Considering that the list of "Books Cited or Recommended" is easily my favorite part of The God Delusion, I decided it deserved its own thread in our discussion.

Here is a list of books I discovered through GD and have since checked out from the library and/or purchased.

I'll start with a story about picking up a copy of Robin Lane Fox's The Unauthorized Version, which I bought yesterday in the afternoon. Fox, a biblical scholar and an atheist, describes himself as someone who "believes in the Bible but not in God." In this book he delves into the actual history of the Bible's construction. I checked it out through interlibrary loan and liked it well enough to want my own copy. I ran a search on the Advanced Book Exchange and found a store in Kansas City that had a cloth edition in stock. I decided to pick it up in person to save the shipping fee.

The store, Steele's Used Christian Bookstore, is located in North Kansas City, in a more or less industrial area. The exterior is nondescript, one of a series of small businesses, and I drove by it on my first pass. Once inside the visitor finds a rabbit warren of books, but the store seemed cheerful and inviting for all that. I wandered around in the maze of bookcases for ten minutes or so. Some were even mounted on rails so they could be slid in and out, packing even more shelves into the small space.

The stock, mostly Christian books, of course, also included some quirky and entertaining oddballs like an autobiography of Bertrand Russell, old editions of the Peanuts, and a nice hardback edition of Ellis Peters' The Holy Thief (a Brother Cadfael mystery). I saw a row of Good News bibles, and flashed back to the early 1970s.

When I found my way back to the counter, I met a character as quirky and entertaining as the store's inventory. He said his name was David and talked as though he was the owner. (I didn't ask if he actually was or not.) He was wearing an outrageous "Uncle Buck" style fur hat with ear flaps. Actually, the hat was larger than Uncle B's and looked like a wolverine stuck on his head. I think he had also had a beer or two. Probably two. It was late in the afternoon. He was talkative, cheerful, and friendly enough. I liked him.

Anyway, I got my book and agreed to be added to his email list for the occasional announcement about sales and the like. I'll never forget that hat...

So, finally, here is the list:

P.W. Atkins. The Creation. A strange book that sets out to demonstrate God didn't actually have anything to do in the creation of the universe. It is arranged in seven parts, corresponding with the seven days of the creation story. I haven't decided if I like it or not.

Julian Baggini. Atheism: A Very Short Introduction. I've owned this book for years, so I didn't really discover it thanks to GD, but was pleased to see it cited. It's the most readable and intelligent overview of atheism I've found.

Jacques Berlinerblau. The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously. A quirky and somewhat cranky book with a misleading title (it's really about why the Bible deserves more secular scholarship in JB's opinion), but it includes lots of lively discourse and is intelligent and thought-provoking.

Ehrman, Bart. Misquoting Jesus. Highly readable, informative, and, unlike GD, solidly supported by scholarship. Interesting for theists and atheists alike. I purchased this book, and have also added another book by Ehrman about the actual Christian history behind The DaVinci Code. Not surprisingly, Dan Brown got lots of things wrong in his book. Anything by Ehrman is bound to be entertaining and educational I'm finding.

Goodenough, Ursula. The Sacred Depths of Nature. An epistle on religion without God. Interesting.

Susan Jacoby. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. I already owned this book prior to reading GD. It's not particularly good, unfortunately.

Max Jammer. Einstein and Religion. Carefully researched and concise. Jammer demonstrates, conclusively, that Einstein was not, in fact, an atheist. Dawkins either didn't read the book or shamelessly misrepresents it in GD.

Robin Lane Fox. The Unauthorized Version.

Miller, Kenneth. Finding Darwin's God. I already owned this one, too. Miller utterly demolishes Intelligent Design, and then goes on to deliver a somewhat unconvincing argument that the Christian God intervenes directly in the natural world through the mechanism of quantum indeterminacy. The last section is still interesting, though.

Pennock, Robert. The Tower of Babel. Not referenced in GD, but interesting and relevant and I came across it from a reference in one of the books on the GD list. (Don't recall which one, though.)

Pinker, Steven. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Found this one at Half-Price.

Stenger, Victor. Has Science Found God. Checked this out through interlibrary loan. It's excellent. Stenger has a new book coming out this month that argues science disproves the existence of God.

Fiske

Edited by: FiskeMiles at: 1/17/07 8:01 am

We discussed the Jacoby book here a while back. Pretty good discussion...I liked the book...go figure! "Blank Slate" was a reading before I joined. I have it but never read it yet.

I want to read the Ehrman book and the Hauser book in the future. Two suggestions for the future maybe!


Mr. P.

Mr. P's place. I warned you!!!

Mr. P's Bookshelf.

I'm not saying it's usual for people to do those things but I(with the permission of God) have raised a dog from the dead and healed many people from all sorts of ailments. - Asana

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Edited by: misterpessimistic  at: 1/17/07 2:25 pm

Here is a bit from the Atkins book, Creation Revisited, which I have to say is intriguing to read. Incidentally, this book is out of print and difficult to come by on the used book market in the United States, so it commands a premium price. (minimum about $60). Inter-library loan is probably the best bet for reading it.

Quote:

---

Take perceiving. Its essence is the acquisition of information about events external to the brain's bearer, and events not wholly external, as in pain. Bodies have antennae -- nerve endings -- that respond to their environment and capture information. These sensors, bunched into things like eyes, trigger signals to the brain. In vision, for instance, a molecule in an eye is struck by light, uncoils, and no longer fits its original slot. The light brings energy which loosens the atoms. The atoms ramble, and in the course of rambling their energy jostles away. The molecule remains frozen in its new and now incompatible shape. The ejection of the molecule from its slot lets another molecule change its shape, which triggers another reaction. That reaction triggers a pulse of current along the nerve to the brain itself. The nerve ramifies, the pulse is spread to a multitude of cells within the brain, and in each one its arrival results in a chemical modification. The cells' constitutions determine how they respond to future pulses, and whether they send new pulses down some channels or down others. And in due course, but perhaps not for a decade, the perception of an event influences a deed.

...

I find it perplexing that to some, even now, it appears that the richness of the brain's properties, properties like perceiving, remembering, acting, deciding, and inventing, cannot have emerged by itself, or that such richness cannot be the outward display of inner motivelessness. It is so important to see through the illusion of complexity into the simplicity underneath. Of course, we might not be able to trace the simple steps that constitute a perception or an opinion or precede or bring about an action; but underneath there is no doubt that they are there. Yet I would not wish this view to be taken as an elimination of the wonder of life: it should, thought, redirect the wonder. What wonder there is, should, in my view, not be at the benevolence and subtlety of external intervention, for that leads to the unnecessary intrusion of a spirit and the invention of a soul. It should instead be wonder at the realization that underlying simplicity can have such glorious manifestations when elaborately coordinated, and that such coordination can grow through the selection of evolution. The only immortal soul man has is the lasting impression he makes on other men's minds. (p. 33-34)

---

Fiske

There's more than a few folks from inside the various Religious communities who have taken a critical approach to Scripture: actually, they would argue that an appropriate reverence to the Text requires holding it accountable for moral and historical error: challenging its ideological abuses and cultural limitations.

Here are a few worth exploring:

The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love by Bishop John Shelby Spong

Is Religion Killing Us? Violence in the Bible And the Quran by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer

Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives by Phyllis Trible

The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism by Regina M. Schwartz

Edited by: Dissident Heart at: 1/17/07 4:42 pm

Dear DH:

Thanks for the recommendations.

I have the Spong book checked out from the library and have been reading bits of it. I find the author rather long-winded, but it might be that I haven't given him enough of a chance yet.

I agree that a lot of the criticism directed at Christian theists concerns fundamentalism. Dawkins, and Harris too, have a tendency to insinuate that liberal Christians aren't really Christians, or to criticize them for inconsistent or selective readings/interpretations of scripture. It's like they want to insist that Christians must accept everything in the Bible or reject everything, which polarizes their arguments and leads to their characterization as "militant" atheists, somewhat akin, ironically, to the fundamentalists they oppose.

Here is a website that might interest you -- musings of a Christian Intellectual.

www.bede.org.uk/index.htm

Fiske
www.fiskemiles.com