The God Delusion
Publication Date: January 16, 2008 A preeminent scientist—and the world's most prominent atheist—asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11. With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence. _The God Delusion_ makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster.
Stats for nerds
41recommend
111mentions
103people
2008–2026years
38% recommend46% neutral16% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Hard to choose for myself who made the post.
But some of my favorites are -
1. God: The Failed Hypothesis Book by Victor J. Stenger
2. The God Delusion Book by Richard Dawkins
3. Berlin: The Downfall 1945 Book by Antony Beevor
4. A Song of Ice and Fire Novel series by George R.R. Martin
5. A Short History of Nearly Everything Book by Bill Bryson
6. Billions and Billions Book by Carl Sagan
7. Flowers for Algernon Short story by Daniel Keyes
8. I'm Glad My Mom Died Book by Jennette McCurdy
9. Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden--from 9/11 to Abbottabad Book by Peter Bergen
10. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space Book by Carl Sagan
11. The Metamorphosis Novella by Franz Kafka
12. The Selfish Gene Book by Richard Dawkins
Gun to my head, pick one? The God Delusion.
- The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
- (As an atheist who found The God Delusion to be one of the most important books I've ever read, as it gave me a solid framework of arguing in what I already considered to be true)
It's okay to read more digestible books, and not serious academic studies. In fact it's more than okay -- in order to understand an academic study you likely need to do a lot of reading on the topic before hand. A pop sci/culture book is very self contained. I can assure you that very few people in the world can read The Genealogy of Morals and understand much of it without having read a significant amount of philosophy before.
Personally, I read Thus Spoke Zarathustra before reading The God Delusion. I can't remember much of the Nietzsche book, but The God Delusion's arguments are forever etched into my brain. It doesn't matter if I didn't get the Russell's teapot argument from a primary source, it matters that I got it.
- Bart D. Ehrman has written a lot of interesting books on Christianity (some of his work might be considered controversial to some practitioners). E.g.,
"Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior"
"Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics"
"Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew"
And, many more. I don't know of a commercial book site where I can just link to a search by author:
https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Bart+D.+Ehrman&lg_topic=lib...
- Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion"
- I can't recall the quote, but "A book worth burning is a book worth reading."
No one has to support or agree with ideas to delve into them, find their flaws and strengths (reality and people are mixtures of gray), and consider other perspectives. To avoid topics is one path to ignorance and decline.
- Das Kapital
- Understanding Socialism
- The God Delusion
- Bible
- Quran
- Mein Kampf
- Atlas Shrugged
- (numerous critiques of objectivism and its political-economic brand: libertarianism)
- Critique of Pure Reason
- The Social Contract
- Industrial Society and Its Future
- A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies
- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- Guns, Germs, and Steel
== And some fiction ===
- Howl
- Tropic of Cancer
- Four Past Midnight (yes, Stephen King)
- Maus
