favorite atheist book

[Mister Agenda]

Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained.

I have reservations about the title of the thread, but I understand what is being asked for.

[NomenMihiNon]

Sense and Goodness Without God: a Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism by Richard Carrier. Beyond simple atheism, it presents an in-depth view of naturalist (and by extension, humanist) philosophy. Reading this book as well as seeing more than a few of Carrier's lectures and interviews makes me wish that he was more well-known among the freethought movement, as he's far more easygoing and personable than the likes of Hitchens and Dawkins...but still doesn't sugarcoat his opinions, either.

[Minimalist]

Robert G. Ingersoll's "The Gods."

http://www.infidels.org/library/historic.../gods.html

Short essay but written in 1872 and still as true today.

Each nation has created a god, and the god has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved, and he was invariably found on the side of those in power. Each god was intensely patriotic, and detested all nations but his own. All these gods demanded praise, flattery, and worship. Most of them were pleased with sacrifice, and the smell of innocent blood has ever been considered a divine perfume. All these gods have insisted upon having a vast number of priests, and the priests have always insisted upon being supported by the people, and the principal business of these priests has been to boast about their god, and to insist that he could easily vanquish all the other gods put together.

[Simsim]

Except for the God delusion I don't read atheist books, because I don't find them interesting ! (What would they tell me?)

On the other hand, I find every scientific book an atheist book. For example, the grand design (by Hawking) is fantastic atheist book. A universe from nothing (by Lawrence Krauss) is another magnificent atheist book. Science is atheistic !

[cneron]

Mine.

[Zen Badger]

The cat in the hat.

No mention of god at all.

[NoraBrimstone]

Definitely The God Delusion. How anybody can possibly read that with their theism left intact at the end, is beyond me.

[Brian37]

Read them all don't stop at one or two. I will say that "The Greatest Show on Earth was over my head, I am sure I could find evolution for dummies though.

While it's not technically what I would consider an atheist book The Greatest Show on Earth was one of my favorite reads in recent years, I loved every page of it and found every excuse to carry it around with me and read bits of it at every opportunity I could manage. When I finished it I wanted to immediately start it over again. Then again, though, I enjoy Dawkin's writing style and the subject matter; I liked The God Delusion, too.

Harris, for me, is better when I listen to him on youtube videos rather than read his books, I find them very dense and somewhat dry and have a hard time maintaining interest/focus while reading them sometimes. Is Hitchens more or less dense than Harris?

I'm reading Dennett's Breaking the Spell right now and am enjoying it and am planning on reading Proving History by Richard Carrier next.

I cant do a fraction to save my life. But I do know science works. And I did get through college. The one consistent thing I found and it always made sense and is a very simple concept. "Method" simply means "you do these steps in this order". That is a concept that a monkey like me can understand. So if I did something wrong in any math or science class, my answer was wrong.

Just like I can drive a car and know it is not run on pixy dust. Just like our American driving if I drove in the left lane going right, my "method" would be wrong. Just like I can know it is based on scientific combustion concepts of mechanics, without knowing how to build a car.

With evolution, I found that book too high tech in language for me. But in other science classes atoms were very easy for me to understand. To this day I know all the atoms in DNA, adenine guanine thymine and cytosine.

And once you know how simple it is for an atom to exchange electrons or bond with other atoms, you can see evolution as the simple shuffling of a deck of cards that it is, over long period of time. What we see now is atom arrangement changing over long periods of time.

I never want anyone here to confuse me with a brain surgeon, not that anyone would. But the basic concepts of science DO WORK and no matter what the field or how complex that field can get, the basic starting point of all science is simple, "Prior data, established formula, control groups, and peer review, and the ability to go where the evidence leads, not where you wish it would go, and the ability to scrap bad method and bad data".

[Brian37]

Read them all don't stop at one or two. I will say that "The Greatest Show on Earth was over my head, I am sure I could find evolution for dummies though.

While it's not technically what I would consider an atheist book The Greatest Show on Earth was one of my favorite reads in recent years, I loved every page of it and found every excuse to carry it around with me and read bits of it at every opportunity I could manage. When I finished it I wanted to immediately start it over again. Then again, though, I enjoy Dawkin's writing style and the subject matter; I liked The God Delusion, too.

Harris, for me, is better when I listen to him on youtube videos rather than read his books, I find them very dense and somewhat dry and have a hard time maintaining interest/focus while reading them sometimes. Is Hitchens more or less dense than Harris?

I'm reading Dennett's Breaking the Spell right now and am enjoying it and am planning on reading Proving History by Richard Carrier next.

I love Harris, his "Letter To a Christian Nation, is a tie with "The End Of Faith", but as I have conveyed before, when he talks about "spirituality" and Buddhism, I get the same lip twitch knowing that Newton got physics right but also postulated alchemy.

Victor Stenger in "The New Atheism" I read after Harris. But was pleased to see that Victor had the same objections I did with the false analogy of "I am smart and educated, so therefor I am on to something". I love Harris but it frustrates me that his own woo is no different than Newton pining after alchemy working.

SAM SAM SAM, I love you. But please, whatever humans do, is not a patent or woo.

[HAL9000]

Really the only book I've ever read regarding atheism was fiction novel "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I am currently reading it now as I picked it up passively when it was on sale. It is very well written, I really like the way he writes.