Thanks zietz. I would support Hitchins God is Not Great. It is much more coherent and articulate than most other recent atheist books, but still provides good room for debate. http://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Rel ... 0446579807 provides 817 customer reviews, with the following the first publisher reviewzietz wrote:In no particular order, I would suggest the following five for non-fiction reads. After Eden: The Evolution of Human Domination, Kirkpatrick Sale God Is Not Great: Why Religion Ruins Everything, Christopher Hitchins Notes From Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing, Robert Wolff
Saving the Appearances: A Study In Idolatry, Owen Barfielder Hitchins
In his work, Sale argues for the problems inherent in the shift from early to late neolithic existence and its implications for civilized life today
Hitchins does a masterful job of laying out the atheistic critique of all faith.
Notes is Dostoevsky's classsic critique of modern rationalism (maybe considered fiction by some)
Wolff gives us a collage of knowledge gained from his time with indigenous peoples in places we have never been.
Barfield's is a classic critique of western philosophical and scientific rationality
These can all be found on amazon.com
This is my first, humble offering.
sandy krolick (zietz) - newbie
"Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly
Hitchens, one of our great political pugilists, delivers the best of the recent rash of atheist manifestos. The same contrarian spirit that makes him delightful reading as a political commentator, even (or especially) when he's completely wrong, makes him an entertaining huckster prosecutor once he has God placed in the dock. And can he turn a phrase!: "monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents." Hitchens's one-liners bear the marks of considerable sparring practice with believers. Yet few believers will recognize themselves as Hitchens associates all of them for all time with the worst of history's theocratic and inquisitional moments. All the same, this is salutary reading as a means of culling believers' weaker arguments: that faith offers comfort (false comfort is none at all), or has provided a historical hedge against fascism (it mostly hasn't), or that "Eastern" religions are better (nope). The book's real strength is Hitchens's on-the-ground glimpses of religion's worst face in various war zones and isolated despotic regimes. But its weakness is its almost fanatical insistence that religion poisons "everything," which tips over into barely disguised misanthropy. (May 30)
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