Posted: June 23rd 2007
George Locke
I’ve never read a book that is about atheism per se.
One book that taught me a lot about the fallacy of absolute certainty is the Zhuangzi. This translation isn’t all that great, but it’s free. The Burton Watson translation is much better.
Zhuangzi supposedly lived around the 300 BC, and his book together with the Tao-te Ching are considered the two great classics of so called “philosophical taoism”, although they are different. While the Tao-te Ching is basically directed at training lords to properly rule (there’s a quote like “fill the people’s bellies and empty their minds and their will be peace” or some such), Zhuangzi is highly skeptical of government and authority in general. Both books express a sense of holistic unity of all things, a sense which I share, btw. From the wikipedia article on Zhuangzi, “[Zhuangzi argued] that our life is limited and the amount of things to know is unlimited. To use the limited to pursue the unlimited, he said, was foolish.” This makes him a skeptic, but he is no solipsist. He believes what he sees with his own eyes, he just knows that there is so much he can never see.
In any case, this is probably my favorite book. Zhuangzi’s work along with the writings of C.G. Jung are the two main sources of my beliefs on religion and spirituality.
Jung teaches that regardless of the actual existence of spirits or God, the unconscious mind can produce spirit-like effects, which are potentially of great value. I subscribe to this view.
Posted: July 15th 2007
bitbutter www
The End of Faith by Sam Harris
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Breaking The Spell. Religion as a natural phenomenon by Daniel Dennet
Posted: June 24th 2007
vjack www
I could list many books here, but I will focus on the most influential part of the question and keep my list short. To date, the most influential books I have read that deal with atheism include the following:
Posted: June 24th 2007