I am asking for suggestions as to good reading material for an atheist. I am live in the bible belt and cannot be open about how I feel and I am a member of a family that purports religion as a way of life and I have actually tried to believe, I have tried to get this feeling of overwhelming euphoria that the deeply religious (supposedly) get when they have epiphanies and illusions of a state of being or of a physical place where they are going. Logic will not let me do that. As a former member of the military, and a traveler, I have seen things that totally go against the religious dogma that has been preached to me my entire life. I choose logic. I love to read. I have read everything that Amazon has to offer on the subject over the past three years. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
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While not directly related to atheism, I was recently reminded of a great book in another thread: The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan.
thank you Nyarlathotep
Try the Dune books by Frank Herbert and the prequels by his son Brian cowritten with Anderson. They give a nice view of how a religion is created, changes, endures, and holds sway over people throughout millennia. When read with a bit of a mindset that you are reading a history (of sorts), you can see how the religions of our time and place may have come into existence and how they might actually operate.
Oh yeah, those are great. I've read all the ones by Frank and a few of the others.
I really enjoyed Brian and Kevin Anderson's stuff. That they used Frank's extensive notes kept the material beautifully in sync with the originals.
Which is your favorite?
God Emperor of Dune.
Hi, Thinker. Since you've no doubt read a lot, these few suggestions are probably well known to you, but here goes anyway:
Lawrence Krauss' "A Universe From Nothing". Also, "ATOM", "Quantum Man" and "Hiding in the Mirror". If you like Lawrence's work, also read "The Science of Star Trek" and "Fear of Physics". As an aside on Lawrence, he'll be on Sam Harris' Waking Up podcast in a week or two. I'm looking forward to hearing them speak. And for pure delight, I'd like to hear the two of them kindly disagree with each other on something. They're both brilliant thinkers who are prone to debate at the drop of a hat.
The late Christopher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great". Christopher is one of history's great intellectuals. There are archives of his decades of articles in Vanity Fair and The Nation Magazine that are a delight to read, and serve as an amazing walk through the latter half of the 20th century and start of the current one. He has a great many published works. If I was as avid a reader as I'd like to be I would consume every one of them.
Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene". I'm sure the rest of Richards works are great, but The Selfish Gene is a masterpiece.
For fun, one could do worse than Douglas Adams' work, such as "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
I personally never tire of advising the reading of Michael Onfray's Atheist Manifesto. It's a great book, real, close and written by one of the greatest contemporary European philosopher.
You really will not be disappointed, really.