Heretic book review

[mumpish]

I've been on a kick for books that would annoy my grandmother lately. Here are two good ones:

Everything You Know About God Is Wrong: This is an anthology of essentially atheist essays and other artifacts, covering the same ground as Christopher Hitchens' excellent God is Not Great with not quite the same even quality but with better variety.

Comments

[quandry]

If you like books for laymen about evolution I also recommend _The Selfish Gene_ by Richard Dawkins and _The Red Queen_ by Matt Ridley.

http://www.amazon.com/Red-Queen-Evolution-Human-Nature/dp/0140245480

http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Introduction/dp/0199291152/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244276193&sr=1-1

I will note though... I'm unimpressed by atheists who spend most of their time arguing that religion is evil, which is distinctly different from God not existing.

[mumpish]

I dunno. Hitchens argues both effectively in God is Not Great and in fact suggests that you need to argue both, to refute the even-if-He-doesn't-exist-look-at-all-the-good-religion-does argument. Hitchens succeeds because he has the sense to make reference to scientific threads of the argument without claiming expert knowledge outside his field. Dawkins, lamentably, in The God Delusion, does not, and while he successfully lays out the scientific arguments, gets hilariously out of his depth when it comes to the rhetorical arguments. My favorite is that he spends a chapter arguing correctly, that the truth of a notion has nothing to do with number of people believing it, followed immediately by a chapter arguing how many famous people in history were actually atheists and only misconstrued as believers.

I've never read The Selfish Gene, although it's sort of on my long-term list. If I go back to this well any time soon it will probably be for Your Inner Fish, which refutes intelligent design by demonstrating how many things

[quandry]

Where Hitchens and I part ways is the idea that you can somehow get rid of religion by arguing against it. Oh sure, you can get rid of the concept of God. But! You will never get rid of large groups of people who belong to some kind of ritualized culturally distinct practice that encompasses instructions on the right way to live your life. Those groups are ALWAYS going to be politically motivated, and they will react harshly against perceived threats. You might end up with Environmentalists instead of Methodists, but ultimately, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, does it matter that it's not a duck?

Hitchens is just mad that humans are pack animals. Well, yeah, our nature sucks, but it ain't going away.

[mumpish]

I'm not sure he thinks that you can get rid of it; I think he's simply tired of tip-toeing around it as though it deserved respect.