(Part 2) Best atheism books according to redditors

https://www.amazon.com/Definitive-Proof-Gods-Existence-Adrian/dp/1540894711

Summary: This article is by the author of "Atheists: The Origin of the Species" a book whose stated conclusion is that "we should expect to hear more about atheism in the future for the simple reason that God is back." Because the scientists he chooses to write about have been Christians like himself, he believes there's no need to become an atheist simply to be "scientific" (whatever that means to him), and he further explains that the people who call themselves atheists are doing so not because they happen to lack a belief in any deities, but instead for political reasons.

There's also an Atheism for Dummies, incidentally.

I think the entire book series is somewhat mis-titled. They're actually very smart and well-written books.

>Once you learn about emergent properties, the whole mind/brain, dualism, soul, consciousness question becomes remarkably boring

I think this is just completely and utterly bass-ackwards. Once you learn about emergence, it just opens up even more problems. For one thing, emergence is often considered to be a type of dualism. So keep that in mind before committing to it as your solution to the mind/matter problem.

And emergence raises the problem of mental causation. You have two choices at this point:

1. One way causal (brain -----> mind)
   
2. Two way causal (brain <---> mind)
   
   If 2, then you are basically talking about property dualism and you open yourself up to the same problems as dualism, such as the interaction problem (how can a non-physical mind cause physical actions?). If 1, then you have the problem of how your mind can grasp my comment here, rationally evaluate it, and cause your fingers to type a response. If 1 then you have to say that your mind is just a byproduct that plays absolutely no role in your physical actions, which seems completely false.
   
   Your other option is to dump emergent dualism, and go with the materialist theory of identity, which says that the mind and brain are just the same thing. But then you have the problem of how aliens and AI could have minds, since they do not have human brains. If the mind can be realized by many different substrates, then you are talking about functionalism and so no longer strictly within materialism, as substance dualism can be functionalist as well (and there are functionalist dualists).
   
   Then you have the problem of how the mind can represent (or be about) things. As the IEP explains:
   
   >How can a pattern of neural firings be of or about or towards anything other than itself? As a purely physical event, an influx of sodium ions through the membrane of a neural cell creating a polarity differential between the inside and outside of the cell wall, and hence an electrical discharge, cannot be of Paris, about my grandfather, or for an apple.
   
   In light of this, you could follow the Churchlands, who are well connected with neuroscience (both their children are neuroscientists) and cannot reconcile this problem, and so they choose to believe that we have no beliefs, desires, doubts, etc. Meaningless matter cannot have any meaning.
   
   But then you open yourself up to the problem that science and reason are thereby destroyed, as they involve representation and aboutness. This could serve as a reductio ad absurdum of materialism. Or not. You could join Alex Rosenberg with his Atheist's Guide to Reality. He is a philosopher who fully understands the implications of materialism and sides with the Churchlands in saying that there is no meaning, nothing means anything, even your own mind. So you can certainly embrace that if you want. Personally, I think the criticism that it is a reductio of naturalism should be answered, but from what I can tell good responses to this charge are not forthcoming, and the worldview of materialism is just assumed to be true.
   

There's a lot the atheist community and LGBTQ community have in common, and they can support each other. Check out this book.

Just a few thoughts from reading your post, although probably not things that will really help you in your situation:

• I find it odd that he calls you spineless when this is clearly a very difficult thing for you. Spineless would be going along and taking the easy route.
  
  
• A person who never questions his faith accusing someone else of simply following others' leads is a person who needs to look in the mirror.
  
  
• Here's a point that might be stressed: belief is NOT voluntary. You either believe or you don't; you can't just decide to believe or not to believe. Your father may rebut this by saying you simply need to seek or accept God or some such nonsense, but rest assured that it is nonsense and he should realize this. Ask him if he could simply decide one day to believe in Vishnu. He should also realize that his faith tells him that God made you the way you are.
  
  
• As a book selection, I would suggest this. I would NOT suggest something like God is Not Great by Hitchens. It is quite abrasive, where Atheism Explained is more matter-of-fact.
  
  
• Good luck. My first few points may be nothing more than fodder for a continuing argument with your father, so I thought some encouragement was in order. This will pass, however it turns out. You will have a good life if you want it.

I don't really think you have to get it. It's a personal choice and I definitely don't think it's one that's for everyone. It's just kind of where I was led after growing up in an openly hostile church. I also don't think that astrology and atheism can't live in tandem. There are definitely atheists that check their horoscope everyday.

Queer atheism definitely exists, though! It's hard to weed through r/atheism to find queer content but there are some lovely queers over on r/Dear_Mr_Atheist. There's also a book called Queer Disbelief that is supposed to be really good.

You might find the following resources useful. Best of luck on your journey.

• The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality
  
• Buddhism Without Beliefs

> Well, it's important to first understand where the burden of proof lies.

Question is if it indeed lies with theism.

The burden of proof does not always fall on people who make a statement about something existing.
For example if I claim "the world is not real but just an illusion" or "the laws of nature do not exist they are only illusions", etc... I am rejecting the existence of something, but I thing common sense would lead us to think that such statements are not the "default" and thus the person denying the existence of the world has the burden of proof.

Atheists are quick to put the burden on theism, but atheism and hard agnosticism make several statements, some positive some not, that DO imply a certain view of the world that really are really problematic.

The most common is naturalism (or worse, reductive materialism) which has a lot of problems which even leads some atheists to reject it (which raises a lot of problems if one wants to remain atheist) or accept the idea that we ourselves are illusions (or rather our minds) and other apparent absurdities, which again are problematic on many levels.

So yeah, accepting atheism to it's full logical conclusion, as Alex Rosenberg does in the book I link above makes atheism less of a default position than one might want to.

...

>That being said, there are common proofs against the idea of a god. For example, in Euthyphro, one of Plato's dialogues,

Euthyphro dillemma is not a problem for Classical theism (which is what philosophers Aquinas fall under and what most Christian, Jew, Islamic and some others like some Hindu and Jainist have historically held and many still do). It works at best for certain moieties of theism, perhaps including some protestant "theistic personalism" views that are somewhat popular today.

Not to bog down the discussion I'd defer to philosopher Edward Feser (and the mountain of literature on the subject too) who aptly explains why Euthyphro dillemma is a false dilemma and not really problematic why raising Euthyphro dillemma is basically showing one has not done his homework regarding theism... and really an argument only pop-atheist make since it works against people who have no training in philosophy and theology.

Same goes with another pop-argument from evil which is today mostly an appeal to emotion and not a logical problem.

...

>Likely the best proof against an omnipotent god is that there are metaphysical rules which go beyond god, and therefore god is not everything. An example of these rules is that the creation must abide by the laws of the creator.

What would be these metaphysical rules?
Such claims you make now again might work for "god as a mere being among other beings" view, but does not work for Classical Theism, where God is not "a being", but rather being itself, or Ipsum Esse Subsistens as Aquinas would have put it (althoug he was not the only or first one), hence it makes no sense to talk about "metaphysical rules which go beyond god" at all.

...

> What I should have said is that it is inherently illogical to believe in god because all proofs are fallacious in nature.

Only they aren't and every single time I hear a refutation it's always some sort of lame strawman, like for example Dawkins "refutations" in "The God Delusion", where he only proves he does not even understand what is going on (like most of the book).

Also as I have said elsewhere, the five ways in the Summa are merely sketches. Aquinas goes in further detail elsewhere on some of the proofs but many other Thomists and philosophers in general have worked on them.

So the claim "because all proofs are fallacious in nature" is the equivalent of "if evolution real then why monkey exist?" that some anti-evolutionary crackpots raise.

More serious atheists like JL Mackie who dealt with them seriously were not so dismissive (and some of their criticism has been very useful to theists as well).


>If you believe it IS logical, then provide the argument and I will disprove it.

Problem is that just like you do not explain evolution convincingly in 1 page, arguments for God also require space.

Since I mentioned Feser above I would link to one of his books where he presents five proofs (which are not the five ways), including various objections and answer to such objections.

If you are really interested read through it (instead of just finding uncharitable reviews which anyone can do). If not, then there is no point for discussion.

More importantly, as I said elsewhere, to understand one must read the actual arguments of the people defending a certain idea, not just the second hand critique. You would not study an idea just by reading its critics.

...

Finally I would say that even IF the proofs for God would fail as you claim (which I disagree) it doesn't make theism automatically irrational (seen the philosophical problems of the atheist position I mentioned above).

A descent selection so far from the other comments. I'll throw in a few, as well:

​

• Carl Sagan - Demon Haunted World
  
• Greg M. Epstein - Good Without God
  
• Michael Shermer - Why People Believe Weird Things
  
• Sean Carroll - The Big Picture
  
• John Loftus - Why I Became an Atheist
  
• A.C. Grayling - The God Argument
  
• Kenneth Daniels - Why I Believed
  
• Robert A Burton - On Being Certain
  
  ​
  
  Some of the above is specifically related to atheism, while others I've used to help shape and inform my understanding and my worldview. Out of the entire list, the Carl Sagan book and the Sean Carroll book rank highest, for me, in level of importance. Those books didn't just change what I think, they changed how I think, and I am forever indebted to them.

You can try Annie Laurie Gaylor's book: http://www.amazon.com/Women-Without-Superstition-Gods-Masters/dp/1877733091/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411346976&sr=8-1&keywords=annie+laurie+gaylor

Women Without Superstition: No Gods, No Masters

EDITED TO ADD: Also, Susan Jacoby's book Freethinkers has some excellent portrayals of the women of atheism.

> The decline of traditional faith in America has coincided with an explosion of new atheisms. Some people worship beauty, some worship political identities, and others worship their children. But everybody worships something. And workism is among the most potent of the new religions competing for congregants.

The sources in this paragraph are pretty dubious. Here they are:

https:/www.amazon.com/Seven-Types-Atheism-John-Gray/dp/0374261091/

Read the top review on this.

https://www.dailydot.com/irl/gwyneth-paltrow-goop-cult/

> Callahan’s whole report is pretty wild, with one interesting caveat: The audience wasn’t wholly invested in the guest speakers. A lot of people walked out of Sadeghi’s lecture, and the crowd was most excited about Paltrow’s panel with celebrity guests Cameron Diaz, Nicole Richie, and Miranda Kerr.

So this source basically admits that it is just sensationalism. The audience didn't care about the con artists, they just wanted to see some celebrities.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/andrew-sullivan-americas-new-religions.html

Just a regurgitation of the previous book, so not really a different source.

http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x4280.html

And finally... a commencement speech by David Foster Wallace?

I would take everything here with a grain of salt.

And here's the link for UK Amazon shoppers. :)

Yes! That's exactly my point! Exactly!! I'm willing to admit I have faith - lets get on equal footing and say you have faith too. That's all I'm asking - lets both be honest with ourselves together. We both are religious, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. You believe that there is no God, and I believe that there is; we both have accepted certain and very specific assumptions. I highly recommend this book - it gives a very hard and honest look at the faith atheists have - and the sad truth of where it leads: staunch nihilism. I really hope you at least click that link. The author is Dean of Philosophy at Duke and debated William Lane Craig in favor of atheism; not to derail the thread here, I'm just saying the guy is a die-hard atheist, I'm not setting you up. Its just that atheist have the sort of faith that ends them up in such a sad, lonely state of nothingness. Its nice to think like Sagan and Dawkins that there is a cosmic orchestra we can suddenly turn into with the dial of science, but with atheism - the conclusion to this melody is total and inclusive nothingness. Blackness. Dead Silence. Its sad that the same vehicle of faith I ride to joy and happiness and hope and love is that same one your ride to...that.

A book I like to recommend that closely matches your criteria is

Sense and Goodness Without God - A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism

by "atheist talking head" Richard Carrier.

Each chapter in this book gives a summary of the modern "state of the art" of the various sciences and other fields of study that bear on the topic of how the world works, and how we can be reasonably assured that what we think we know is probably true. Fields include (off the top of my head, hence not in that order) cosmology, physics, history, biology, philosophy, politics, an explanation of the Scientific Method and more.

This is not a "popular atheism" book like Dawkins' The God Delusion. The survey of intellectual fields is aimed at a college student level. It's also not an attempt to disprove God (or Allah, or whatever other kind of superstition). Instead, it's a thorough explanation of how a world view based on Naturalism is internally consistent and in agreement with observed reality, i.e. how it makes sense. The decision of whether you want to look at the world through Naturalist glasses or something based on ancient myths is left to you.

I am currently reading The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality
The author does a good job of explaining why spirituality has nothing to do with god(s), and is more or less our birth right.

Hi I am Jason Malcolm from Edinburgh, Scotland.

I am flying to San Francisco to attend the Deep Reinforcement Learning Bootcamp, and staying for 3 weeks - so if anyone has any local knowledge of labs, hacklabs, meetups, art-studios, organic/ permaculture farms or any intersection of art, craft, making, engineering, computers or robots in the Berkeley / San Fran Cisco area ( & will visit L.A. to see cousins ) then reply or PM me.

I am staying in Berkeley for 3 weeks if anyone has any recommendations for hacklabs, or computery robotic stuff, or fun or interesting things.

I have been studying Neural Nets for a few years, part time and online so this will be my first IRL course.

My father, Chris Malcolm, lectured in & researched AI & robotics at Edinburgh University and so I was exposed to computing and intelligent robots from a early age.

At Edinburgh College of Art, (part of Edinburgh University) I attained a Masters Degree in Tapestry - so I am a trained weaver, dyer and spinner of wool :) and I have been creatively exploring materials, ideas and inspiration for a couple of decades.

I have always been into math & programming, beginning with Microsoft BASIC on the NASCOM II, PASCAL and then BBC BASIC, BBC LOGO. Gave it up to do art for a few years. Then computer animation, old-school realtime VRML97 for VJs, 3ds-max, then Blender & python.

I support my creativity by making websites for others, initially handwritten HTML ( and VRML :) ), Javascript, then PHP and now often Wordpress - I program quite a bit in my spare time.

A Lecture by Professor Geoffrey Hinton, demonstrating the wake sleep algorithm training a Restricted Boltzmann Machine to draw digits from MNIST made me think, machines can be creative.

Then the first MOOCs happened and I took, Professor Andrew Ng's Machine Learning and Professors Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun's MOOC Introduction to AI ( based on the textbook Artificial Intelligence A Modern Approach by Peter Norvig and Stuart Russel ).

I then took Geoffrey Hinton's MOOC Neural Networks for Machine Learning and this enabled me to read & comprehend papers and try replicating experiments using some of the libraries from Toronto University.

Since then studying to varying degrees of success parallel GPU programming, elementry physics, calculus, haskell, Stanford's CS231n, & Berkeley's CS294-112.

I want to study robotics because I believe that AI can best succeed when computation is embodied in a creature.

I hope to work towards developing robots that can learn to assist and perform useful tasks, like gardening, housebuilding, ecology or folding shirts.

My (current) long term research goals are to enable robots to talk about what they are doing, short term: get Tensorflow to control my Cheerson CX-10WD nano FPV drone and learn to fly it using Reinforcement Learning.

The idea of Strong AI ( where the machines 'awaken' ) may happen but I think Professor Dan Dennet is correct that we will build machines that will build machines that build machines, &c, that may achieve strong AI, i.e. self-evolution.

I sometimes dream of machine learning coming up with creative solutions to help us colonise the solar system. Occaisionaly I imagine a far flung future when Robots may become considered another domain of life with their own wants, dreams and motivations that are a paradigm shift away from what we know now - perhaps in a millenia or so.

Probably just getting a robot to make a really good cup of tea is a not ignoble goal.

https://www.amazon.ca/Quantum-Universe-Small-Book-Things-ebook/dp/B07NW5GQJ7/ref=sr_1_9?keywords=the+quantum+universe&qid=1568177132&s=digital-text&sr=1-9

Writing a romance/sci-fi novel next

Edit: They are on Amazon now so if you have prime you can get free shipping.

Yea there are a lot better of books to give a devout Christian to read than the God Delusion, Dawkins is for someone who's already turning away from their faith to seal in the deal, something a little less attack-y like The God Argument would be better suited

You may be interested in these five books: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. These examine the claimed evidence of the existence of a historical jesus without presupposing any of christianity is true (i.e. they were written by atheist scholars). They judge it way more likely that the jesus story is a melting pot of earlier myths and stories without any basis in fact.

I gave my wife Women without Superstition, Your Inner Fish, Agora, and Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life.

Apparently Dawkins has a new book which is very similar to "the God Delusion" but written in a more "understandable" way, ie, simpler vocabulary. Intended for younger people or people not as well-educated. Apparently people were asking for a more understandable book:

Outgrowing God: A Beginner's Guide

https://www.amazon.com/Outgrowing-God-Beginners-Richard-Dawkins/dp/1984853910

This is why we always need to start with epistemology. Don't argue about anachronisms in the BoM, argue about how Moroni 10:4's idea is used by many conflicting religions, and has proven all of them true to their followers.

This book talks about this approach in detail (I've listened to interviews, but haven't yet read it).

We recently came out to both our families (sent an email to everyone). It's so much less stressful now (well, for us) not to have to pretend and appease anymore. I highly recommend it.

What helped me feel more prepared for it was reading the book A Manual for Creating Atheists. It isn't my intention to deconvert any of my family, but it really helped me learn how to have conversations with those who rely on faith to determine their truth without getting pulled into crazy arguments. The method relies on asking non-confrontational questions which keeps things from getting nasty and if your family is eager to convert you, they'll likely be willing to answers any questions you have. So yeah, I also highly recommend reading that book.

Snapshots:

1. Wrote a book examining religion on ... - archive.org, archive.today
   
   
   
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Carlin is up there among my favorite comedians. Another ones are Doug Stanhope and Tom Segura.

> Also points for the emphasis on possibly. It irritates the hell out of me how people just take it as given that ‘rationality > emotionality’ when it’s completely arbitrary. People need to drop the Seneca and pick up the Descartes now and then.

Before moving forward, are using 'rationality' and 'reason' as synonyms? If I understand correctly, one of the cornerstones of Stoicism is that reason is the only thing that differentiates humans from other animals. So as you might guess, reason takes an important place in Stoicism since without it, it'd be futile to distinguish between what's under your control and what's not under your control. However, I think I understand where you're coming from. For instance, as an atheist, up until recently I thought religions to be a scorch to the human species but after reading the book John Grey's Seven Types of Atheism [1] and giving it some careful thoughts, I've come to realize that religion might've had (and likely still has) its place throughout different civilizations for reasons that are unique to the human condition. Certainly I don't condone all the horrific crimes that have been committed in the name of religion but at their cores, some religion might be considered benign and just try to provide some framework in a chaotic universe even if such framework isn't scientifically accurate.

[1]: I don't consider this book to be infallible but with all of its weakness, it puts forward some interesting ideas that are at least worth entertaining, even if you don't espouse any of them.

Ants individually aren't intelligent, but as a group they can behave in intelligent ways, although they don't do it the same way we do. If you ask a random person to guess how many marbles are in a container you won't get a very accurate answer, but if you ask 1000 people and average their answers you'll get a much more accurate result. We can understand our environment and communicate with others to create a more accurate model of the world, we are the only animal that does this. An individual ant will run in a random direction when it feels vibration such as a foot stomping on the ground. This doesn't help the individual ant much but when thousands of ants all run in random directions it results in them scattering, protecting the colony. Ants release pheromones in response to environmental stimuli. They do this automatically, it requires no understanding. The pheromones they release are received by other ants who are influenced and also release their owns pheromones. This complex network of ants signalling eachother can respond in ways more intelligent than any individual ant. It's similar to how you can understand this sentence, but no individual neuron in your brain can understand anything. I recommend the book From Bacteria to Bach and Back. It talks about how consciousness may have evolved, and how cultural evolution began to overtake biological evolution.

> I'm fine with words having baggage, it is what gives them their weight and meaning, after all; as long as the baggage is representative of reality.

It's complicated, isn't it?

The problem is if the words prevent us from examining the actual situation.

Do we deal with brain cancer because we have thought about whether we should (and can), or because of a word that somehow got tagged on?

Anyway, gotta go. This tuned out to be interesting.

--

I'm currently reading Dennett's From Bacteria to Bach...

https://www.amazon.com/Bacteria-Bach-Back-Evolution-Minds/dp/0393242072

You might enjoy it :-)

Atheism Explained is a book I am reading. If your parents really like philosophy, this book builds up the arguements on both sides and shows the errors in the Christian defences of god.

>Is there a book any of you have read that compares religion and irreligion without bias?

The problem is that religion asserts there is a god (and generally a lot of other things), and atheism rejects that assertion. I question whether it is possible for there to be some non-biased middle ground. You either accept that if there's no reason to believe something then there is no reason to believe it, or you don't. I think pretty much every book is going to be "biased" because you can't make a rational argument for both sides without... being rational.

Personally, I've only read Richard Dawkin's God Delusion. Already being comfortable as an atheist, I wasn't very impressed, and it certainly can't be considered unbiased. There's also Atheism for Dummies. That might be the best bet for "unbiased" as its purpose is to explain what atheism is to non-atheists, not to present an argument for it. However, I have not read it.

You sure showed us Christians! Oh, wait...

http://www.amazon.com/Atheism-For-Dummies-Dale-McGowan/dp/111850920X

No sarcasam, I would love to make this argument blazenly! Can you send me some links or articles supporting your statment: "Atheism isn't really coherent..." I've been meaning to pick up a copy of this book, but I would love any resources you have. I feel like I could make this argument in the abstract, but I lack any concrete way to really formulate it.

Nope, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Biblical scholars are predominantly christian, so they are quite biased.

It's basically 6-7 books in one, I spent 4 years on it. Each "section" is a normal book-length size. Think of the value, not just the cost. It's well over the size of a normal 200-page book and goes into much more detail on the issues related to religion, which is after all a complex topic.

Also, there is a Kindle version. If you find that unsatisfactory, here's a detailed explanation from my blog of the pricing differences and why they were made that way.