Books to read suggestions? oO

[SGOS]

I just ordered nightfall after hearing about it here.  It should be here next Friday, although that is no longer a given with the new improved trumpmail.

[PopeyesPappy]

The author, Anne McCaffrey, said that she "strongly suggests the books be read in publication order.

Some of the events in Dragondrum were contiguous with The White Dragon. So I prefer Dragondrum first since The White Dragon is really the culmination of that whole story line.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Some of the events in Dragondrum were contiguous with The White Dragon. So I prefer Dragondrum first since The White Dragon is really the culmination of that whole story line.

She "suggested". I gave a full set of Pern books (less Todd's books) to a twelve y.o. and told him to read them in chronological order.

[PopeyesPappy]

She "suggested". I gave a full set of Pern books (less Todd's books) to a twelve y.o. and told him to read them in chronological order.

Just throwing my reason for reading Dragondrum first out there... If you read The White Dragon before Dragondrum, Dragondrum kinda becomes a prequel.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Just throwing my reason for reading Dragondrum first out there... If you read The White Dragon before Dragondrum, Dragondrum kinda becomes a prequel.

Depends on which version of Piemur you like.

[trdsf]

A lot of the non-theist reading I would have suggested is already here, as is some of the fiction.

To the latter, I'll add:

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series // Douglas Adams
The (core) Foundation trilogy / I, Robot (or better yet, The Complete Robot) / the Lije Baley trilogy // Isaac Asimov
The Nine Billion Names of God / Childhood's End // Arthur C Clarke
Stand on Zanzibar // John Brunner
Cat's Cradle // Kurt Vonnegut
Contact // Carl Sagan (so much better than the movie, and I liked the movie)
Brave New World // Aldous Huxley
the Holmes canon // Arthur Conan Doyle
the Dr. Thorndyke series / R Austin Freeman
Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street // William S. Baring-Gould
The Physicists / The Visit // Friedrich Dürrenmatt
The Illuminatus! Trilogy // Robert Anton Wilson and Bob Shea


Under non-fiction, let me add:

Gödel Escher Bach / Metamagical Themas / The Mind's I // Douglas Hofstadter
The Ancestor's Tale / The Selfish Gene / The Blind Watchmaker // Richard Dawkins
Cosmos / The Demon-Haunted World // Carl Sagan
Brave New World Revisited // Aldous Huxley
A Brief History of Time // Stephen Hawking
Six Easy Pieces and Six Not-So-Easy Pieces / Perfectly Reasonable Deviations // Richard Feynman
The Secret Art of Dr Seuss / Dr Seuss Goes to War // Theodore Geisel
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions // Randall Munroe
A Year at the Movies // Kevin Murphy
The Fireside Watergate // Nicholas von Hoffman
Inside Music // Karl Haas

That might give you something to chew on.  :D

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Thanks for the brain jog, Stand on Zanzibar ordered. Now to find a gal not wearing impervipants.

[Unbeliever]

Just curious, why do you want to read books on atheism?

It's good to know the arguments of both positions in order to better keep from being persuaded by bogus ''logic.''

Besides, it's fun!

:-)

[Unbeliever]

I do consider myself agnostic (as correctly used in terms of knowledge) in that it is not possible for anyone to prove that some 'god' can not exist; however I am an atheist in that I do not believe that any god as described/worshipped in past or present religions exists. To learn about religion, forget the holy books and study the human brain.

I hear often that a God cannot be disproven, but I disagree. A theistic God can be disproven by the incompatible properties ascribed to it. I don't have time to get into it, but there's a good site for it, at...


Hold on, I've got to go look up the link...

[Unbeliever]

Well, I don't know how to put the link here, with my phone ( I'm not very techy). Just Google incompatible properties arguments: a survey, by Theodore Drange, at infidels.org. It's a good read.

[Baruch]

Well, I don't know how to put the link here, with my phone ( I'm not very techy). Just Google incompatible properties arguments: a survey, by Theodore Drange, at infidels.org. It's a good read.

Inverse of Anselm's argument for god and similar such.  Ontological arguments.

[Unbeliever]

No, that argument defines God into existence by assuming a perfect being exists, because it could not be perfect without existing. Drange's atheological arguments are not related.

[Cassia]

I hear often that a God cannot be disproven, but I disagree. A theistic God can be disproven by the incompatible properties ascribed to it. I don't have time to get into it, but there's a good site for it, at...

While these sorts of logical arguments support my disbelief in the various religious god claims they do not result in my complete knowledge that "a god" does not or can not exist.

[Unbeliever]

True, I think there's only exactly one thing any of us can really know: the fact of our own awareness.

All else is subject to uncertainty.

[SGOS]

No, that argument defines God into existence by assuming a perfect being exists, because it could not be perfect without existing.

When I read that argument, the first thought I always have is, "Why is existence even important to perfection, especially in relation to God?  I know that's irrelevant and neither here nor there, but it leads to a feeling of, "Oh, fuck this shit."  Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking that if existence is a necessary attribute of perfection, then I can think of a lot of things must be more perfect than God, because most things actually do exist, while God's existence remains a question.  Existence is a pretty fundamental property.  If you have to prove something exists, you are on ice that is much too thin to support something as weightless as an argument.

I know that if that was my answer to a question on a philosophy test, the professor would flunk me.  But I don't care.  Philosophy of that kind has already flunked, and arguments that linger on past the point of "Oh, fuck this shit," don't make sense either, because arguments require two people speaking the same language, and neither of those languages can be Gibberish. 

All of those 18th Century god proofs are nothing but bushels of words to hide logical fallacies.