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Atheism: The Case Against God - George H. Smith
#11
RE: Atheism: The Case Against God - George H. Smith
Ok, I'm going to take some time to examine this carefully because I feel like something is missing in this reasoning put forth. Just can't pinpoint whether it has to do with one's state of mind being assumed to be outside the chain of causal events and then somehow being included all of a sudden, or if it's something else.
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#12
RE: Atheism: The Case Against God - George H. Smith
Ok, so here's my thinking so far:

My crystal ball reveals a future in which Trump becomes president, so long as I am not led to view what the crystal ball reveals. However, if I do see through the crystal ball that Trump will become president, then this will lead me to a course of action that prevents Trump from becoming president.

This suggests to me that the crystal ball did not reveal to me the event that would inevitably happen, but rather the event that would happen if I was not led to view the event through the crystal ball. But then me being led to view the event though the crystal ball was something the crystal ball failed to "predict".

So I remain convinced that you cannot really know at any point in time how the future will unfold if you are going to be led to change that future. You can only have that knowledge [theoretically] if it is impossible to be led to change that future.
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#13
RE: Atheism: The Case Against God - George H. Smith
I do remember reading some of this book and I guess the most interesting part in it, that is not so much discussed in other "atheist" books, is how this God today that Bible non-literalist Christians worship is actually not God of Christianity but God of Agnosticism - you know when they put God in another dimension/ at the beginning of time/ another galaxy.

And indeed, when you think about it in the Bible it is described that Heaven consists of seven layers and that God is on the seventh one. But, of course, with time people discovered that was not the case and Christians lapsed into agnosticism trying desperately to compensate with science while looking for new home for their God.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
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#14
RE: Atheism: The Case Against God - George H. Smith
First atheist book I read, back in the day.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard P. Feynman
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#15
RE: Atheism: The Case Against God - George H. Smith
(August 16, 2019 at 6:38 pm)Grandizer Wrote: Has anyone read this book? I'm halfway through finally, and it's actually not bad from a philosophical angle. If you thought Hitchens' "God is not Great", Dawkins' "The God Delusion", and Harris' "The End of Faith" were rather unfulfilling in this respect, give this book a read. Though a little outdated now and not in tune with the latest discoveries of modern science, and though Smith is very aggressively anti-theist, he nevertheless takes the arguments made by theists seriously and provides precise and perhaps very pedantic counters to the arguments (without going over the top with flowery language). It's not the most entertaining read, though, but it's got value.

When I was Vice-Director of the Connecticut Chapter of American Atheists during the 1980's I used to pass out free copies of this book to new members.  Great
"The world is my country; all of humanity are my brethren; and to do good deeds is my religion." (Thomas Paine)
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#16
RE: Atheism: The Case Against God - George H. Smith
I read it in 1995 and it corrected some misapprehensions I had about atheism. My main motivation for reading it was my prof for intro to religion said he wasn't going to cover atheism because it's illogical, so I checked out the book so I could see for myself. If the had just said he wasn't covering atheism because it isn't a religion, my interest would not have been piqued. Besides the prof's 'logical' arguments against atheism and the logic course I was taking at the same time, George Smith's book was the biggest influence on helping me realize I'm an atheist.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
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#17
RE: Atheism: The Case Against God - George H. Smith
Up to the ethics section now but haven't finished it all yet. Makes a really good point for moral naturalism actually, whereby he clearly shows how moral oughts are objectively based on what is of value to man (using analogies in medicine and architecture) rather than what man subjectively values. In other words, there is the objective sense of value and there's the subjective sense of value.

That said, considering how he's starting to "fanboy" for Ayn Rand in this section, I'm a bit wary of what he's about to argue next in terms of the specific code of ethics (if he does argue for such), but as far as the moral philosophy itself goes broadly, I see no issue.

So far, my favorite in this book has been one of the prior sections where he contrasts faith with reason and thoroughly shows how unreliable faith is as a means to knowledge of God.
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#18
RE: Atheism: The Case Against God - George H. Smith
Just finished the book. His last chapter on Christian ethics was too biased against Christianity, but the author did a good job showing that the moral teachings of Jesus in the Gospels weren't anything remarkably original and that they were never meant at all for today's generations but rather they were intended to prepare the generation of followers in his lifetime for the expected imminent coming of the kingdom of God (e.g., the "sell all you have and give to the poor, and you will amass treasure in heaven" teaching). Also made a great point about how Jesus (per the Gospels) really wasn't that great of a philosopher compared to the likes of Socrates.

His Epilogue (written around 40 years after the first publication of the book) was very illuminating, shedding some light on who the author is, how he was raised, what got him interested in the topic of religion and philosophy, and the stressful experience of writing his first book ever as someone who was still in his early twenties. There is a level of self-awareness involved in this Epilogue which I did not see much of throughout the book itself, and he explains how the way he wrote so passionately back in his twenties in this book no longer reflects his style of writing.
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