Notable Atheists

[PopeBeanieModerator]

The following is from @davis (thank you!) in a regular AZ Forum post. Each of the “Four Horsemen” deserve their own thread here, whenever one of you members or I finally get to it.

Four of the most famous New Atheists are all well known intellectuals and have written books which strongly attack religion and advocate secularism. All four have written other books in their own fields. Every one of them are fascinating intellectuals who write of topics we have discussed a lot about here on Atheist Zone:

1. God is not Great a book that directly attacks religion. Christopher Hitchens an essayist and journalist. He is well known for provocative criticism not just of religion such as his book on Mother Theresa which he named “The Missionary Position” but wrote scathing critiques of Bill Clinton and other figures. He died recently being a non-believer to the end.

2. The God Delusion. It’s by Richard Dawkins. He is a famous biologist who wrote books on nature in a way so that ordinary people can have a sophisticated understanding of evolution. The God Delusion is a long read and covers nearly every aspect of religion and he injects a lot of humour into it.

3. Breaking the Spell. Daniel Dennett a philosopher with one specialty in cognitive philosophy (especially Free Will). His better known works are Freedom Evolves and his recent book “From bacteria to Bach”. Breaking the spell is a more academic work which focuses mostly on the human phenomena of “Imposing irrational explanations on natural phenomena” and our ability to believe just about anything.

4. The End of Faith. Sam Harris is both a philosopher and a neuroscientist. He is well known for his controversial views and has also written a brief book on Free Will (he and Daniel Dennett are friends yet clash strongly on this topic). The End of Faith is also a more academic look at religion and is rather controversial especially with Harris’s severe condemnation of Islam and claims that it is inherently violent.

You’ve probably read one or two of these books, if you haven’t you should deffinately read God is not Great and the God Delusion. If you haven’t read any of their other books you should read “The Selfish Gene” or “The greatest show on Earth” by Dawkins and “Hitch 22” or “The Missionary Position” by Hitchens. If you are up for a challenge you might also try “Freedom Evolves” by Dennett.

 

[UnseenParticipant]

Where are all the comments? I myself commented yesterday.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

I will check it out. I had some too. I also saw them yesterday.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

I think this is a pretty common problem, which I’ve mentioned in Tips (and in a Welcome to Atheist Zone group I’m trying to start).

People normally just arrive at the Home area of the group, instead of the Forum area where the forum’s topics are listed. Sometimes (as in your case, I think) they see the Forum, and miss what’s only visible at Home. Adding a bit to the confusion, when in Home, you still see the most recent posts in the Forum topics.

Hoping to further clarify, Home is for “updates”, similar to short-lived twitter posts. The Forum topics are permanent, and updatable. In spite of this easily-misunderstood structure, the Forums are actually more manageable and updateable than those vastly distributed and empty forums in at Think Atheist.

[UnseenParticipant]

Maybe having a group isn’t such a good idea then. I went to the Forum, clicked on The Four Horsemen and ended up back here. What?

[UnseenParticipant]

BTW, I notice that these posts haven’t gone away. What’s different?

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Unseen wrote:

BTW, I notice that these posts haven’t gone away. What’s different?

@unseen, because these posts are like any regular post, in a topic. (And this topic also happens to exist within a group forum, but one wouldn’t necessarily notice that.)

If this still doesn’t make sense, I hope you can ask for more clarification, so we can eventually delete some of these comments and distill them down to just one or two that are most useful. It all didn’t even make sense to me, until I realized only a couple of months ago how a group’s Home and Forum divisions could be so confusing, at first. I’ve GOT this, now! If you don’t yet, then I’ll work more on a tutorial or something.

I’ll do what it takes to clarify this for everyone, because Groups here really do have more potential than Groups did at TA.

And @regthefronkeyfarmer, it seems you weren’t fully understanding it back there a couple of months ago, either?

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Pretty long. Just take a half-day off from work. Or skip a few soap opera episodes.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

There is a book out too.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Thanks Reg, that is a good article with good links, including one to the book. I’ll steal another link from there to a video on the famous and only meeting the four had together:

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