Annotated Atheist Reading List

© Brooke Clarke 2009


Background
A Knock on the Door
Books Read
    The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
    The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
    The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins - Tree of Life
    The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design by Richard Dawkins
    Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment by Phil Zuckerman
    Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
    The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris
    God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens
    Breaking the Spell by Daniel C. Dennett
    The Ethical Brain by Michael S. Gazzaniga
    Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives by Michael Specter
    the blank slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker
    Trick or Treatment: The undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine  by Simon Singh & Edzrd Ernst MD
    The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria
    Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
    Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) by Richard P. Feynman
    The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard P. Feynman
    What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman
    Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charles P. Pierce
    Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America by P.D. Gaubatz & P. Sperry
    The Road to Serfdom, by F.A. Hayek
    Monetary Regimes and Inflation: History, Economic and Political Relationships by Peter Bernholz
    Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led To Vietnam by H.R. McMaster
    The Girl with Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
    The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
    The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest by Stieg Larsson

DVDs Watched
Now Reading
  
    Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam  by Michel Onfray
To Be Read
On Order
To Be Ordered
People
Jeremy Rifken
Vilayanur Ramachandran
Srikumar S. Rao
George Carlin
Penn Jillette
James Randy
Bill Maher
The Four Horsemen
Richard Dawkins
Daniel Dennett
Sam Harris
Christopher Hitchens
A.J. Jacobs
June Cohen - book list for TED
Pat Condell - list of videos
Links

Background

It's becoming clear that the U.S. is being severely damaged by it's religious population.   It used to be that the religious people claimed that without religion the world would be much worse off, but the opposite is the case.  This is made clear in the newer books related to Atheism, most of which have been written post 9/11.  I see this as a positive benefit of the events of 9/11.

This is a part of a larger problem of people believing in what amounts to nonsense.  For example see the listing at:
http://www.prc68.com/I/Faradic.shtml#Quackery

A Knock on the Door

Jan 2010 - On the front porch were a couple of men in suits, one of them carrying a book with a black cover.  I invited them in and they said more people were in the car so I ask that they also come in.  The four men and myself talked for over an hour.  They were Jehovah's Witnesses (Wiki).  It turns out that they do NOT believe in evolution, but instead intelligent design.  They also:
They gave me a free copy of Awake! which I've read.  It has a number of misrepresented "facts".  One of them relates to William Paley (Wiki) who was the author of the Watchmaker Analogy (Wiki) in 1802.  Darwin published his theory of evolution in 1838.  After reading the Paley article in Awake! I see why Dawkins titled one of his books The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design and so now have it on order along with The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.

I asked that they come back in a month so I could do my homework on evolution.

Books Read

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan, ( @Amazon , Wiki book, author)

Hardcover: Random House; Later Printing edition January 1, 1995
Paperback: Ballantine Books, February 25, 1997 ISBN-13: 978-0345409461
Carl Sagan (Wiki Carl) "(November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrochemist, author, and highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics and other natural sciences. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

This is the first book that's easy to read and makes a logical case for atheism that I found.

Wiki: "He is world-famous for writing popular science books and for co-writing and presenting the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which has been seen by more than 500 million people in over 60 countries.[2] A book to accompany the program was also published. He also wrote the novel Contact, the basis for the 1997 film of the same name. One of the last books he wrote was Pale Blue Dot. During his lifetime, Sagan published more than 600 scientific papers and popular articles and was author, co-author, or editor of more than 20 books. In his works, he frequently advocated skeptical inquiry, secular humanism, and the scientific method."

May 27, 1996 on Charlie Rose Show -

Part 1, We live in an age based on science and technology with formidable technological powers.  ... There's no more than a handful of members of congress with any background in science at all. The Republican congress has just abolished it's own Office of Technology Assessment. ... CR: What's the danger of all this? 
There's two kinds of danger, 1) One is what I just talked about.  We've arranged this society based on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology.  And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power are sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces.  . . . 2) And the second reason that I'm worried about this is that science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking.  A way of skeptically interrogating the universe, with a fine understanding of human fallibility.  If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes along.

CR: There are millions of people that understand that science does not prove religion because religion is faith based and therefore you should not deny the value of it because it is faith based and not scientific. 
Let's look a little more deeply into that.  What is faith, it's belief in the absence of evidence.  I don't propose to tell anybody what to believe, but for me believing when there's no compelling evidence is a mistake.  The idea is to withhold belief until there's compelling evidence.  .... Where religion gets into trouble is in those cases where it pretends to know something about science.  The science in the Bible for example was acquired from the Jews by the Babylonians during the Babylon captivity of 600 BC.  That was the best science on the planet then, but we've learned something since then.  Roman Catholicism, reformed Judaism, most of the mainstream Protestant denominations have no difficulty with the idea that humans have evolved from other creatures, that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old, the big bang.  They don't have any trouble with that.  The trouble comes with people who are biblical literalistists who believe that the bible is dictated by the creator of the universe to an unerring stenographer and has no metaphor or allegory in it. ...

Part 2,
CR: You seem to say it's growing, this pseudo science.  ...
CS: The problem is that today the technology has reached formidable, maybe even awesome, proportions and so the dangers of thinking this way are larger.  Not that this is a new kind of thing.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (his web page) ( @Amazon ,WiKi on Richard)

Hardcover:
Paperback: Mariner Books; Reprint edition (January 16, 2008) ISBN-13: 978-0618918249
Richard sets out to make a case for atheism in this book but does not include the arguments for Evolution here.  By using evolution Richard explains the development of complex life forms. 
This book was very well received, prompting two books written to try and refute Richard's arguments, they are:
God is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins by Thomas Crean (Paperback - Oct 31, 2007)
and
The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine by Alister E. McGrath and Joanna Collicutt Mcgrath (Hardcover - Jun 8, 2007)
There is an hour and 10 minute video where Dawkins and McGrath "debate" the issues, but in many cases McGrath will not answer Richard's questions.

" And I thought and thought and thought.  But I just didn't have enough to go on, so I didn't really come to any resolution.  I was extremely doubtful about the idea of god, but I just didn't know enough about anything to have a good working model of any other explanation for, well lift, the universe, and everything to put in its place.  But I kept at it, and I kept reading and I kept thinking.  Sometime around my early thirties I stumbled upon Evolutionary biology, particularly in the form of  Richard Dawking's books The Selfish Game and then The Blind Watchmaker, and suddenly (on, I think the second reading of The Selfish Gene) it all fell into place.  It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, neutrally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life.  The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it.  I'd take the awe of understanding, over the awe of ignorance any day."  Douglas Adams (pg 116)

Six Numbered Points:  (pg 157, 158)
  1. One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect, over the centuries, has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of the design in the universe arises.
  2. The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself.  In the case of a man-made artifact such as a watch, the designer really was an intelligent engineer.  It is tempting to apply the same logic to the eye or wing, a spider or a person.
  3. The temptation is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem is who designed the designer.  The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability.  It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable.  We need a "crane", not a "skyhook", for only a crane can do the business of working up gradually and plausibly from simplicity to otherwise improbably complexity.
  4. The most ingenious and powerful crane so far discovered is Darwinian evolution by natural selection.  Darwin and his successors have shown how living creatures, with their spectacular statistical improbability and appearance of design, have evolved by slow, gradual degrees from simple beginnings.  We can now safely say that the illusion of design in living creatures is just that - an illusion.
  5. We don't yet have an equivalent crane for physics.  Some kind of multiverse theory could in principle do for physics the same explanatory work as Darwinism does for biology.  This kind of explanation is superficially less satisfying that the biological version of Darwinism, because ti makes heavier demands on luck.  But the anthropic principle entitles us to postulate for more luck than our limited human intuition is comfortable with.
  6. We should not give up hope of a better crane arising in the physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology.  But even in the absence of a strongly satisfying crane to match the biological one, the relatively weak cranes we have at present are, when abetted by the anthropic principle, self-evidently better than the self-defeating skyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer.
"Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man - living in the sky - who watches everything you do, every minute of every day.  And the invisible man has a special list of ten things, he has not want you to do.  And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry  forever and ever 'til the end of time . . . But He lover you!" ... George Carlin  (pg 279)

"Fundamentalist religion is hell-bent on ruining the scientific education of countless thousands of innocent, well-meaning, eager young minds.  Non-fundamentalist, 'sensible' religion may not be doing that.  But it is making the world safe for fundamentalism by teaching children, from their earliest years, that unquestioning faith is a virtue." (pg 286)

"Our Western politicians avoid mentioning the R word (religion), and instead characterize their battle as a war against 'terror', as though terror were a kind of spirit or force, with a will and a mind of it's own.   Or they characterize terrorists as motivated by pure 'evil'.  But they are not motivated by evil.  However misguided we may think them, they are motivated, like the Christian murders of abortion doctors, by what they perceive to be righteousness, faithfully pursuing what their religion tells them.  They are not psychotic, they are religious idealists who, by their own lights, are rational.  They perceive their acts to be good, not because of some warped personal idiosyncrasy, and not because they have been possessed by Satan, but because they have been brought up, from the cradle, to have total and unquestioning faith."  (pg 304)

'I Am Offended!' - Richard Dawkins @ UC Berkeley

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins ( @Amazon )

hardcover 2009 ISBN 978-1-4165-9478-9
This book was written to present the evidence for evolution but is a great book for learning about evolution.  It's truly an amazing thing.
On pg 24 is the Hairpin Thought Experiment.  The connection between any living thing can be traced by going back (de-evolution) in time to some ancestor, then making a hairpin turn, and then going forward in time (evolution).  Note that there is not a horizontal connection between current animals. 

Tree of Life

David M. Hillis, Derrick Zwickl, and Robin Gutell, University of Texas Tree Of Life
On pg 329 is a small image of the David M. Hillis, Derrick Zwickl, and Robin Gutell, University of Texas Tree Of Life showing the evolutionary family connections of animals, plants, Fungi, Protists, Bacteria & Archaea (3,000 species less than 1% of all species shown).  Based on RNA genetic coding.  The Just under ANIMALS is a "You are here" for humans.  Note if in Acrobat Page Scaling you select "Tile All Pages" then 35 sheets will be printed which when assembled will make a single sheet about 5 feet on a side allowing you to read the names on the outside edge. 
Discover Life - has a linear version of the Tree of Life
Introduction to Phylogeny - Tree of Life alphabetical with common names
for example: animals - Chordata (animal phylum) - Vertebrates - Mammals & kin - Mammals - Placental mammals - Primates - Homo sapiens
 PBS - What Darwin Never Knew - Dec 2009 Transcript is on line, DVD for sale.  Has info on Chimp jaw muscle size vs. human jaw muscle size and it's effect on brain cavity size. (that may be the difference between chimps and humans)!

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design by Richard Dawkins ( @Amazon )

This book was written to present definitive refutations of the arguments of creationists.  But it also has a chapter about bats and has a lot about evolution.
Note the title is based on the work of William Paley (see above).  Paley, Dawkins and myself  have a great appreaction of the spendor of life on earth.  It's just that scientific knowledge was primitive in Paley's time and he got it all wrong.

Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment by Phil Zuckerman ( @Amazon )

Hardcover: NYU Press (October 1, 2008) ISBN-13: 978-0814797143
Associate Professor of Sociology at Pitzer College
Phil spent a year living in Denmark and interviewing people there.  It is the country that has the least theism (most atheist).  It's also a country that is in the top ten countries for lowest homicide, lowest infant mortality, lowest rape, highest longevity, most contented population, i.e. a very good place to live.  The point Phil was setting out to make was that lacking God a society will get along just fine.  But I think he has made the point that when the leaders of a country believe in God they will make much poorer decisions than a more rational person so "God Fearing" countries are much worse off.

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris ( @Amazon )

Sam started this book on the day after 9/11 and after hearing an audio book version it's clear he very concerned about how the world can survive if religions continue as they are.  He makes a case that the Holocaust was caused by Christianity.  The Vatican maintained the "blood libel" story as late as 1914.  The church opened it's genological records to the German Nazis so they could find the Jews.  Not a single German Catholic has ever been excommunicated, even to this date. 

Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris (Sam Harris web page, @Amazon )

Paperback:  Vintage Books, Jan 2008, ISBN-13: 978-0307278777
Sam has written the book as a letter to a Christian.  He uses the technique of giving an example in another religion and then pointing out that the same argument applies to Christianity.  

"The same Gallup poll revealed that 53 percent of Americans are actually creationists." (pg x)
Among developed nations, America stands alone in these convictions.  Our country now appears, as at no other time in her history, like a lumbering, bellicose, dim-witted giant.  Anyone who cares about the fate of civilization would do well to recognize that the combination of great power and great stupidity is simply terrifying, even to one's friends."  (pg xi) (BC: added larger font and bold)

Countries where religion is almost non existent are: Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom (pg 43).
"In 2005,  a survey was conducted in thirty-four countries (BC: there are 206 in the world) measuring the percentage of adults who accept evolution.  The United States ranked thirty-third, just above Turkey." (pg 70).

Religion is the basis of most conflict in the world (pg 81).
Palestine: Jews vs. Muslims
Balkans: Orthodox Serbs vs. Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbs vs. Bosnian & Albanian Muslims
Northern Ireland: Protestants vs. Catholics
Kashmir: Muslims vs. Hindus
Sudan: Muslims vs. Christians & animists
Nigeria: Muslims vs. Christians
Ethiopia and Eritrea: Muslims vs. Christians
Ivory Coast: Muslims vs. Christians
Sri Lanka: Sinhalese Buddhists vs. Tamil Hindus
Philippines: Muslims vs. Christians
Iran and Iraq: Shiite vs. Sunni Muslims
the Caucasus: Orthodox Russians vs. Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis vs. Catholic and Orthodox Armenians

"The idea that Islam is a "peaceful religion hijacked by extremists" is a fantasy, and it is now a particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge." (pg 85)

Sam Harris, The View from the End of the World, SALT talk at Google (1:22:32) Longnow.org - explains the problems of religious moderation
"We have a choice between conversation or violence.  Faith is a conversation stopper."  To make religous war unthinkable, like slavery and canibalism, we have to undermine the dogma of faith.
A Conversation with Sam Harris (1:29:52)- The goal is to spread secular thinking and scientific knowledge in society. (after "End of Faith" was published)

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens ( @Amazon )

Hardcover: Hachette Book Group (2008) ASIN: B002C4ZU6Q

Wiki:  book, author - "Hitchens contends that organized religion is "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children", and that accordingly it "ought to have a great deal on its conscience." Hitchens supports his position with a mixture of personal stories, documented historical anecdotes and critical analysis of religious texts. His commentary focuses mainly on the Abrahamic religions, although he also touches on other religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.

Hitchens points out the dangers of religion ("ethic cleansing") and shows many flaws in the various versions of the bible.  He makes the case that the bible was written by humans in the middle east and nowhere in it is there a mention of other parts of the world like Australia.  Hitchens is harder to read than some of the other writers because he uses a vocabulary larger than mine.

Chapter 15 "Religion as an Original Sin" (pg 205) starts :
"There are, indeed, several ways in which religion is not just amoral, but positively immoral.  And these faults and crimes are not in the behavior of its adherents (which can sometimes be exemplary) but in its original precepts.  These include:
The rest of chapter 15 develops the last four points, the first being already covered in prior chapters.

page 239:  "Four days after his election (Feb 1939) by the College of Cardinals, His Holiness (Pope Pius XII) composed the following letter to Berlin:

To the Illustrious Herr Adolf Hitler, Fuhrer and Chancellor of the German Reich!  Here at the beginning of Our Pontificate We wish to assure you that We remain devoted to the spiritual welfare of the German people entrusted to y our leadership.... During the many years We spent in Germany, We did all in Our power to establish harmonious relations between Church and State.  Now that the responsibilities of Our pastoral function have increased Our opportunities, how much more ardently do We pray to reach that goal.  May the prosperity of the German people and their progress in every domain come, with God's help, to fruition!"

page 251: "The connection between religion, racism, and totalitarianism is also to be found in the other most hateful dictatorship of the twentieth century: the vile system of apartheid in South Africa."

Christopher Hitchens Challenge

"First, name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.... Second, think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith?"   The first is very difficult and the second it very easy.

Poison or Cure? Religious Belief in the Modern World - Video
Authors@Google: Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens / Bill Maher

Breaking the Spell by Daniel C. Dennett ( @Amazon )

Dennet is making the case that religion needs to be studied (reverse engineered) scientifically.  He also calls himself a "Bright" rather than use the term atheist.  It's similar to people calling themselves "Gay".

The Ethical Brain by Michael S. Gazzaniga ( @Amazon )

Chapter 9 "The Believing Brain" has some ideas on why people believe in religion.

Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives by Michael Specter (@Amazon ) TED Talks - Michael Specter: The danger of science denial 
Michael Specter's home page & Videos
Authors@Google: Michael Specter - Vaccination, organic food, generically engineered food

This book is about how people deny the truth of the scientific method by adopting beliefs without any proof.
In 1025 Avicenna (Wiki) not only was the father of modern medicine but inductive logic (replaced the logic of Aristotle) and the basis of the scientific method.  Francis Bacon developed the Baconian Method (Wiki) around 1265 which was a step in the History of scientific method (Wiki).
In 1961 Arthur C. Clarke wrote "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable form magic".

Many people confuse correlation with cause and effect.
Some gene sequencing companies that have an internet business.  They are not doing a complete sequence but rather key hereditary, disease and medicine parts. Michael has his genes done by all three of them.
http://www.navigenics.com
http://www.decode.com/
https://www.23andme.com/
the blank slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker ( @Amazon )
Goes into why we are not born with a "blank slate" and why many cling to this outmoded idea along with the noble savage.

Trick or Treatment: The undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine  by Simon Singh & Edzrd Ernst MD ( @Amazon )
Uses the scientific method to expose Acupuncture, Homeopathy, Chiropractic and Herbal medicine as non functional.
Good history about blood letting (killed George Washington) and Florence Nightingale (use of statistics) (Wiki)
Also a section "Why do smart people believe odd things?"

The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria 2009 paperback ISBN 978-0-393-33480-7 @Amazon
The 2009 paperback has a new preface that talks about the Obama administration.  Fareed has what appears to be a good overview of what it takes for a country to be The old paradime was capital and labor, the new one is ideas and energy.
The problem with America is a disfunctional political system, i.e. it can not accomplish much in a reasonable time, China can accomplish a lot in a short time, but is very poor (in terms of GDP/person).

Richard P. Feynman

Nobel winner in Physics, bongo player, safe cracker, very intelligent, athiest, etc.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) ( @Amazon )

This was my first Feynman book and the one I like the best.  It covers safe cracking, picking up women at bars and other interesting stories.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman (@Amazon)

By the time he was 12 Richard knew he was an atheist. 
Chapter 13 "The Relation of Science and Religion"

What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman ( @Amazon )

Has a lot of info on his investigation of the Space Shuttle Challenger problems (not just the O-rings).

The Character of Physical Law (Messenger Lectures, 1964) @Amazon
DVD "Infinity" (about Richard P. Feynman)  @Amazon

TED Talk: Richard Feynman: Physics is fun to imagine
Messenger Lectures on Physical Law - The first "Law of Gravation" (and second " Physics and Math" lectures) are highley recomended for anyone, even if you think you know about gravity!

Mary Roach

also wrote "Stiff" about cadavers.  She's a very interesting woman!

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach ( @Amazon )

Mary has a very interesting curiosity.  She also authored Stiff about cadavers.

TED Talk: Mary Roach: 10 things you didn't know about orgasm

Charles P. Pierce

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free @Amazon
This is a very interesting book in that it has a lot of information about Donnely, the author of Atlantis which may be the first pseudo-science idea made from whole cloth.

Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America by P.D. Gaubatz & P. Sperry ( @Amazon ) - makes the case that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is a Muslim Terriost organization.

The Road to Serfdom, by F.A. Hayek - when Socialism (collectivism, central planning) is implemented the form of government needs to be totalitarian and things like art need to be suppressed so that there is no dissent.

Monetary Regimes and Inflation: History, Economic and Political Relationships by Peter Bernholz - chpater  5.2 Hyperinflation are Caused by  Government Budget Deficits" p71 " The figures demonstrate clearly that deficits amounting to 40 per cent or more of expenditures cannot be maintained".
Found this book after reading a paper by Hayman Advisors Kyle Bass is managing director - MSNBC talk by Kyle "Ahead of the Money" Airtime: Tues. Aug. 17 2010 | 9:01 AM ET - near zero interest rates will continue until there's a restructuring of the economy (Wiki).

Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chief of Staff, and the Lies That Led To Vietnam by H.R. McMaster - Kennedy installed McNamara to cut off the joint chiefs.  Johnson kept McNamara as his chief military adviser and ignored the joint chief.  But the joint chief could not come to a consensus because of infighting.  The administration lied to the public and congress and had no strategic objectives other than LBJ's idea of "killing more VC".  It makes you wonder what we are doing with our military today on foreign soil, i.e. what's our strategic objective and how's it being met?  If you know please tell me.

These were ordered after seeing the movie "The Girl with Dragon Tattoo".
The Girl with Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson ( @Amazon)
The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson ( @Amazon)
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest by Stieg Larsson ( @Amazon)
Although the first book could be read by itself, these are really a single story that is open ended allowing for a number of follow on books.  It's too bad that Stieg died after the third book came out.  There's a relationship to the book Society Without God apparent in the behavior of the key characters.

DVDs Watched

Letting go of god by Julia Sweeney - Wiki, IMDB, her blog, @Amazon
TED Talks:   Julia Sweeney has "The Talk" 
                    Julia Sweeney on letting go of God - firsrt 15 minutes of DVD
                   
The Jill and Julia Show - pans "The Secret"

Religulous (DVD) 2008 directed by Bill Maher (Wiki: Bill, Religulous) ( @Amazon )
Looks at U.S.and European religious beliefs (not enough time for Asian religions).

The God Who Wasn't There: A Film Beyond Belief (2005) written and directed by Brian Flemming. (Wiki: movie, director) ( @Amazon )
The movie debunks the Jesus myth.  But for me the really interesting part are the interviews (Wiki) in the special features section.
Contact (IMDB) written by Carl Sagen the character Eleanor Arroway is based on Carolyn Porco (Lecture at AAI) ( @Amazon )
marjoe (IMDB) Marjoe (Mary Joseph) Gortner, a pentecostal preacher makes a documentary while in the process of quitting preaching. ( @Amazon )
The Invention of Lying - the invention of "The invisible man in the sky" and the "Rules" on the back of two pizza boxes. ( @Amazon )
Letting go of God by Julia Sweeney funny story of her progression from being religious to an atheist ( @Amazon )

Reading


Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam  by Michel Onfray ( @Amazon )
put on the shelf, boring.

To Be Read - Watched

On Order

The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis by: Jeremy Rifkin

To Be Ordered

Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman ( @Amazon )

Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg ( @Amazon )

The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount by Greshom Gorenberg ( @Amazon )

Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Hacoby ( @Amazon )

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay ( @Amazon )

Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects by Bertrand Russell ( @Amazon )

God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory by Niall Shanks ( @Amazon )

Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smith ( @Amazon ) (Skeptic's Bookshelf)

People

Note that these people can be searched on YouTube, Google Videos, Amazon, etc.

Jeremy Rifken (Wiki)

The Empathic Civilisation - 52 minute lecture - 11 minute animated version
Mentiones the formation of religion.

 Tan Le (Wiki)

TED Talk - Tan Le: A headset that reads your brainwaves
emotiv - sells the headset

 Vilayanur Ramachandran (Wiki) (UCSD)

"Mirror Neurons" were mentioned by Jeremy Rifken in the Empathic Civilisation talk.
VS Ramachandran on your mind - 23 min video 2007
VS Ramachandran: The neurons that shaped civilization - 8 minute video about "Mirror Neurons"
Chralie Rose interview - July 14, 2009 29 min video "Mirror Neurons" starting at 12 min
5 BBC Audio Lectures -
the Temporal Lobes and God - Part 1 -
the Temporal Lobes and God - Part 2 -
Religious Faith Morality & Epistemological Absurdities - Sam Harris, Ramachandran, Dawkins - Right hemisphere believes in God, BUT left hemisphere does not.

Srikumar S. Rao

Arbejdsglæde Live! 2009 - be radiantly alive many times each day

George Carlin (Wiki)

George progressed from just a comic, to a combined jester and philosopher and finally jester, philosopher and poet.  This is apparent in his later HBO specials.

Penn Jillette (Wiki)

Penn & Teller: Bullshit! - longest running show on Showtime where they debunk Bullshit ideas in a way that they will not get sued (like happened to James Randy when he debunked Uri Geller (Wiki))
Penn Says video blog on Crackle

James Randy (Wiki)

James Randi Educational Foundation - win $1,000,000 if you can do anything paranormal.
TED Talks - James Randi's fiery takedown of psychic fraud Apr 2010 - takes a full bottle of sleeping pills at the start of his talk

Bill Maher (Wiki)

The Four Horsemen

Google Video - 4 Horsemen Dawkins web page - I've been watching many hours of YouTube on my home theather system.

Richard Dawkins - 

Coined the word "Meme".
TED - Proflie -
Richard Dawkins on our "queer" universe
Richard Dawkins on militant atheism
"In my view, not only is science corrosive to religion, religion is corrosive to science."
"To put it bluntly, American political opportunities are heavily loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest."

Richard Dawkins: Growing up in the universe
Wall Street Journal - Where does evolution leave God? - "We commissioned Karen Armstrong and Richard Dawkins to respond independently to the question "Where does evolution leave God?" Neither knew what the other would say. Here are the results." - Richard's related page -

Daniel Dennett -

Home Page at Tufts University
Philosophy professor, interested in how the mind works, words, memes, reverse engineering religion
TED Talks - Profile
Dan Dennett's response to Rick Warren - Rick Warren on a life of purpose
Dan Dennett on our consciousness
Dan Dennett on dangerous memes
Dan Dennett: Cute, sexy, sweet, funny - new idea about what makes things funny (brain reward for debugging)

Sam Harris -

http://www.samharris.org/
Has had profound life changing experience which usually is attributed to religion, but Sam sees it as neurological so is studying that area.  His book The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (wiki) was started the day after 9/11.
Ted Talks - Profile
  Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions (March 2010)
Religious Faith Morality & Epistemological Absurdities 10 min 2007

Christopher Hitchens - Wiki: author

 A.J. Jacobs

 TED Talk: A.J. Jacobs' year of living biblically

June Cohen

Her TED reading list:

"1/9: Denialism, by Michael Specter @specterm. How fear of science is preventing progress. Powerful. Loved.

2/9: The Art Instinct, by Denis Dutton (of @aldaily) Beautiful prose arguing that art is a human universal.

3/9: Connected, by Nicholas Christakis @connected_book The shocking proof of how deeply we're affected by our friends' friends.

4/9: The Wisdom of Whores, by @ElizabethPisani How POORLY we spend billions of $ trying to prevent AIDS

5/9: I Am an Emotional Creature, by Eve Ensler. Embrace your inner girl!

6/9: Whole Earth Discipline, by Stewart Brand. Environmentalism reconsidered, for the realities of a new era. Or: Why nuclear power, GM foods & squatter cities are green.

7/9: No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale, by George Whitesides. Tiny, lovely things in image & prose

8/9: This Will Change Everything, edited by John Brockman @edge. Short, sharp essays by who's who of TED world. I think one could safely call this "brain candy."

9/9: Fair Game, by Valerie Plame Wilson, the 'outed' CIA agent, who'll talk at TED about the need for nuclear disarmament. I'm fascinated by this woman!"

 Pat Condell

http://www.patcondell.net/
YouTube -
The faith of idiots August 07, 2010
Freedom is my religion August 02, 2010
A god of life July 26, 2010
The enemy within July 18, 2010
The Pope needs a miracle June 27, 2010
No mosque at Ground Zero June 04, 2010
Hello angry atheists May 03, 2010
Vote small, think big (Choices) April 24, 2010
What I know about Islam April 18, 2010
Is Satan a Catholic? March 27, 2010
The crooked judges of Amsterdam February 05, 2010
Thank God for Andy Choudary January 14, 2010
Aggressive atheism November 28, 2009
Wake up, America October 22, 2009
The arrogance of clergy October 02, 2009
Apologists for evil July 23, 2009
Ban the burka June 28, 2009
Children of a stupid god May 26, 2009
Islamist dickhead March 24, 2009
Free speech is sacred March 17, 2009
A word about the soldiers March 12, 2009
Freedom go to hell February 13, 2009
Shame on The Netherlands January 25, 2009
The water of life (the meaning of religion for some people) December 23, 2008
Godless and free October 31, 2008
Stop sharia law in Britain October 06, 2008
Welcome to Saudi Britain (pulled & reinstated on YouTube) September 30, 2008
Islam's war on freedom August 31, 2008
Take your god and shove him August 21, 2008
The tyranny of scripture (creation museums) August 07, 2008
Islam is not a victim July 20, 2008
secular world is a sane world June 27, 2008
God is not enough May 23, 2008
The curse of faith April 25, 2008
The religion of fear March 31, 2008
Appeasing Islam March 08, 2008
Take a cruise, Tom (Scientology) February 22, 2008
Sharia fiasco February 10, 2008
God the psycho February 02, 2008
O dhimmi Canada January 19, 2008
Hook, line and rapture (Pat Robinson) January 08, 2008
Partying with Baby Jesus December 24, 2007
Pimping for Jesus (US election) December 18, 2007
Laugh at Sudan (naming teddy bears) December 03, 2007
Why debate dogma? November 27, 2007
A word to Islamofascists (Muslim Council of Britain) November 14, 2007
Was Jesus gay? November 02, 2007
What's good about religion? October 23, 2007
More demands from Islam ctober 09, 2007
Hello angry Christians September 25, 2007
Video response to Osama September 11, 2007
Unholy scripture (going to church on Sunday is blasphemy) August 31, 2007
Islam in Europe August 17, 2007
God bless atheism August 03, 2007
Why does faith deserve respect? July 19, 2007
Politics and religion July 10, 2007
What about the Jews? June 29, 2007
The myth of Islamophobia June 21, 2007
Origin of the species (Creation Museum) June 13, 2007
Catholic morality June 04, 2007
Miracles and morals ay 29, 2007
Am I a racist? May 20, 2007
Why are we friends with Saudi Arabia? May 14, 2007
United States of Jesus May 03, 2007
In Jesus' name April 25, 2007
Religion in the UK April 17, 2007
Absolute certainty April 13, 2007
Happy Easter April 05, 2007
What do I believe? March 28, 2007
The trouble with Islam March 16, 2007
What have I got against religion? March 04, 2007
Hello America February 18, 2007
The Blasphemy Challenge February 08, 2007

 Kary Mullis (Wiki)

Kary Mullis won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a way to copy a strand of DNA.
TED Talk: Kary Mullis celebrates the experiment - filmed 2002 posted 2009
the science behind global warming may be flawed.
Science magazine:
Evidence for Large Decadal Variability in the Tropical Mean Radiative Energy Budget 1 February 2002
Evidence for Strengthening of the Tropical General Circulation in the 1990s 1 February 2002
Reexamination of the Observed Decadal Variability of the Earth Radiation Budget Using Altitude-Corrected ERBE/ERBS Nonscanner WFOV Data - JofClimate Vol 19 pg 4028 1 Dec 2005. the science behind global warming is OK

Links

Atheist Alliance International - many of the YouTube videos came from here
Freedom From Religion Foundation -
TED Ideas Worth Spreading - Technology, Entertainment, Design - many of the YouTube videos came from here
Muslim acts of terror - pdf document

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