lies, the myths, the misunderstandings and other nonsense. He speaks to the values we Freethinkers find in such organizations as the Freethought Association, the Great Lakes Humanist Society, and so forth. Very thoughtful, and I find he validates my own thinking as an Atheistic Humanist Freethinker.
This book was recommended to me by a Unitarian minister, by the way. So Humanism and Free Thinking is not dead among the UUs.
Joel
While not about freethought or humanism, I’m currently reading “Founding Brothers.” It’s like a running portrait of our “founding fathers” and the notable moments in their (and our) history. This is a part of my ongoing game of “catch-up” where history is concerned. I sorta blew it off as a kid and am now making up for my shortsightedness. I have to say that it’s a great read! Entertaining as well as enlightening.
I’m currently in between grad classes so I can relax a little with Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. I just finished the first chapter and it’s quite enjoyable. My last class was a seminar in road literature so I read four novels in the past month: On the Road, Blue Highways, A Good Day to Die and Not Fade Away. Before that I had a Buddhism class and gained many new insights. I’m looking forward to making the next 3 Beer Discussion group at Jeff’s house and chatting.
JP
I’m really into Carl Sagan right now. I’ve just rediscovered a fascination I used to have with space when I was a kid. I’m finishing Cosmos and starting in on The Demon Haunted World. He really is an enjoyable writer.
My self-identification as a freethinker started when I read Vonnegut in high school. He was always at or near the top of my short list of heroes. So it goes…
I am in the middle of “Little Big Minds” by a psychologist Marietta McCarty. The book gives us ideas on how to make and /or let our children be philosophers. The books is set up a little bit like a guide, with exercises, topics, and games, but I still find the information useful. It is nice to think there are people out there that want our children to grow up thinking, and for themselves; questionning what is, what isn’t, and what could be. I haven’t gotten all the way through, but I think there are some good topics in here that could be useful.
Don’t count on Heaven, or on Hell.
You’re dead. That’s it. Adieu. Farewell.
Eternity awaits? Oh, sure!
It’s Putrefaction and Manure
And unrelenting Rot, Rot, Rot,
As you regress, from Zoo. to Bot.
I’ll Grieve, of course,
Departing wife,
Though Grieving’s never
Lengthened Life
Or coaxed a single extra Breath
Out of a Body touched by Death.
“The Biologist’s Valediction to His Wife”
from Offcuts by Sherwin Stephens
I’ve been reading “Being Dead” by Jim Crace, which is an unabashed look at how we return to nature. Made me wonder what others have to say on the subject of dying and the afterlife (if one exists). I’m a deist, and being so, I believe that there’s an order and a purpose for death, but whether that’s more than “pushing up daisies” I can’t know. I’m pretty sure it’s not pearly gates or fire and brimstone. Or do we come back, reincarnation? There’s one really depressing arguement against reincarnation though - if we all get a second (third, fourth, etc) chance at this, then why are we making the same (and worse) mistakes?
I just wanted to send this question out into the void. If there’s no afterlife and we just cease to be, do you fear death more… or less?
On the same topic - has anyone read STIFF by Mary Roach? It’s a very entertaining read about the use of the human body for scientific gain. Her other book, SPOOK, is the scientists search for an afterlife. Not quite as well researched - but still entertaining. I have both on my shelves - if anyone’s interested.
“I just wanted to send this question out into the void. If there’s no afterlife and we just cease to be, do you fear death more… or less?”
Good question! I think the fear of death is an invention of religion. If we just cease to be, what is there to fear? There isn’t even any fear of the unknown, because in a way, we’ve already been there....before we were born. The feeling I associate with death is disappointment, not fear. Disappointment in the sense that I may die too early, before I accomplish and experience all that I would like to.
what about the brain being the seat of the soul? As such the base chemicals that compose the neruons are the building blocks of not only our self awareness but also our very existential being?
So preserve the brain maybe by cryogenics or maybe someday even digitally and there by obtain immortality that way>?
Interesting comments Jeffo: “what about the brain being the seat of the soul? As such the base chemicals that compose the neruons are the building blocks of not only our self awareness but also our very existential being? So preserve the brain maybe by cryogenics or maybe someday even digitally and there by obtain immortality that way?”
I have to preface my reply by saying that I don’t think that there is such a thing as a “soul”, or a permanent “self”. What I perceive as my “self” is fluid (constantly changing). I am not the same being I was 30 years ago. I will not be the same 30 years from now. Taking that into account, I have two replies:
1. If my brain were somehow rendered digitally and was able to exist indefinitely as digital data, I wouldn’t really consider that immortality. Immortality implies permanence, thus it is an illusion. Everything is impermanent. Even if I existed in a similar bodily form a thousand years from now, I would likely be so different that I wouldn’t even recognize my present self as my self. It would probably be similar to when I watch old video tapes of myself running around as a two year old. I know that that kid is related to me in some way, but he wasn’t me as I exist now. In a similar way, I don’t think that my brain rendered digitally would be “me”. If you could make a digital copy of my brain with all my memories intact and let it exist for a year while the original me goes on living and then got us together you would probably find that we would be very different.
2. Even assuming that some form of immortality could be achieved through cryogenics or digital technology, would you really want to do that? It does not sound appealing at all to me.
To bring this conversation back to the “What have you been reading? thread: Have you read Frank Herbert’s Dune series? He has characters that go through many changes over thousands of years. I think he does a nice job of showing how much people can change over time. There are also a couple prequel trilogies that have been written for that series and the first has interesting depictions of machine intelligences.
Maybe we can continue this conversation at movie night on Wednesday.
I quite agree with you as to change rendering one different over time. Also immortality is a misnomer as well. Nothing even the stars above is truely immortal. But when you think that we only live for 80-90 years if we are lucky then to speak of hundreds of years is nearly as good as saying immortal.
Oh on the Dune books ironically enough I was just give a copy of Dune The Machine Crusade. It is actually by Herbert’s son so I am looking forward to it
