(August 12, 2013 at 11:57 am)CleanShavenJesus Wrote: Sounds easier to skip that stage and go straight to science and philosophy books.
I had virtually no concept of what philosophy even was before I started reading atheist books; I had no idea that I had played around with philosophical concepts throughout my teens and early twenties during my deconversion, of sorts, and the early years of me being an atheist. It took an introduction to philosophical concepts in atheist books to show me that philosophy might actually be useful to learn about.
The best way I can describe it is like math to one of my good friends: he didn't get it, didn't care about it, had no interest in it -- until he realized it was important to learn so that he could learn to fly planes. Once that in-road was made and once he was able to connect mathematical concepts to something he loved, he math began to make sense to him. Similarly for me, once philosophical concepts were framed in such a way that I understood them in the context of something I already had an interest in and why they were important I could finally connect the concepts to something I felt was tangible, and from that I could extrapolate to other areas of thought and other parts of my life.
It's easy to just say "Skip that step and read the philosophy book!" but that's disregarding the vital step, in my case, of figuring out how I could apply what I was learning to my life and my interests. Without the in between step of the atheist books I very well could have read the first five pages of a philosophy book, thought "This is boring as shit!" and put it back on the shelf never to pick it up again.
For some people that in between step is vital. For others it's not. We all walk our own paths through life and we all come to knowledge from different directions, some take a longer path than others. Don't poo-poo what other people need just because you don't need it.
Teenaged X-Files obsession + Bermuda Triangle episode + Self-led school research project = Atheist.
