Skeptic News: More Stenger News

Recent Reading

Susan Jacoby: Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism
Excellent overview of the prominent role that freethinkers (atheists, agnostics, and deists) played in America's past, including the founding of our country, the abolition of slavery, and giving women the vote. (*****)
Sam Harris: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
One of the most frightening books I've ever read. Among numerous other topics, Harris argues that it is almost inevitable that atomic weapons will fall into the hands of religious radicals -- if not terrorist, then perhaps a nation with religious radicals in charge. (****)
Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion
Highly recommended. Despite what you might have heard, Richard Dawkins does not spew venom in this book. Flames do not shoot out when you open it, nor does bile drip from the pages. Far from being an hysterical, rabid diatribe against religion, it is a quite measured, logical explanation of the evidence against God and why religion should not be treated with such reverence. (*****)
Daniel C. Dennett: Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
I highly recommend this book for anyone who is about to embark on studying religion and atheism. Why do people enjoy music? Why do we like to socialize? Why do we sometimes become violent? Science has attempted to answer each of these questions. Dennett proposes that science attempt to answer another: Why are people religious? Even if one of the religions is true, that still means that billions of people believe religions that are not true. Why? What is it about our evolutionary past that makes us willing to believe? (*****)
Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Why wasn't Europe invaded by ships carrying gun-wielding Native Americans or Africans, rather than the other way around? This is an excellent explanation of why some societies became quite advanced, while others remained primitive. (*****)
Richard P. Feynman: "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character
Very entertaining and thought-provoking collection of anecdates from the life of perhaps the best-known physicist of the 20th century. (****)
Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack S. Cohen: The Science of Discworld
You'll have to visit Amazon UK to locate this one. This book explains science concepts by comparing them to the decidedly different physical laws of the Discworld series. (****)

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March 05, 2007

More Stenger News

God: The Failed Hypothesis by Victor J. Stenger has now shown up at #21 on the March 11 edition of the New York Times Best Seller List in the Hardcover Nonfiction category. The God Delusion is at #12 and Letter to a Christian Nation is at #24.

Blogcritics has an interview with Victor Stenger.

There's also an interview with Victor Stenger in the March 3 Point of Inquiry podcast.

ExChristian.net has a brief article about the book and the advertising campaign.

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March 5, 2007 in Religions, Cults, and Miracles | Permalink

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Comments

Just poking around the internet and saw your post on the flat earth. I am reminded of being taught the flat earth myth when I was a child growing up in Tennessee not far from where the Scopes trial was held. Ironic, ain't it?

Now it will be a real breakthrough when the skeptics go back and re-check the Galileo story. Did Galileo get convicted for contradicting the Bible? In a narrow, pedantic sense, this is true. Jesus was convicted and crucified for organizing a revolt against Rome, but everyone knows that wasn't the real issue. If intellectuals had not had a higher view of Aristotle than the Bible, would anyone have noticed or cared about the verses in the Bible that Galileo contradicted? When I review what happened with the Inquisition, it seems quite a novelty for someone to have been condemned on the basis of contradicting a Bible verse. Not even Luther was honored this way, because the Catholic Church was only interested in power and money.

Anyway, the Catholic church seems to have been happy to let Galileo continue doing and writing about science while under arrest. I have visions of soldiers delivering pizza to the lab and asking Galileo what he was working on, but perhaps that is just my imagination at work.

Posted by: Looney | Mar 16, 2007 2:04:41 PM

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