posted March 03, 2008 09:11 PM            

A must read for atheist and religions people who still doubt their faith. At times he does go overboard even targeting mother teresa. But knowing he is a literary savvy and that too a british-american one I think this book will definitely be worth the read. He even goes on to say all religion is equal to child abuse.

He points out a case where by a Rabbi is known to have actually passed VD while circumcising a boy child. Yikes, must be long ago perhaps.
http://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446579807

This must be an entertaining book

posted March 04, 2008 11:01 AM            

he is a literary savvy
thats what I am interested in .

posted March 04, 2008 11:07 AM            

I also hear he moved from left to neo-conservatism

But I think being an aries that he is - he researches further and seeks his truth.

I actually like that about him. How many aries can you find who you can convince to buy your truth on first hearing? LOL

posted March 04, 2008 11:11 AM            

And he is british too

His comments on Creationism:

quote:

---

Dawkins is a prominent critic of creationism, describing it as a "preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood". His 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker contains a critique of the argument from design, and his other popular science works often touch on the topic. In the book, Dawkins makes reference to the watchmaker analogy made famous by the eighteenth-century theologian William Paley in his book Natural Theology. Paley argued that just as a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. However, Dawkins demonstrated the anology to be false. According to Dawkins, natural selection, the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially non-random process, has no purpose in mind and if it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.
Dawkins has ardently opposed teaching intelligent design in science lessons. He has described intelligent design as "not a scientific argument at all but a religious one" and is a strong critic of the pro-Creationist organisation Truth in Science. Dawkins has said the publication of his September 2006 book, The God Delusion, is "probably the culmination" of his campaign against religion. Dawkins was a featured speaker at the November 2006 Beyond Belief conference.

---

quote:

---

God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

A reader makes following comments:

"As a scientist," Richard Dawkins writes, "I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect" (p. 284). In other words, the greatest crime of fundamental Christianity is to think without asking scientific questions. For those readers already familiar with Dawkins' work, it will come as no surprise that this book is nothing less than brilliant. Pity those readers, however, who either won't read this book (they should) or who will find nothing positive to say about it, because this is the work of one the greatest thinkers of our time.

In THE GOD DELUSION, Dawkins, the celebrated evolutionary biologist, Oxford Professor, and author (The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love, The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution), gives us a carefully-reasoned yet entertaining treatise on atheism that is equally eloquent and provocative. His basic argument is that the collective irrational belief in "The God Hypothesis" is not only wrong ("intellectual high treason"), but pernicious in its resulting intolerance, oppression, bigotry, arrogance, child abuse, homophobia, abortion-clinic bombings, cruelties to women, war, suicide bombers, and educational systems that teach ignorance when it comes to math and science. Sure to provoke his adversaries, Dawkins not only portrays the "psychotic" God of the Old Testament as "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully" (p. 31), but also challenges, quite convincingly, every major argument for God's existence, and shows that the Founding Fathers considered religion to be a threat to democracy. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, claimed "Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man" (p. 43). Benjamin Franklin said "Lighthouses are more useful than churches" (p. 43). A 1796 treaty signed by John Adams declares, "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion" (p. 40). Adams also said, "this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it" (p. 43). Even conservative icon, Barry Goldwater, threatened to fight fundamentalists "every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans" (p. 39).

While Dawkins is clearly out to change minds here, unfortunately, for most of his readers, he is only preaching to the choir. Nevertheless, for its erudite advocacy of science and rationalism at odds with the divisive, oppressive, injurious, and deadly forces of religion, THE GOD DELUSION is highly recommended. Further reading in this area includes Daniel Dennett's, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006) and Sam Harris's, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006) and Christopher Hitchins' recent God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618918248/ref= pd_sim_b_title_2/103-0406985-1274205

---

posted March 04, 2008 12:52 PM            

I don't know if anti-theism is a word but I think it fits more than atheism. Being "a" something implies indifference, as in "asexual". Spending time and effort writing a book about something you don't believe in takes effort. It must be motivated by the need to show everyone else they are wrong/stupid/etc. If you don't care, well, you just don't care.

posted March 11, 2008 01:08 AM            

http://www.richarddawkins.net/article,2331,Richard-Dawkins-US-Tour-begins -this-week,RichardDawkinsnet

posted March 11, 2008 03:52 PM              

Search with your heart first, then your mind.

posted March 11, 2008 05:37 PM            

We have to accept others however we think they are because in accepting them, we are also accepting the creator within us.

Remeber Tolle talks about it too and I will also add "Acceptance not Rejection is the way to discern our low quality ego".

Anyhow - I hated biology as I was graduating in high school. Its time to read this genius as in reading him, I am fixing the holes in my own soul

posted March 11, 2008 10:32 PM            

Let me explain why I said I am reading Dawkins, its because it helps me look at the cosmos with an atheist eye too. Scientists Einstein and Hawking were atheists too. Who can deny that the picture of the cosmos they presented to us is much more grander and beautiful than what all the prophets of the Old Testament combined have presented to humanity by putting God in a little box. And I am not being egoistical by that statement. Those are facts today.

That unknown when a body dies, is as much a mystery to an atheist as it is to a religios man. The difference is that a religious man tries to bring supernatural beliefs in to it or rather explains his mysteries in religious ways while a atheist tries to identify how consciousness operates from thereon. At times I love Agnostic views of the world too and that is there is nothing to worry about after you die. LOL...you may read this book on how Dawkins explains these philosophies in just about enough words and it is so beautiful typical of an Aries author that it cannod be missed.

-----------------------------------

No matter who you read or what you read , in the end always have your own beliefs. Your own consciousness is equal to that of all people, however what differs is the level of awareness with each other. - Mannu

posted March 11, 2008 10:36 PM            

Chapter 2 and 3 of Tolle's books talks about ego. He has researched so many books and even provided his own experiences while writing that book. I thank him for doing such a thing.

I think you may follow the past video recordings without buying his book as well

posted March 12, 2008 09:21 PM            

DENVER -- Sometime before his deadly rampage at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, gunman Matthew Murray penned a letter addressed to God in which he poured out his frustration and confusion over his faith and ranted about the hypocrisy of Christians.

Colorado Springs police discovered the letter in Murray's 1992 Toyota Camry, which was found parked outside the New Life Church on the day of the shootings. CALL7 Investigators obtained a copy of the letter on Wednesday, hours after Colorado Springs police released its official 450-plus page report on the shootings.

posted March 13, 2008 03:03 PM            

That letter is from 1992. So yeah things did change a little bit since then.

You have to go to the Bible states and see what I mean

posted March 13, 2008 05:51 PM            

When people like you bring out the evil , evil shall be no more.

Together we all can.