1. Tome truths

Comment #49496 by docwhat on June 12, 2007 at 6:09 am

Does anyone know if there is a reason why I cannot buy "In Defense Of Atheism" by Michel Onfray from the US amazon, but can from amazon.ca? It is also absent from B&N.

His other book, Manifesto, is available here...

Ciao!

2. Richard Dawkins Explains 'The God Delusion'

Comment #28524 by docwhat on March 29, 2007 at 3:07 pm

You can download the podcast directly via the URL:
http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/13/9195593/npr_9195593.mp3

3. The Fourth Flea!

Comment #26710 by docwhat on March 21, 2007 at 8:32 am

iwentdowntotheriver:

I agree that hold a logical conversation about the merits of the book, etc. that one should read the book or remain silent.

However, I think that these forums serve another purpose other than logical and dispassionate conversation: Fellowship!

We are talking to each other and sharing feeling and such. Caesar Best was simply sharing his feelings about a lack of a good conter-argument book and I can sympathize. I went looking around for counter argument books too and mainly found things such as C.S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity."

"Mere Christianity" was horrible, btw. It pretends to be logic but is just a study in how to trick people via fake logic. I was very disappointed. Of course, C.S. Lewis bugs me for other reasons, in part because I loved Narnia so much as a kid and when my wife told me after college that it was actually full of Christian references I felt kinda betrayed. Don't know why; I wasn't an atheist at that point, but I guess I wasn't very religious.

On a semi-related note, I found Marcus Borg's books about Jesus, "Meeting Jesus for the first time" and "Jesus: long subtitle" (2006) were interesting. I didn't finish the newer one, in part because it kept combining the post-Easter (his phrase) stuff with the pre-Easter (again his phrase, aka historical) stuff.

But "Meeting..." was pretty good, if you ignore the post-Easter stuff (which there isn't much of).

It talked about how 'sin' is probably better translated as 'impure' (as in not kosher) and explained why the story of the Good Samaritan isn't just about someone helping someone. The first two people couldn't help the half-dead person because he was half-dead (death is impure). The Samaritan (didn't have to observe the purity laws) helped the guy. Jesus was basically saying the purity laws, of the time, weren't rational or moral.

It was pretty good and I have to admit that I like the pre-Easter Jesus a bunch.

Adios Comrades! ^_^/

Ciao!