for a reliable, accurate study of the authenticity of the Bible and/or the existence of God?
My dear atheist posters, what would you recommend . . .
by pennycandy 51 Replies latest watchtower bible
-
lonelysheep
Hi Penny,
I haven't read a lot of books on the subject, but out of those I did, I would have to recommend you read "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris.
A poster here recommended this last year, and I'm grateful to him. -
kid-A
Three essentials:
"Totem & Taboo" and "Civilisation and its Discontents" by Sigmund Freud
"Beyond Good and Evil" by Neitzsche
"Escape from Freedom" by Erich Fromm
-
Elsewhere
A few books I would recommend would be:
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins ( Hardcover - Sep 18, 2006) The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris ( Paperback - Oct 10, 2005) Another book would be:
The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Read by Tim C. Leedom ( Paperback - Sep 1, 2001) When reading this final book I could tell the author was a die-hard, flaming, death-to-religion guy. While writing he couldn't resist making unnecessary snide remarks, which I found unattractive. There were also some ideas and theories that even I, a devout atheist, found hard to swallow. The one thing this book is good at is using old and ancient documents to clearly demonstrate that Jesus and GOD are characters that were copied from stories about other deities. When you line up the characteristics and stories of Jesus to the characteristics of other deities, the similarities are astonishing.
Simply put, the stories about the Judaeo Christian god in the bible were clearly plagiarized from pagan stories.
(BTW, I have all three books if you want to borrow any of them)
-
Do Not Call
Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard E. Friedman was quite good.
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is excellent. -
pennycandy
Good ideas. Thanks for all the suggestions.
-
Little Drummer Boy
Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard E. Friedman was quite good.
I second that.
-
tetrapod.sapien
Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard E. Friedman was quite good.
i third that too.
there is also a really good book by isreal finkelstein called The Bible Unearthed. i own this book. great read. approaches it from an archaeological perspective.
for atheism, there are lots of great books. if you want to know about atheism in relation to xianity, bertrand russel's Why I am No Longer a Christian is a great read, imo.
the atheist essays on www.ebonmusings.org i felt were great for ex wits.
peace,
tetra
-
kwintestal
I would recommend The Bible Unearthed (link to Amazon.com) regarding the history of the bible and it's origin. It provided accurate archeogical proof that the bible account (OT) was written in the 8th and 7th centuries BC. If you read this book, you will not believe the bible (OT) was written by Moses, David and Solomon when you are done.
Very easy to understand non-technical discussion regarding the subject too.
I've read "The God Delusion" (just finished this afternoon) and it was very good too.
Kwin
-
Scully
for a reliable, accurate study of the authenticity of the Bible and/or the existence of God?
All I needed to do was read the Bible itself to see how archaic, backward and ridiculous it was.
The parts where the virgin girl who was raped and was required by God's Perfect Law to marry her rapist and remain with him for the rest of her life was one of the most vile, unjust, unloving, degrading requirement I have ever seen in print. This was supposed to be "righteous"?? This was supposed to be "justice"?? This was supposed to have been uttered by the mouth of a "loving" god?? Not my cup of tea, thanks.
Having said that, one book that I really enjoyed was Can We Be Good Without God? by Robert Buckman, which explores how people developed morality, and how it is possible to have morality without having a deity in the equation.