The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
by Christopher Hitchens
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Book Summary Information
Author: Christopher HitchensEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-11-06
ISBN: 0306816083
Number of pages: 528
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Book Reviews of The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
Book Review: A Marvelous Resource
Summary: 5 Stars
Don't let the name fool you; this is a rather large book, the size of a substantial hardback, but it is a paperback. I suppose it is marginally portable, but I'm not about to carry it around.
It's a compilation of some of the most interesting thoughts on atheism over time, beginning with Lucretius, Omar Khayyam, Thomas Hobbes, Benedict de Spinoza, David Hume . . . all the way up to Salman Rushdie and Sam Harris. Some favorites are here, like George Eliot, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain and George Orwell; and some I'd never heard of before but like now that I've read, John Betjeman, Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Anderson and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
A random sample of quotes I highlighted as I read:
". . . the working assumption is that we should have no moral compass if we were not somehow in thrall to an unalterable and unchallengeable celestial dictatorship. What a repulsive idea!" Christopher Hitchens in the introduction
"Superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear." Benedict de Spinoza
". . . the most genuine method of serving the divinity is by promoting the happiness of his creatures." David Hume
"It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations, that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations." David Hume
"Upon the whole, then, it appears, that no testimony for any kind of miracle has ever amounted to a probability, much less to a proof." David Hume
"He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness." John Stuart Mill, speaking of his father
"The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments . . . are complete skeptics in religion." John Stuart Mill
"Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and great glibness of speech . . . [w]here is that Goshen of mediocrity in which . . . platitudes will be accepted as wisdom . . .? Let such a man become an evangelical preacher." George Eliot
"[T]o theologians we may apply what Sancho Panza says of the bachelors of Salamanca, that they never tell lies--except when it suits their purpose." George Eliot
"The truth is, no miracle can, from the nature of things, be stated as an established fact." Anatole France
"In principle the man of science is ill-qualified to verify a supernatural occurrence. Such verification presupposes a complete and final knowledge of nature, which he does not possess, and never will possess, and which no one ever did possess in this world." Anatole France
"The Christian Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same; but the medical practice changes." Mark Twain
"What is characteristic of illusions is that they are derived from human wishes. . . religious doctrines . . . all of them are illusions and insusceptible of proof. No one can be compelled to think them true, to believe in them. Some of them are so improbable . . . that we may compare them . . . to delusions." Sigmund Freud
"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." Albert Einstein
"I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it." Albert Einstein
"There is as much difference between a collection of mentally free citizens and a community molded by modern methods of propaganda as there is between a heap of raw materials and a battleship." Bertrand Russell
"So, considering this range of alternatives, one thing that comes to my mind is how striking it is that when someone has a religious-conversion experience, it is almost always to the religion or one of the religions that are mainly believed in his or her community." Carl Sagan
"There are lots of charismatic people who have all sorts of mutually exclusive conversion experiences. They can't all be right. Some of them have to be wrong. Many of them have to be wrong. It's even possible that all of them are wrong. We cannot depend entirely on what people say. We have to look at what the evidence is." Carl Sagan
"That is, if your belief in God is supported by miracles, Kung [Hans Kung, author of Does God Exist?, 1980] will endorse them for you; but if you find them an obstacle to belief, he will explain them away!" J. L. Mackie
"This divine command view can also lead people to accept, as moral, requirements that have no discoverable connection . . . with human purposes . . . it can foster a tyrannical, irrational morality." J. L. Mackie
"A prevalent fallacy is the assumption that a proof of an afterlife would also be a proof of the existence of a deity. This is far from being the case." A. J. Ayer
"I really do mean thank goodness! There is a lot of goodness in this world, and more goodness every day, and this fantastic human-made fabric of excellence is genuinely responsible for the fact that I am alive today." Daniel C. Dennett
"Intelligent design has been unkindly described as creationism in a cheap tuxedo." Richard Dawkins
"Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a different reason: it gives them something to do." Richard Dawkins
"It is not for nothing that one of the symptoms in a developing psychosis, noted and described by psychiatrists, is 'religiosity.'" Ian McEwan
"[T]he retreat of religion from the ground occupied by science is nearly complete." Steven Weinberg
"If there is a natural evolution from polytheism to monotheism, then is there not a natural development from monotheism to atheism?" Ibn Warnaq
"[R]eligions survive mainly because they brainwash the young." A. C. Grayling
Summary of The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of God Is Not Great, a provocative and entertaining guided tour of atheist and agnostic thought through the ages--with never-before-published pieces by Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.Christopher Hitchens continues to make the case for a splendidly godless universe in this first-ever gathering of the influential voices--past and present--that have shaped his side of the current (and raging) God/no-god debate. With Hitchens as your erudite and witty guide, you?ll be led through a wealth of philosophy, literature, and scientific inquiry, including generous portions of the words of Lucretius, Benedict de Spinoza, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Mark Twain, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, H. L. Mencken, Albert Einstein, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and many others well-known and lesser known. And they?re all set in context and commented upon as only Christopher Hitchens--“political and literary journalist extraordinaire? (Los Angeles Times)--can. Atheist? Believer? Uncertain? No matter: The Portable Atheist will speak to you and engage you every step of the way.
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