Fine group of god-demolishers represented here!

books:


	• The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever Christopher Hitchens Da Capo Press, 2007 - 528 pages average customer review:based on 37 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A must-have book for thinkers

This collection of writings by a diverse group of thinkers is well worth the price of admission. This is a valuable work that one is likely to refer back to often.

Included are essays by: Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, H.P. Lovecraft, George Orwell, Martin Gardner, Carl Sagan, Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, Penn Jillette, Salmon Rushdie, and Sam Harris.

I highly recommend this book.

--Guy P. Harrison, author of
50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God

An excellent anthology

If you've been looking for a one-stop shop to explain why there are people who do not believe in a creator, this would be the place. Not so much an exposition as an anthology tied together with long introductions by Hitchens, you'll find a lot of perspectives here. Helpfully it includes more than just anti-Christian polemics: there are several reviews of Islamic thought and the Qu'ran which will be instructive and which are sufficiently balanced as not to be one straw man after another.

It could have been better. Another reviewer comments on this book not so much being atheist as anti-theist and I think they've hit something (notice I used "anti-Christian" and not "non-Christian" above). Certainly Hitchens himself is anti-religion and not just non-religious. But if you buy into his argument that religion is A Bad Thing(TM) then you also need to be on the attack. He does, and so he is. And that's fine, or it would be in a different book. But in an anthology it feels more appropriate to let the extracts speak for themselves without layering on top of them. Or at least it does to me.

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The Portable Atheist

Being a fan of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennet, and other authors/thinkers pertaining to this "genre", I have no choice but to offer Kudos. There are many views from various characters throughout world history to our present time included in this compilation of quotes, notations, and essays etc.etc. This book should be included in any collection of voices representing freethought and even as a reference for any research along these same lines.
Thank You, Don Ward

Fine group of god-demolishers represented here!

First off, there are plenty of famous atheists not here, but given the space, Hitchens has gathered a motley, inspiring, humorous, and always brilliant band of iconoclasts (though I do not recall if Nietszche himself was included)..Going way back to the ancients, hitting the stride with Hume, and including Boswell's interview with Hume as he lay dying ( a piece not to be missed), moving on to Darwin, Russell, and of course Dawkins, and contemporary polemicists, even an excerpt from Updike, you really cannot miss here. Brit Novelist Ian McKeowen shows up with a look at "end days" movements, a speech he gave at Stanford. Perhaps some rational ideas, science, and genius brains may admit some light to the make-believers out there, and we can only hope so!

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of God Is Not Great, a provocative and entertaining guided tour of atheist and agnostic thought through the ages--with never-before-published pieces by Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.Christopher Hitchens continues to make the case for a splendidly godless universe in this first-ever gathering of the influential voices--past and present--that have shaped his side of the current (and raging) God/no-god debate. With Hitchens as your erudite and witty guide, you?ll be led through a wealth of philosophy, literature, and scientific inquiry, including generous portions of the words of Lucretius, Benedict de Spinoza, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Mark Twain, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, H. L. Mencken, Albert Einstein, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and many others well-known and lesser known. And they?re all set in context and commented upon as only Christopher Hitchens--?political and literary journalist extraordinaire? (Los Angeles Times)--can. Atheist? Believer? Uncertain? No matter: The Portable Atheist will speak to you and engage you every step of the way.

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