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{"id":2039,"date":"2013-02-23T13:24:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-23T13:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/02\/a-reading-list-for-atheists.html"},"modified":"2013-02-23T13:24:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-23T13:24:00","slug":"a-reading-list-for-atheists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/02\/a-reading-list-for-atheists.html","title":{"rendered":"A reading list for atheists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

OK, nobody was speaking of John C. Wright, but by goodness they ought to be. \u00a0Here he is<\/a>, giving a list of reading materials he would and wouldn\u2019t recommend to the aspiring atheist. \u00a0It\u2019s a fair list. \u00a0Though I was shocked he didn\u2019t include Sam Harris or Christopher\u00a0Hitchens\u00a0due to never having read them. \u00a0I admit I\u2019ve not read Harris\u2019s later works, though his breakout book The End of Faith<\/i> was riddled with all\u00a0manner\u00a0 of errors and false assumptions, and seemed to set the standard for the movement known as\u00a0modern\u00a0atheism (who needs facts when you know religion is dumb?). \u00a0I know he corrected some of the errors in later years, such as crime rates associated with secular\/religious societies, and did back down on his basic call to eradicate religions he\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0like\u00a0from\u00a0the planet. \u00a0But still. <\/p>\n

Hitchens, also, was a factual train wreck, \u00a0and many things he\u00a0spoke\u00a0about as firmly rooted in fact were the stuff that would get you a D- in most college courses. His many errors in god is Not Great<\/i> were examples of his fast and loose approach to facts. \u00a0I enjoyed reading reviews of the book as various individuals with expertise in different fields all disassembled the book and its\u00a0inaccuracies,\u00a0 while also deferring to experts in other fields as if to say \u2018he\u2019s probably only wrong with the facts I know, not those over there.\u2019 Hitchens was the living example of how a British accent and a caustic wit will get you bonus points in modern American debate, God rest his soul.<\/p>\n

As for the others on the list, the only one I\u2019m aware of I might question is the late, great Carl Sagan. \u00a0Yes, a popular evangelist for the pre-Harris styled atheism, Sagan still demonstrated some pretty weak knowledge of religion in general and biblical studies in\u00a0particular\u00a0 \u00a0I will always remember seeing a lecture he gave ages ago in which he said if you believed the Bible, you must believe the world is flat with four corners, referencing images from the Book of Revelation. \u00a0Even fundamentalists could shoot that one out of the sky. \u00a0Brilliant man, but like Stephen Hawking, only within his particular realm of expertise. \u00a0Otherwise, a reading list worth looking at, for the atheist or the thinking believer.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"