Annotated Atheist Reading List
© Brooke Clarke 2009
Background
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
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:
- Do not vote
- Do not accept blood transfusions
- Do not celebrate holidays
- Do not have anything to do with war
- Believe in Armageddon. ( incorrectly forecast Armageddon for the
years: 1914, 1925 and 1975)
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)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
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.
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:
- Presenting a false picture of the world to the innocent and the
credulous
- The doctrine of blood sacrifice
- The doctrine of atonement
- The doctrine of eternal reward and/or punishment
- The impossible of impossible tasks and rules."
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
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.
(
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
Vilayanur Ramachandran (Wiki) (UCSD)
"Mirror Neurons" were mentioned by
Jeremy Rifken in the Empathic Civilisation talk.
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)
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
-
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 -
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
Christopher Hitchens - Wiki: author
A.J. Jacobs
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:
Links
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