RE: Book Recommendations
July 20, 2020 at 4:44 pm
(This post was last modified: July 20, 2020 at 4:50 pm by Simon Moon.)
(July 19, 2020 at 8:14 pm)Belacqua Wrote:(July 18, 2020 at 11:55 am)Gnomey Wrote: What else you all got?
- Gnomey
Reason, Faith, and Revolution, by Terry Eagleton
This book explains why Hitchens, Dawkins, et.al, take an overly simple view of religion and tacitly support a questionable ideology. Young people who found the "New Atheists" appealing need to get past their rhetorical appeal and see what else is going on. (Eagleton has a sharp sense of humor and good politics: his book On Evil is dedicated to Henry Kissinger.)
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5...6B1A05C383
Seven Types of Atheism, by John Gray
Adult atheists have concluded that the metaphysical claims made by religions are unpersuasive. This may well be true, but no such conclusion exists in isolation -- it needs a more complete system of commitments about what is true. Gray explains some of the more important outlooks which help us conclude that religious claims are untrue.
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5...E47C77C098
Is it atheists fault that the arguments and evidence for the existence of gods provided by theists, does not require more sophisticated refutations than those provided by Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, et al, ?
Seriously. Please provide an argument for the existence of gods more sophisticated or convincing than: Kalam, Ontological, Teleological, TAG, etc, that have not been refuted by any of the above people? I was able to detect the flaws in these arguments after 2 semesters of basic logic courses, and I am not at the level of intellect as those mentioned.
And just to show that I can be just as guilty of fallacies as the 'best' apologists (I'm looking at you, William Lane Craig), here's an appeal to authority fallacy;
72.8% of PhD level philosophers at 99 of the top universities, disbelieve in the existence of gods. I would guess, with pretty high confidence, that the majority of those 72.8% are quite a bit more philosophically sophisticated than Dawkins, Hitchens, et al., and yet they come to the same conclusions*.
Philosopher Study
*that theists have failed to meet their burden of proof for their claim that gods exist.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
