The Atheist Book Club discussion

That looks good!

i'm going to look at the sample from Kindle and see if it's worth buying the entire book. thanks for the suggestion

I'll look also.

I haven't read this book, but it probably makes sense to compare it to The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I find Dawkins a bit strident. The first half of his book was good; the second to much of a rant against religion without getting to any point.

Rants against religion always make me smile.

A fast read, filled with many specifics as well as arguments to fuel an atheist's righteous anger. I particularly liked the section debunking the argument that religion is a source of comfort.

But religion is a source of comfort. It doesn't need to be the only one, but that is a role it has successfully filled for centuries. And let me add an anecdote. A women in the small town I grew up in was overheard by my mother chatting with the minster in the receiving line right after the Sunday service (Episcopalian) had ended. She thanked him for his sermon and said, "I don't believe in God in the least, bu tit is a comfort to come here all the same." (Or something to that effect). The comfort is real. Even I, an atheist sine age 6 or so, love visiting churches (not services I emphasize). It is the small churches in Europe I favor, and I have had no more profound experience than wandering into the empty chapel of a convent in Salzburg, and hearing teh nuns choir (completely unseen) perform Gregorian chants. (Yes it was the same convent Maria von Trapp was in). Did it shake my commitment to atheism? Not a bit. I just appreciate what such things have to offer. We atheist should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Religion has had and still has its value on a personal level as comfort in a troubled world. Our target should not be that; it should be the aspect of religion that seeks to control minds for terrestrial political purposes, for that is truly an enemy of humanity.

Religion is no comfort to me more like a pest.

You miss my point. Faith, whether religious or atheist (yes, atheist faith exists. It is the faith of human beings toward each other. trust in other words.) is a positive thing. Rigid belief is not. religion has worn both of these hats and it is time to separate them. Labeling the great unknowns of the universe "God" seems primitive, but it is merely a vocabulary for understanding. Where atheists diverge is in attaching human attribute to God. There is no reason to do so and very reason not to. The universe is a fluidity of physical forces, subject, we assume to rational investigation. If those who believe in God are open to such investigation, they are merely using a different vocabulary. If they are not, they are to my mind idolatrous (I know, it sounds odd): they are making God a being with human characteristics but without human limits. Not possible. This is what causes the harm, because it is a slippery slope that ends with sincere investigators of the unknown being burned at the stake or bent to submission (e.g., Galileo). Religions are still doing this today--all of them (except perhaps Buddhism, which really isn't the same anyway.

Xox wrote: "Timothy wrote: "You miss my point. Faith, whether religious or atheist (yes, atheist faith exists. It is the faith of human beings toward each other. trust in other words.) is a positive thing. Rig..."

No. Absolutely not. Faith is trust. Belief is insistence on something as being fact. There are certainly overlaps, but the debate over the conflict between faith and belief has been going on for a long time. Faith implies mental openness, belief implies mental closure. This is a complex debate. And remember, before Darwin (though he had many antecedents), religion controlled the debate about just about everything. That has changed only slowly. But we owe it to ourselves to take the time to look at all angles. Yes, a lot of religious belief is based on fiction (nonsense is too imprecise a word here) that has been taken for fact. The rest is politics and best understood as such (since 300 BCE at least). Yet human beings have spiritual/emotional needs that must be addressed. It is now up to the atheist community to look at those needs and find ways to address them that allow people to eliminate religion as the sole avenue for addressing those needs.

Definition of faith: A medieval superstition used before science and reason came about no longer useful in modern times.

Depsite my dislike of Xox's aggresive and outright rude tone, I have to agree. Faith is belief in something without evidence, or even despite of evidence. Trust is something that is earned through actions. The main difference is in the way it holds up to betrayal. Faith would be to adhere to an idea, or person, even if that idea or person proved to harmful or false in some way, more specifically, it would be ignoring the harm or betrayal because you have faith that it will be all right in the end, and that the idea or person will behave or act in the way you have faith that they will. Whereas if someone you trust proves themselves false, then the trust is damaged, or even lost, because they have provided evidence that you shouldn't trust them. It would be irrational to continue trusting a person who had hurt you, and it would require work on their part ot regain and repair the damage they have done. Faith in a person, however, would mean continuing to get hurt while telling yourself that "I have faith, they will become what I believe they are, it will be as I believe it should be". This is irrational, and damaging.

Faith is something you have without any evidence to support why you have it, or that continues despite evidence showing that what you have faith in not worthy or not what it claims to be, or even is non existent. Trust, however, is an evidence based position, built on knowledge of a person, and them having built that trust up through their actions and attitudes.

As for providing something to replace religion for fulfilling emotional needs, no-one needs to do that, it already exists. Its called family and community. Groups crop up to provide community, support and emotional well being already without the need to rely on religion for it. And as these atheist and secular groups welcome all with open arms, they're already ahead of religion, which rejects people due to sexuality, race, holding alternative religious beliefs, etc etc. Just as an example, no atheist group would reject someone due to their sexuality, in contrast, 40% of al the homeless teenagers in Salt Lake City are homeless because their mormon parents kicked them out for being gay (Thats a stat I got from Greta Christina, so I felt it should be the one I use here ;P)

Hazel wrote: "Depsite my dislike of Xox's aggresive and outright rude tone, I have to agree. Faith is belief in something without evidence, or even despite of evidence. Trust is something that is earned through ..."

Faith and trust are synonyms when used in a non-religious context. When you say you have faith in someone, you are not saying you worship them; you are saying to trust them and believe in them as a person. Where the difficulty lies is when these words are used in a religious context because the meanings get corrupted by dogma. This is why sorting this out is so difficult. But one cannot banish these words simply because of their religious connotations in certain contexts. But even within religion there is a clear distinction between faith and belief. Faith is open; belief is closed. it is useful to think of this as a spectrum with rigid, fundamentalist belief on one end and open, nonsectarian faith on the other. I strongly feel that we atheists need to step back from being so reactive to loaded words and re-claim the vocabulary. That is why I feel this exercise is useful. Religion has too long controlled the way people perceive the universe. But we do have to acknowledge the role of trust in each other (which I chose to call faith as well) as a fundamental building block of human society. And interpersonal trust is not objective, based on cold facts alone. In the end, it is very much a leap of faith, just not a religious one. This sort of faith is a moral concept and my whole point is to take the religious vocabulary out of discussions of morality. This is the job of being an atheist thinker, to my mind.

Look. I am a professional writer, editor, and former lawyer. I speak four languages and studied a fifth, Chinese (modern and classical), for several years. I also studied Latin and ancient Greek. I think I know what words mean and how their meanings fluctuate. What you should do is some research on the topic of faith and belief. You will find it is both difficult and fascinating. Yes, words are tricky. In every language. So we have to be careful, respectful and precise. And please understand, you and I agree on a great deal. The challenge for us both is to create a vocabulary for atheism that replaces what religion has done.

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. Friedrich Nietzsche

As I said, do a little research about the long-standing debate over faith and belief. And you haven't really read what I said about the leap of faith between people that creates trust. No religion involved, but there is no way one can prove that another person is 100% trustworthy. You need to have faith in that person. Very simple. Very complicated.

Religious language is unverifiable and hence factually meaningless.

Xox wrote: "I did a little search on the use of the word "faith". Faith is the word used by religious fuckheads and idiots. I suggested that rational people to stop using the word "faith" for anything positive..."

Not much of a hockey fan, are you?

I think perhaps we need to look at the title of this thread and get back to the issue of atheist anger. Yes, we are angry--at thousands of years of religious manipulation of our minds and our lives. But we must channel and discipline our anger. Because if we don't we run the risk of becoming that we we despise: religious zealots, but without the religion. We must not make a cult out of atheism, the way people like Ayn Rand did. We must be better than that. So we must decide why we are atheists. it is not enough to be against religion; we must be for something. My choice is to be for a system of moral understanding that is independent of religion. If we could take the debate over good and evil, right and wrong, and remove religion form it, we will have accomplished a great deal.

Xox wrote: "Timothy wrote: "Xox wrote: "I did a little search on the use of the word "faith". Faith is the word used by religious fuckheads and idiots. I suggested that rational people to stop using the word "..."

It's a movie about the 1980 US Olympic hockey team. They won the gold medal in the last winter Olympics to omit professional hockey players. The title is "Miracle," and it is a wonderful movie--about hope, hard work, and believing in each other. and it has nothing to do with religion at all. Nothing. Watch it. And then decide if faith is only a religious concept.

Xox wrote: "Timothy wrote: "I think perhaps we need to look at the title of this thread and get back to the issue of atheist anger. Yes, we are angry--at thousands of years of religious manipulation of our min..."

Read about Ayn Rand and decide for yourself whether she formed a cult or not. She was a severe atheist, but not anyone we should follow or emulate. I am not saying we should not be angry; I am saying we must channel our anger productively, to get rid of the influence of religion over politics everywhere in the world. Agreed?

Xox wrote: "Despite my dislike of Hazel for being insulting even when she agrees with me"

Really? Really?! I point out that you were rude and aggressive, which is demonstrably the case, and you throw that back as me being insulting. No, I was not being insulting, I was being accurate. If you don't like someone being "insulting" about you, maybe you should learn to reign in your aggression, and not dole it out in spades, I have as yet to read a post of yours that isn't aggressive and derogatory in tone. Even if thats truly how you feel (which I do completely understand), you'd get your point across better if you weren't such a twat about it (that ones actually an insult). You will find people will listen to you more.

Timothy is right about anger, it is better when it is directed and controlled in a productive manner. Hell, this thread is about a book by Greta Cristina, based on a talk she gave on anger, in which that is exactly what she says. Throwing around nasty names, and scathing insults as you do is neither of these things, and just makes you look like a complete dickhead (there you go, that one was an insult too). The crying shame is, if you take the time to read your posts, and try to ignore the derogatory tone, there are some salient points. Try making them in a calm and polite manner, people are less likely to think "Oh, its Xox's post, I'm not reading it" (I didn't say respectful, by the way, but without calling people idiots, without shouting bullshit, by tempering yourself, you'll get your point across better.)

Oh, and also, stop misinterpreting what Timothy is saying, he says something that you should be agreeing with like "We must not make a cult out of atheism, the way people like Ayn Rand did. We must be better than that", and you jump down his neck for it. Ayn Rand did start a cult, she was an atheist, she's really quite famous for it, yet you yell at Timothy for saying we must ensure this doesn't happen again, when you should be agreeing that that is exactly what we should be ensuring doesn't happen.

Timothy wrote: "But religion is a source of comfort. It doesn't need to be the only one, but that is a role it has successfully filled for centuries. And let me add an anecdote. A women in the small town I grew up..."


Some of that "troubled world" is the direct cause of religion and a good chunk more is caused by other dogma. Having faith in a god (which has no evidence at all) and having faith in a good friend are completely different things. We at least have evidence that the friend exists, and not having faith in that friend will neither break my leg nor pick my pocket. Faith in the friend should really be called "reasonable expectation".

Timothy wrote: "As I said, do a little research about the long-standing debate over faith and belief. And you haven't really read what I said about the leap of faith between people that creates trust. No religion ..."


Name one thing we have 100% evidence for?

Graham wrote: "Timothy wrote: "As I said, do a little research about the long-standing debate over faith and belief. And you haven't really read what I said about the leap of faith between people that creates tru..."

Exactly. Faith is everywhere. It is the cornerstone for our survival and our society in many ways.

Timothy wrote: "As I said, do a little research about the long-standing debate over faith and belief. And you haven't really read what I said about the leap of faith between people t..." No.

This is just a word game you are playing. We need faith only when do not have evidence. Faith is redundant when evidence is forthcoming. Faith (when used not in the godly sense) means "reasonable expectations". These 2 things are very different propositions.

I tend to agree, but good evidence, reliable, convincing evidence is rare outside the lab and often even tricky then. But the debate over faith and belief is not a word games too many lives have been lost over the centuries in the name of religion to dismiss it quite so easily.

I have yet to hear anyone question gravity, aerodynamics and the strong nuclear force when flying at 35,000 ft. This is evidence that those disciplines work! I don't need to understand the data to in a lab to know that. Evidence in the everyday world doesn't need to be scientific, this is a standard that, as you say is hard to achieve, but it is still evidence.

This is not what we are talking about when we talk about religious faith. We don't need faith that plane will fly or the atoms that make up its structure will suddenly release their bonds. Its reasonable expectation.

People believe things because they believe the proposition to be true, faith and belief are interchangeable words when we talk about propositions that cannot be falsified or proven true.

a distinction needs to be made here. The concept of faith begins with interpersonal faith, trust between two people. It cannot begin elsewhere. Belief starts in another place, in the notion that some things are true (whatever they are). The two concepts merge because we must inevitably trust that things are true because either we cannot be sure to begin with or because we have to take other people's word for it. We can't search for the ultimate proof of every single alleged fact in the universe ourselves. So we trust. We have faith.
Then religion comes in. Relgion seeks to provide ultimate answers, solid, immutable facts. But since there is no way of proving the allegations of the divine realm concretely, we must trust. We must have faith. The problem comes in where belief in these "divine" facts becomes rigid. Faith is no longer the issue, adherence (read obedience) to a fixed belief is (faith is not and cannot be fixed because it is open). Religion requires obedience and punishes anyone who questions the object of the belief. And so the interpersonal faith we began with is perverted into dogma. We know what happens then.

Faith, or belief are both reasonable words to use about atheism. As an atheist, I have faith in the scientific method as a means for uncovering laws and principles I can apply for adaptive purposes. I cannot prove in a logical sense that this method of discovery will always be the best way to proceed, but I believe that it will. To have faith in something is not a concept alien to atheists. The turning point is what is the object of your faith? If it's a mystical being of omniscience, you're certainly not an atheist.

I think the source of the atheist's anger may be rooted in the same persecutions carried in Xox's rhetoric. While I agree with many of his points, I refuse to lump all people of religious faith under the rubric of 'idiot.' It is the same prosecution as implied by the phrase 'godless idiots' applied to atheists; as if we are somehow missing out on some important point due to a stunted intellect.

As an atheist, it does not disturb me that other people choose to believe in a god, since very many intellectuals throughout history (St Thomas Aquinas for one) have tried to address a proof of God to no avail. Yet science, based on logic but still not needing to lay claim to any eternal truth, is undeniably successful, as any person of faith must admit, unless they stand before you in bearskins and still use stone knives. Logic is my bulwark (phraseology intended). The more accommodating we are as a group to people of faith, the more our point of view might be considered.

Very well said! You speak for us all (I hope).

Why should we accomidate people of faith? People of faith are responsible for anti gay laws, Women's reproductive rights, creationism in biology text books and other basic human rights violations. And don't forget all those who love to slam planes into buildings they had plenty of faith.

Carl wrote: "Why should we accomidate people of faith? People of faith are responsible for anti gay laws, Women's reproductive rights, creationism in biology text books and other basic human rights violations. ..."

Xox has summed it up perfectly. Accommodate the faithful as a tactic for communication. When we try to engage the faithful, using 'faith' as I employed it in my post is a place of commonality to start from. Will this lead to understanding on the part of the (religious)faithful? Perhaps. Will it lead to their abdication of 'faeries under the garden'(Dawson's term). Most probably not. However, to circle back to the topic of this thread, should we be angry and confrontational, or firm and persuasive? I vote for the latter.

Xox wrote: "Michael wrote: "However, to circle back to the topic of this thread, should we be angry and confrontational, or firm and persuasive? I vote for the latter. "

Why not both? I would start off as tac..."

I think we just have different personalities, LOL. You do raise a legitimate point, and though our styles differ, methinks are goals are aligned!

Wow, I thought this book was pretty bad. How disappointing. Does anyone have recommendations on other books that address this topic better?