Arguing about Gods

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1. skissaneApr 2023
   My own personal introduction to philosophy came from Edwards and Pap's now rather dated 1965 textbook A Modern Introduction to Philosophy–my father did an introduction to philosophy course at university in the late 1960s, and that was the main textbook they used, and teenage me was rather excited to discover it on his bookshelf. I myself did 1st year philosophy at university in 2000, but only one unit (logic) actually had a textbook, the others I did (epistemology, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, political philosophy) just used photocopied books of readings (I remember we had readings from Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Hobbes, Hume, Berkeley, Kant–and some more recent authors whose names escape me now). I found a site with a whole set of free university-level philosophy textbooks – https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/subjects/philosophy – although I can't vouch for them since I haven't read any of them myself

   Some philosophers whose works I've read and enjoyed: Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia; Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons; Peter Singer's Practical Ethics; Graham Priest's In Contradiction; Graham Oppy's Arguing about Gods; Edward Feser's Five Proofs of the Existence of God – that's a rather eclectic and idiosyncratic list, including books by authors which radically disagree with each other (e.g. Feser's book tries to prove God exists, Oppy's book argues all known proofs of God's existence fail) - but you definitely won't find any of that "critical theory" cant in any of them

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2. super_marioAug 2012
   Here they are before I forget:

   A Devil's Chaplain

   Are You Living in a Computer Simulation

   Arguing About Gods

   Atheism - The Case Against God

   Atheist Manifest - In Defense of Atheism

   Atheist Universe

   Biblical Cosmology

   Breaking the Spell - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

   Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief

   Darwin's Dangerous Idea Evolution and the Meanings of Life

   Demon Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark

   Dossier Of Reason

   Evil God Challenge

   Forged

   God - The Failed Hypothesis

   God Is Not Great

   Godless

   History of God

   Jesus Interrupted

   Jesus Myth - The Case Against Historical Christ

   Letter To A Christian Nation

   Logic and Theism

   Love Thy Neighbour - Evolution of In-group Morality

   Lying

   Misquoting Jesus

   Superstition In All Ages

   The Ascension of Yahweh_ The Origins and Development of Israelite Monotheism

   The Christian Delusion

   The Dialogues of Plato

   The Early History of Heaven

   The End of Faith

   The Evolution of God

   The God Delusion

   The God Virus How Religion Infects Our Lives And Culture

   The Moral Landscape

   Who Wrote the Bible

   Why I am not a Christian

   These are just some of the books I have read on the subject, but there are others highly rated and recommended that I still want to go through. However, these are really good.

   If this list seems daunting I would recommend a shorter list:

   "Breaking the spell" by Daniel Dennett "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkings "God is not great" by Christopher Hitchens "End of Faith" by Sam Harris

   But books by Steven Hawking "The Grand Design", "Universe from Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss and "Your Inner Fish - A Journey into the 3.5 billion year history of the human body" by Neil Shubin, are also great although somewhat more technical. All other books are softer read.

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