My parents are both religious, [Mum is Roman Catholic and Dad is Protestant] and Mum won’t let my buy the Atheist books I am interested in reading for educational purposes. She feels I am blatantly insulting her, when in actuality I am not. Where are good places to find these books? My school library does not have all of them, and my local library has limited resources.
Posted: May 26th 2009
George Locke
As bitbutter indicates, inter-library loan can get you pretty much any book ever published, if you’re willing to wait a week or two (you can get magazine/scholarly articles the same way). Ask your local librarian, who will surely have all the details.
Posted: May 28th 2009
Eric_PK www
You can find excerpts of magazines like Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer online.
You can also ask you library if they can do inter-library loans – this allows them to request books from other libraries.
Posted: May 28th 2009
George Ricker www
If you have access to the internet, which apparently you do, there are lots of resources available.
As has been noted already, atheism itself is a very simple thing. It is simply the absence of god-belief. One mistake people make is trying to load the word up with more baggage than it is meant to carry.
But if you aren’t in a position to obtain books that you want to read, you can certainly find a wealth of material on the web. You’ll need to exercise your own critical thinking skills to see which has the most value.
Good luck with your search.
Posted: May 27th 2009
bitbutter www
If your library is short on books on atheism you could investigate whether you could get the books you’re interested in via an inter-library loan system—where other libraries send the books you’re interested in to your local library. I’m not sure exactly how this works in the US. If you lived in seattle to you could try a google search for interlibrary loan seattle and see what turns up.
You can find some more information about atheist books and reading material here.
Posted: May 27th 2009
brian thomson www
The funny thing about atheism is: it’s pretty simple and boring on its own, since all it really means is that you don’t believe in gods, and there’s only so much you can say about that. So, a lot of atheism-related writing has to do with related topics, such as abuses by religions, Church/State issues, and more. In the USA, there are 1st Amendment issues regarding religions and government, such as “faith-based initiatives” by governments. Online, I think a good place to start is the Secular Web Kiosk which has many useful articles on related topics.
One particular piece of advice I would give a new reader is: make sure you’re clear on the definitions of words such as Atheism and Agnosticism, since both are somewhat misused by some writers, particularly those with agendas. Some will tell you that atheists have a firm belief that “there is no God”, which is not the same as “I do not believe there are any gods”. Some people quote dictionary definitions, but who wrote the dictionaries?
Recently, one well-intentioned article in The Guardian repeated a common fallacy (Agnosticism = “I don’t know”), but it was soon followed by another article correcting the first one, by referring back to the inventor of the word “Agnostic”. (It is not a belief: is a “meta-belief”, a statement about the possibility of knowledge.
Another “hot button” topic in the USA at the moment is “Evolution vs Intelligent Design”, which is an oversimplification of the issues involved, which are mostly to do with education. There was a court case a couple of years ago, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, which made media headlines. It centred on the use of an “intelligent design” text book in school, and the claim that it was different from Creationism. The judge ruled that they were the same, and not science, and so “intelligent design” could not be taught as science. The court findings documented the lengths that creationists go to to hide their true religious agenda, and make for interesting reading on their own.
Posted: May 27th 2009