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Feel free to discuss the books you're reading at the moment, your favorite authors or works, and so on. I'm sure everyone has a book they think others here might find interesting!
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Books of Interest to Atheists and Skeptics
Breaking The Spell by Daniel Dennett
A Devil's Chaplain, by Richard Dawkins
The End of Faith, by Sam Harris
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
God is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens
Godless, by Dan Barker
Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris
Why I am not a Christian, by Bertrand Russell
Sites for Bibliotaphs
Audible.com
BookCrossing.com
BookMooch.com
The Internet Archive
LibraryThing.com
LibriVox.org
Project Gutenburg
Shelfari.com
Started by Dyslexic's DOG. Last reply by tom sarbeck Sep 14, 2016. 1 Reply 1 Like
Started by Dr. Thoss. Last reply by Kelly Jan 14, 2016. 54 Replies 1 Like
Started by Steph S.. Last reply by Gerald Payne Apr 30, 2015. 5 Replies 0 Likes
Started by Cory D Wells. Last reply by sk8eycat Jan 22, 2015. 5 Replies 0 Likes
Started by Nick Bottom. Last reply by Randall Smith Oct 23, 2014. 1 Reply 2 Likes
Started by Don. Last reply by Don Sep 13, 2014. 1 Reply 0 Likes
Started by Nick Bottom. Last reply by Michael Mann Sep 7, 2014. 1 Reply 0 Likes
Started by Don. Last reply by Don Aug 31, 2014. 4 Replies 1 Like
Started by Jeffrey. Last reply by Nick Bottom Aug 23, 2014. 17 Replies 0 Likes
Started by Fester75. Last reply by Joseph P Jan 11, 2014. 5 Replies 0 Likes
Started by Jenn Wiffen. Last reply by Joseph P Sep 10, 2012. 1 Reply 0 Likes
Comment
No problem, Randall. The stuff in that book summary sounded suspiciously like the ad hominem arguments that creationists try to slime Darwin with, because they think that if they can show that Darwin was a mean person, all of his scientific work is disproven. It made me immediately suspicious of this guy's intentions and intellectual rigor.
Some creationists don't seem to get that evolutionary theory is based more upon the 150-something years following the publication of Darwin's book, rather than being based directly upon Darwin's work. I've talked to creationists who actually think that research into evolution is done by studying Origin in greater depth, trying to glean new insight from Darwin's book. They don't understand how scientific research works, on a fundamental level.
I doubt that most of them are quite that stupid, but they're definitely out there.
Happy reading Randall, you won't regret it.
Thanks, Joseph, for the information. As I said, the Wilson book is controversial and full of misleading statements.
Chris, I'll check for The Lunar Men, on your recommendation.
Oh, here we go. I just did a little digging. Do you mean the one covered in this article, in The Guardian? https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/30/charles-darwin-victor...
That article was the second item in the list, when I did a search for A.N. Wilson, following his Wikipedia article.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._N._Wilson#Critiques_of_Wilson's_work:
Wilson's biography Charles Darwin, Victorian Mythmaker, (2017), was criticised by John van Wyhe in the New Scientist for confusing Darwin's theory of natural selection with Lamarckism at one point, as well as other scientific, historical and editorial errors. Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian wrote it is "cheap attempt to ruffle feathers", with a dubious grasp of science and attempted character assassination. In The Evening Standard, Adrian Woolfson says that "..while for the greater part a lucid, elegantly written and thought-provoking social and intellectual history" Wilson's "speculations on evolutionary theory," produce a book that is "fatally flawed, mischievous, and ultimately misleading". Steve Jones, an emeritus of University College London, commented in The Sunday Times: "In the classic mould of the contrarian, he despises anything said by mainstream biology in favour of marginal and sometimes preposterous theories." The geneticist and former editor of Nature, Adam Rutherford, called the book "deranged" and said Wilson "would fail GCSE biology catastrophically.
Does anyone really think that Darwin came up with biological evolution completely on his own? His contribution is the synthesis of Natural Selection as the driving mechanism ... or as we know now, ONE of the driving mechanisms.
And sure, he made plenty of errors, which have since been cleared up by later scientists. Who is this A.N. Wilson guy, and to which book are you referring?
Plagiarize is perhaps a little strong. Charles' grandfather Erasmus Darwin and his friends among others were already debating evolution, and Alfred Russell Wallace was working on it at the same time as Charles - you could say that the time to work out evolution was there. Many people were sleeping in church but groups of others formed hotbeds in which ideas grew. A very interesting book about this time is The Lunar Men by Jenny Uglow. A must-read, I think.
Writing good English is difficult today, I hope I make sense.
Sadly, one of my heroes has been vanquished.
According to A.N. Wilson, Charles Darwin has been exposed as a fraud (subtitle: "Victorian Mythmaker"). Wilson convincingly argues that not only did Darwin plagiarize previous exponents of evolution, but he presented many errors in his writings. The bottom line is, he did not "discover" evolution.
Yes, his The Origin of Species (1859) exposed the evolutionary idea, and changed the minds of the educated world. Yes, Darwin was one of the greatest naturalists who ever lived. But, as Wilson declares, "Darwin was wrong".
You'll have to read the book to make your own decision.
I'm totally addicted to Crais' novels; it's an automatic purchase every time a new one comes out. He has a whole string of them with a regular character named Elvis Cole who's the quintessential LA detective.
Just finished a true story book called The Lost City of the Monkey God, by Douglas Preston. Within the last 5 years an ancient civilization was discovered in the Mosquitia area of Honduras. For years, there were rumors of a mysterious "White City" buried in the jungle. New techniques (lidar) indicated that the rumors were true. The discoveries were written about in National Geographic back in 2015. (I missed it.)
Since my daughter and her family lives in Honduras, and I plan to visit them and go to the ruins of Copan this spring, the book was especially interesting to me.
Spud, mentioning Louisa May Alcott reminds me of when I went to Concord, Mass a few years ago. I saw the homes and graves of several of the great "authors"--Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, etc. I couldn't help but think about the card game.
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