no, quite the opposite. Since his writing style is so drab, boring and juvenile, I am touched to laugh at how people absolutely ignorant to science actually believe that dude knows anything about anything. Saint Augustine gives better, more substantive arguments for atheism, and he is a Patristic theologian! I am just waiting for a real scientist to offer a real book arguing for atheism based on actual science rather than sensationalism

There's that nerve being touched again.:o

Seriously though, as I've said before, our understanding of the development of superstition in human evolution has increased greatly recently and it's a fascinating subject.

agreed, but for the opposite reasons I think you are implying. when I first read Dawkins I was excited, it was quite popular and critically acclaimed, people were saying it was life changing..

then I read it. No science, no data, no facts, no substance, just needlessly emotive fallacies and irrelevant griping. His books read more like the pissed off rantings of a 15year old's blog post

There are certainly better written and more entertaining books on the subject of the superstition we call religion. On that we can probably agree. Dawkins' arguments are accurate but indeed very basic.

When it comes to Charles Stanely or Paula White than I agree with completely but otherwise you obviously haven't read any good books on religion. And no, Dawkin's arguments are far from accurate, that is precisely my beef with him. It is not that he tries to discredit theology, no that is fine, it because he absolutely fails to do such with any accurate arguments. He uses nothing but straw man and red herring fallacies, he rarely tackles the crux of the issues head on. For example, he says that God(s) are just human anthropomorphic creations from our collective imagination, which may be true, but he just leaves it there, no evidence or documentation. He doesn't use any science or data to support this, which he could. He could just the general rules of Mechanics to point out how the Muliverse doesn't exactly operate in a way which our religions describe, and in fact suggest a randomness. Further, he could add psychological research data which points out that humans inherently seek meaning and pattern behind EVERYTHING they perceive/conceive of, and that God(s) are just a continuation of that naturally human trait. Humans look for meaning behind every rustling bush, and we inevitably draw up the conclusion that it is God(s) and this very well may be simple anthropomorphizing of otherwise natural or coincidental events. If a sophomore English student turned in an essay with the verbatim arguments I would give him a C+ for effort but ask him to elaborate and dig deeper..
Of course conversely, deep theologians argue the opposite, that the inherent and instinctive search for meaning by humans is precisely there to find God(s) in the first place, instilled in us from Creation just as hunger is a natural drive for food, this human curiousness for meaning is a hunger for the Divine. Without necessarily agreeing with either perspective, surely we can criticize the shallowness of Dawkin's argument ;)

my beef is not Dawkins, but rather that so many people acclaim his poor writing as if it were actually good writing. I do not criticize the context or subject he is arguing, rather I am criticizing his otherwise poor writing style. It is a shame really, quite a waste. I have read his published scientific papers so I know he knows how to write, he just opted not to with these muckraker collections

Project for a Revolution in New York - Alain Robbe-Grillet

next will be Robbe-Grillet's Topology of a Phantom City

Le Voyeur is one of all time favorite scary books, I also like Jealousy and In the Labyrinth.

Regarding Dawkins, the arguments against the existence of gawd are pretty basic, but the lumpen pays so little attention to reality and logic that his books are necessary. I didn't read them more than once, so I don't suppose they, like many other books, bear a lot of deep scrutiny. so, in other words, the arguments against Dawkins I'm reading here are a lot less to the point than his vs the big white beard in the sky fellow, or whatever your silly image is of the creator...

yeah, it's a good one. Also Journey to the End of the Nuit is well worth your time.

both of these are absolutely essential reads...I translated one of his interviews once, it helps to understand his desire for delirium. He hates pretty much everyone.

currently finishing Gunsights by Elmore Leonard, one of his westerns.

Very much enjoyed last week The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer, a ripping page turner, spy novel, but with the clarity of Graham Greene.

Over the weekend, read Hollywood Hills by Joseph Wambaugh, a sympathetic cop book I don't find offensive.

currently reading Invitation to aa beheading by vladimir nobokov.

Might do the job you're after. It'd be a bit tl;dr to explain, but PM me if you want more info.

I tend to agree about Dawkins. I feel that the subtext of his general epistemology is that everything ought to be contained by a narrow but ill-defined notion of empiricism. If he was Popperian I could square it; as it is, I'm not sure if what he's actually proposing that his proofs ought to be applied everywhere; by which token, there's no art and very little exploratory science... ironically, I suspect we'd return to some pre-Cartesian but Godless dark ages by my (admittedly rash) understanding of Dawkins.

Having said that, he does propose some very tricky questions for particular forms of Theology (think: Daniel Strange) which purport to argue for trans-historico-cosmological absolutisms to a given religio-cultural narrative.

Does anyone know if any of the New Atheists have written about John Hick?

Oh, also - Hitchens is fine; I merely disagree with his version of atheism, and he's generally a great writer. Dawkins is a cunt.

more urgent than philosophy! a fucking life-saver.

and for fun:




it's free on the kindle reader (you don't need an actual kindle). free on project gutenberg too but the kindle reader looks way better.

rouges gallery for shit sure. Surprised Cthulhu not on the cover as well.... How's the book?

Finished "Au-delà de l'avenue D" by Philippe Marcadé.
No translation to English yet as far as I know.
Quite interesting and fresh, Marcadé went to the US, met Johnny Thunders with a friend, talked about the sauce on your pasta, befriended Thunders, got a band together, played Max's, CBGB's, Irving Plaza, played drums for Gang War a short while, met Sid and Nancy, slid into drug addiction, saw friends OD, die from AIDS...
It's lively, humble, he laughs at himself without having it looking like a pose. Quite good. Except for the spelling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2-f_...eature=related

This.

Currently in the weird position of reading several books at once.

Blood Meridian (Cormac Mccormack) - Been wanting to read this ever since Dylan C. mentioned it as being an inspiration for Hex. Makes sense. An incredibly dark/fucked up portrayal of Old West, USA...but also, completely beautiful. Sodomizing savages and blood and miles of empty landscape.

Queer (William B.) - Only a few pages in, so no solid opinion this far. Reads much like Junky only desperate in different ways.

It recently struck me that I haven't read through a decent-sized book in an embarrassingly long time. So, I headed down to my used book shop and picked up some new reads...




Friend by Diana Henstell - This is the book that Wes Craven's extremely underrated film, Deadly Friend, was based off of. I loved the movie, although most seem to hate it, and figured that I just might adore the source material even more. What a gem of a find.




The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule - She's a big name in the true crime genre, which I'm still pretty new to, so I thought I'd check out some of her work. Chose this over another book I was looking at based on Ted Bundy, due to the author's status and her insider perspective on this particular case.




The Embrace by Aphrodite Jones - A true vampire story... need I say more?

I'll probably read them in this order, actually.

Classic!





Well, I just bought a Kindle and it's amazing. I never thought I'd buy one, but being able to customize the text size and line spacing of what you are reading is great! You can really fly through what you are reading.

I downloaded one of those torrents that has 25 gigs/over 10,000 books e-books....pure insanity. A lot of it is garbage like James Patterson and Nora Roberts, so I'm SLOWLY going through all the folders and deleting shit.

Anyway, the main reason I bought it is to go back and read Infinite Jest. Having an instant dictionary and being able to click on the hundreds of endnotes makes reading it again that much better! Really great!

I'm a true crime buff and I freaked when I finally found a used paperback of
"The Stranger Beside Me" at a bookstore in Seattle a year and a half ago.
It's a book you read and just can't forget.

Just read Patrick Süskind Parfyme and the Pigeon and Marko Tapio Enkeli lensi ohi (in english Angel flew over). Now I started Dostoyevsky the Brothers Karamazov. It´s almost twenty years since I read it last time.

Actually I found "the stranger beside me" a bit boringer in terms of true crime. What was it (I'm racking my tattered memory), the crimes + story are compelling but theres still something so unattached about the whole thing, so unintimate, and this is about a book where the woman had actually worked with Bundy. Hm.

What True Crime do I like? Well, "The Perfect Victim" is probably one of my favorite books of all time, of all kinds. It gets into the heads of everyone involved so well, and the topic is fascinating itself. The descriptions of sensory deprivation where the girl had to live without light and barely any sound either with her head trapped in a box or living in one are suck in my mind. And the mind control he was able to put on her...she went out and got a job, eventually!!! And would then return home and go back to her box!!! Oh god, mind control.

Umm what else...all the books about karla homolka and paul bernardo are pretty awesome.

OH. "the night stalker" is fucking amazing. I love that one. It wants to access the dark carnal themes of humanity itself, and in this person. I think that's partly what's missing from "stranger". It's spoken from this complete outsider voice, kinda cold.

Have you (those reading and interested in true crime) ever read "Exquisite Corpse" by poppy z brite? Its entirely fiction but the character is picked up obviously from the corpse of jeffrey dahmer. Poppy's writing in it is her usual lush, colourful and impeccably dark and descriptive prose but set using him and cannibalism as a setup. It's really, truly great. If you're not hooked by the time you get to the boy in the bathtub, you wont get there !

Ha, I just finished up "Drood", a fictional account of the friendship/rivalry between Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens. "The Moonstone" is mentioned throughout the novel.

SteveOK! Never read that one!! Love asimov's non fiction stuff

Been reading The Discovery of Time, a book about the human history of timekeeping

 

Although not covering his complete output this is a well researched read.

Damn, sounds like I need to hurry and finish Friend so I can dig into Stranger Beside Me. A lot of you quoted that part of the post haha.

But so far Diana Henstell's Friend is really good. Not sure if noisereductions reads this thread at all, but I know he's a big Deadly Friend fan. I'm surprised by just how different the novel is from the film. Definitely a cool read so far.

Roland Topor - The Tenant (not this edition tho'.)

''The Artist and the Mathematician: The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed'' by Amir D. Aczel.

Also started to re-read ''The Sheltering Sky'' by Paul Bowles

I just finished this. I have never read a Perez-Reverte novel that I couldn't put down from start to finish! Always the perfect blend of pious and religious imagery/allusions and yet also gritty gangster shit (I guess its my LA upbringing being surrounded by murals of Our Lady and pummeling gang violence which has given me these tastes)..

This last one was quite potent for my recent situations as it was more obviously a love story than the others. Sure, it was also a political and social critique, but it was still based on a love story, and one I could quite relate too..

It seems that Perez-Reverte wanted to comment on the state of modern "dating" and its shallowness in comparison to another time. He uses fencing as the analogy, as fencing is a fight of sophistication, ettiquete, honor.. The Fencing Master is fighting an uphill battle as the world changes, as guns and firearms turn sword fighting into a quant sport..

I can relate to this, dating seems like an "ambush and stab in the back" like the brutishness of modern warfare is to the honorable combat of sword fighting. People today really seem to be just out there to conquer the next heart, and the thrill of the chase is lost. I suppose the real question is was there ever any regality to romance and love, or have we always just been like David and Bathsheba?

up next




I'm already enjoying this one, even though I wish I had the fortitude to sit back a day or two and revel in the last one I just finished but alas, I'm bored and immobile for the next few days.

William Blake - Selected poems

there is a really great forward by Patti Smith in this

everything is cinema by richard brody &
journey to the end of the night by celine

fucking shit this is really really good. It just keeps reading like a random stream of free-associative musings, like a rather sophisticated mushroom binge. I'm rather smitten..

so its really a true story so to speak?