A Question for an Atheist:?

Question

What writings can I obtain offline to help give me a better understanding of your position?

Thank you to you all for the assistance in my quest to a better understanding.

Answer 1

Russell is a good start, along with 'Why I am not a Christian' there is a good collection of articles called 'Sceptical essays'. Anything by Sagan who although not an atheist (at least not avowed) was quite good at the sceptics point of view, 'The Demon Haunted World' is particularly good.

Dawkins of course, but start with his earlier stuff, it is less polemical and leads you through to atheism in a more natural way than merely starting at the end as in 'The God Delusion'.

If you really feel up to it the granddaddy of them all is Hume, particularly his short essay 'On Miracles' and his masterpiece of western philosophy 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion' which shoots down the Creationist position in a witty and devasting way and is still a great read 250 years after it was written.

Answer 2

Depending on the position from which you're starting, there may be a great deal to read. It might help to know of any specific areas you might want to address.

After all, atheism is fundamentally a passive position: we simply don't believe in something - for various reasons - that other people do.

But of course in order to validate that position nowadays it's necessary to have counterarguments to match the ones that religionists adduce to explain their belief. Note that it was not always thus: in Voltaire's time, for instance, many atheists simply found the religious hypothesis an absurd and inadequate explanation for the world - without needing to put something in its place.

Now that science has revealed many of the facts behind ancient mysteries such as the origin of the universe, and of life, and of species and Man, a more active dialogue and debate should be possible. Sadly, that debate consists largely in Believers rejecting these scientific arguments - invariably with poorly-formed and frequently disingenuous arguments against.

A classic example is the Argument from Design, which seeks to demolish evolutionary theory on the grounds that all life-forms are perfectly matched to their environment in a way that appears to be the result of purposeful design.

If this interests you, you can do no better than to read Richard Dawkins' 'The Blind Watchmaker', which shows clearly and in detail how the effect of evolution is specifically to produce superbly-adapted creatures, that have the appearance of purposeful design.

Many anti-evolutionists attempt to belittle evolution on the false grounds that it's a theory of 'random chance'. In fact it's no more chance-based than American Idol, for example: the contestants entering the competition are randomly self-chosen, and have a random range of singing skills; but the group of judges are anything but random in their tough and meticulous selection of talent. In evolution's case, the mutations and variation are the talent set, and natural selection picks from these the creatures best able to survive.

If you're interested in the scientific underpinnings of evolution, 'Blind Watchmaker' will be instructive. For a more general look at the objections to religion that form the atheist outlook, Richard Dawkins has produced perhaps the best overall discussion in the form of 'The God Delusion', which has among the top of the Amazon bestsellers in the US, Canada and the UK for many months now, and would perhaps give the best grounding. It's a book of which Penn and Teller have said 'If this doesn't change the world, we're screwed'.

CD

Answer 3

Welcome to Russell's Teapot!
"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."

- Bertrand Russell

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I would recomend
"Why I am not a Christian" by Bertrand Russell.
"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins
"Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" by David Hume.
"De Natura Deorum" by Cicero.
"Letter to a Christian Nation" or "The End of Religion" both by Sam Harris

Edit, Somebody mentioned Neitzche, I think his best work was his last, "Twilight of the Idols Or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer"

Answer 4

Since atheism is a disbelief in supernatural religion, we don't have a belief that needs to be constantly reinforced by reading some text. Most of us are satisfied with just leading ordinary lives like everyone else.
Anyway, there is a magazine called American Atheist, and their address is:
PO Box 5733,
Parsippany, NJ 07054
You might try looking for issues of their magazine in a large library. Alternatively, look through the catalog at the library. You will probably find books on atheism or books on religion that discuss it, and probably any large bookstore will have books discussing it in their religious section.

Answer 5

Thank you for asking respectfully.

My position is based on the fact that there is no evidence for the existence of a god. I don't think one needs a book of any sort to point that out.

However, many believers seem to think that existence itself implies the existence of a god, and therefore an understanding of nature would be a good introduction to non-theist thought. The alt.talk.origins archive pages will give you an excellent introduction, and I strongly recommend them. Daniel Dennett's book "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" will help as well (so will the evolution books by Dawkins and Gould).

Many believers seem also to think that religious certainty implies the existence of gods. Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" is a great look at how our consciousness and belief-formation systems work, and how they are often fooled. In particular, the chapter on Heterophenomenology will help you to get past the false notions that "I'm certain, so it must be true" and "I experienced it, so it must be true".

Michael Schermer's "How We Believe" and Robert Solomon's "Spirituality for the Skeptic" are good representatives for these things as well. And Dennett's latest - "Breaking the Spell" - is a great explanation of how religion really develops.

Answer 6

Secular Web

Answer 7

Most people who are atheists are so because they accept evolution as the explanation of our origin. If you learn how evolution functions, I'm sure you'll get a better understanding of our point of view. So...

I recommend "On The Origin Of Species" by Charles Darwin. It's not the most comprehensive book on evolution but it's the one that introduced evolution to the world and it displays a broader spectrum of evolution than alot of other books on the subject do. By all means, though, read any other book written by the most educated people in the world. They know what they're talking about.

Answer 8

Consult some "recognized" reading material, on the subject. Use search engines, etc., for obtaining relevant research material, for a better study of the concept, and the basis of its origin.

Answer 9

The God Delusion - Dawkins.

There is a great chapter in Cosmos by Carl Sagan. And further it is scattered throughout the whole book, although the point of the book is a lot more about science than it is about the lack of religion.

Answer 10

unlike you we are not solely dependent on one book of fairy tales to fulfill our understanding of the world. the world is full of diversity and every human has a unique point of view... why? because every person has a different foundation for life a different community or culture that they come from... we are all influenced by different societies. we fulfill different needs in that society... getting 50$ from a stranger would not be received the same by everyone.. but this is just one example... a very poor person would feel grateful and guilt... you'd have to be very poor to understand that one... low income earner would feel something else middle class something different again and the very rich I have no idea what they would feel but i bet it is very different from the very poor..... the point being there are myriads of experiences that form a society and there are thousands of societies that form a world... open mindedness plays a role in seeing life as it is.... and evolution counts because we could look back at just the past 100 yrs and see that humanity has learned.... we are still learning so you can't depend on some old dusty book to know what we have yet to learn.... it's called growing up... we do it as one human we do it as a society now we do it as a world .