Please help spread the word by adding the Rational Atheist Book Club Profile as a friend. Thanks! A book club for friends of RATIONALATHEIST.COM. We will be diving into many interesting books, some of which will include The God Delusion, God: The Failed Hypothesis, Letter to a Christian Nation, The End of Faith, Breaking the Spell, The Science of Good and Evil, The Demon-Haunted World and more. It doesn’t matter if you’ve already read the books we will be reading/discussing. It’s always good to stay up-to-date on the issues they raise and get the input of others.
If you are a theist and wish to read along with us and comment, feel free. But if you are disrespectful, please expect the same treatment in return. We will be addressing a book for a specific length of time - posting comments WHILE we read the book, however, the topics will be left open indefintely so individuals can always post comments on a book that we have already read. |
|
CURRENT BOOKS |
| OCT - JAN 1 |
Letter to a Christian Nation By Sam Harris Humanity has had a long fascination with blood sacrifice. In fact, it has been by no means uncommon for a child to be born into this world only to be patiently and lovingly reared by religious maniacs, who believe that the best way to keep the sun on its course or to ensure a rich harvest is to lead him by tender hand into a field or to a mountaintop and bury, butcher, or burn him alive as offering to an invisible God. The notion that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that his death constitutes a successful propitiation of a &8220;loving&8221; God is a direct and undisguised inheritance of the superstitious bloodletting that has plagued bewildered people throughout history. . . |
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason By Sam Harris This important and timely book delivers a startling analysis of the clash of faith and reason in today's world. Harris offers a vivid historical tour of mankind's willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs, even when those beliefs are used to justify harmful behavior and sometimes-heinous crimes. He asserts that in the shadow of weapons of mass destruction, we can no longer tolerate views that pit one true god against another. Most controversially, he argues that we cannot afford moderate lip service to religion&8212;an accommodation that only blinds us to the real perils of fundamentalism. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris also draws on new evidence from neuroscience and insights from philosophy to explore spirituality as a biological, brain-based need. He calls on us to invoke that need in taking a secular humanistic approach to solving the problems of this world.
Natalie Angier wrote in the New York Times: "The End of Faith articulates the dangers and absurdities of organized religion so fiercely and so fearlessly that I felt relieved as I read it, vindicated&8230;.Harris writes what a sizable number of us think, but few are willing to say." |
Guns,
Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies By Jared Diamond
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a brilliant work answering the question of why the peoples of certain continents succeeded in invading other continents and conquering or displacing their peoples. This edition includes a new chapter on Japan and all-new illustrations drawn from the television series.
Until around 11,000 BC, all peoples were still Stone Age hunter/gatherers.
At that point, a great divide occurred in the rates that human societies
evolved. In Eurasia, parts of the Americas, and Africa, farming became
the prevailing mode of existence when indigenous wild plants and animals were domesticated by prehistoric planters and herders. As Jared Diamond vividly reveals, the very people who gained a head start in producing
food would collide with preliterate cultures, shaping the modern world
through conquest, displacement, and genocide.
The paths that lead from scattered centers of food to broad bands of settlement had a great deal to do with climate and geography. But how did differences in societies arise? Why weren't native Australians, Americans, or Africans the ones to colonize Europe? Diamond dismantles pernicious racial theories tracing societal differences to biological differences.
He assembles convincing evidence linking germs to domestication of animals, germs that Eurasians then spread in epidemic proportions in their voyages of discovery. In its sweep, Guns, Germs and Steel encompasses the rise of agriculture, technology, writing, government, and religion, providing
a unifying theory of human history as intriguing as the histories of
dinosaurs and glaciers. 32 illustrations. |
| 
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark By Carl Sagan ow can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don't understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions. Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms. |
UPCOMING BOOKS |
| |
JAN 1 - APR 1 | | | | |
PREVIOUS BOOKS |
| |
God:
The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist, By
Victor J Stenger
Meet
the Author Preface
Chapter
One: Models and Methods Chapter
Two: The Illusion of Design Chapter
Three: Searching for a World Beyond Matter Chapter
Four: Cosmic Evidence Chapter
Five: The Uncongenial Universe Chapter
Six: The Failures of Revelation Chapter
Seven: Do Our Values Come From God? Chapter
Eight: The Argument from Evil Chapters
Nine and Ten: Possible and Impossible Gods & Living in the Godless Universe | 
Darwinism
and Its Discontents by Michael Ruse
Meet
the Author Chapter
One Chapter
Two Chapter
Three Chapter
Four Chapter
Five Chapter
Six Chapter
Seven Chapter
Eight Chapter
Nine Chapter
Ten Chapter
Eleven Chapter
Twelve |
The
Science of Good and Evil by Michael Shermer
Meet
Michael Shermer, author of The Science of Good and Evil Part
One Part
Two |
LIFE!
Why We Exist... And What We Must Do To Survive by Martin G. Walker
Meet
the Author Discussion
on the Book
|
The
Top 10 Myths About Evolution by Cameron M. Smith and Charles Sullivan
Meet
the Authors Discussion
on the Book |
| The
Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for
God by Carl Sagan
Discussion
on the Book |
Breaking
the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett
Discussion
on the Book |
God
Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything By Christopher Hitchens
Discussion
on the Book
|
What
We Believe but Cannot Prove: Today’s Leading Thinkers on Science in
the Age of Certainty By John Brockman Discussion
on the Book |  The
Golden Compass By Phillip Pullman
Discussion
on the Book |
| The
Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini Discussion
on the Book | Plato
and Playtupus Walk Into a Bar
Discussion
on the Book |
Parenting
Beyond Belief 1)
Personal Reflections2)
Living with ReligionShould
we abolish religion or co-exist with it?3)
Holidays and Celebrations4)
On Being and Doing Good5) Values and Virtues, Purpose and Meaning
6)
Death and Consolation7)Wondering
and Questioning8)
Jaw-dropping, Mind-buzzing science9)
Seeking Community | Why
I am Not a Christian Discussion
on the Book | |
Blasphemy
By Douglas Preston Discussion
on the Book |
Coincidences,
Chaos, and All That Math Jazz: Making Light of Weighty Ideas By Edward
B. Burger, Michael Starbird Discussion
on the Book |
The
Republican War on Science By Chris Mooney Discussion
on the Book | | |