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The God Delusion

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Religious Studies
by: Richard Dawkins

May 21, 2007
On Richard Dawkins's spectrum of belief, I'm a 6...that is, strongly suspecting that a supernatural God who designed and still presides over the world doesn't exist. I find much of interest and practical use in some 'religious' teaching and literature however. The God Delusion is a fait accompli - it has no reasonable counter argument. Every theist should read it and be made to either refute it or give up their Religion, or at the very least concede that their Religion should not receive special treatment or recognition in a secular world.

It is delivered in a sometimes facetious, sarcastic and sneering tone - no doubt the result of years of wearily having to rebut and pick apart specious arguments from religious zealots - at ... Read More:

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God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Religious Studies
by: Christopher Hitchens

March 01, 2008
I make one simple point: does religion per se create evil,
or does humanity create evil in its name? The point has been
made over and over again that any great system of thought
creates zealots who are prepared to kill in its name. Humans
like and crave for certainty, and they cannot tolerate having
their certainty challenged. It is simply a non sequitur for
authors like Hitchens constantly to bang on about the evil done
in religions' names. When will people stop peddling this tired
old fallacy? It does not address the substance of the argument.
Does the atom bomb invalidate nuclear physics? Of course not. Let's
hear the *arguments* for the non-existence of God, not the
emotive (alas ... Read More:

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Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue: Bk. 1 (Blue cover)

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Religious Studies
by: Neale Donald Walsch

February 06, 1997
This is a book you should read, whether or not you have any religious beliefs. Yes, it's comical to think that the author would be having a 'conversation with God', and I was sceptical too, when I was first introduced to the book. However, even if you don't believe in a 'God' of any kind, or believe that Neale Donald Walsch has had a conversation with such a God, what the book says makes a lot of sense anyway.

And those of us who were brought up to believe in a vengeful God who judges and condems us, will find it a relief to realise that this simply isn't the case.

I was sceptical - now I'm convinced!

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Surprised by Hope

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Religious Studies
by: Tom Wright

December 21, 2007
In many ways this book acts as a popular level summary of Wright's recent thinking, and that is both its strength and ultimately also its weakness. The book's big idea is that Jesus' bodily resurrection is not a one off event but rather the forerunner of the general resurrection, and that this is the key which makes sense of a great deal of new testament thinking, in the gospels and the letters and in Revelation. He contends that the loss of belief in the bodily resurrection being replaced by an idea of a non-corporeal heaven has resulted not only in a loss of appropriate hope for christians but also has wider consequences for theology and for how christians live their lives. These are important ideas, clearly expressed and forcefully argued. The book's weaknesses ... Read More:

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Man's Search for Meaning

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Religious Studies
by: Viktor E. Frankl

December 01, 1997
What gives this book a very distinguished credibility and authenticity is the pertinent fact that the author formulated his ideas while as a Holocaust prisoner. Immediately the reader is taken out of the comfort zone as the captive and dehumanising realities of such a barbaric context are presented.

Frankl looks very very deeply at what provides human strength to get over the most forlorn, hopeless and torturing circumstances. Nietzche's dictum "What doesn't kill us only make us stronger?" planted itself in my mind throughout this book and just did not move.

It's very difficult to find any sort of fault with any story where humanity can triumph inhumanity, it really is. There's just such a sense of sadness and misery that the fact that someone ... Read More:

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Good Omens (Discworld)

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Religious Studies
by: Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett

May 23, 1991
I wonder if my writing a review for this book is a waste of time. There are already so many giving this book and it's authours all of the praise they're due!
Bravo!

But I love this book so much I just have to talk about it!

Here we see a collaboration between Gaiman and Pratchett so cleverly written and elaborate. Many strands of story converging together in a well ordered and thought-ahead way. Something hard for one writer to convey on his/her own let alone having to confure with co-writer on a different continent.

Some obvious Pratchett style writing - obvious Gaiman Style and some, where the writers themselves are said to not know who wrote it.
As if the book wrote, grew and evolved all on its own.

I think one of the ... Read More:

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The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Religious Studies
by: Sam Harris

February 06, 2006
As an atheist, I was drawn to this book through the endorsement of Richard Dawkins - an endorsement I find baffling. As a number of reviewers have noted this book does not remotely deserve to be bracketed with The God Delusion and other sober critiques of religious faith.

The biggest clues to Harris' agenda are revealed by the 'authorities' he invokes to buttress his opinions: the discredited pro-Israeli 'scholar' Daniel Goldhagen; the tub-thumping neo-conservative Thomas Friedman; the Zionist Alan Dershovitz (a man demonstrably shown to have manipulated historical sources in constructing a fervent defence of Israel), and Samauel Huttington.

It is not suprising given these bed-fellows that Harris allows himself to entertain the most bellicose, 'intolerant', ... Read More:

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Advent Calendar: Ted Rand "the Night before Christmas"

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Religious Studies
by: Ted Rand

September 15, 2005
As an atheist, I was drawn to this book through the endorsement of Richard Dawkins - an endorsement I find baffling. As a number of reviewers have noted this book does not remotely deserve to be bracketed with The God Delusion and other sober critiques of religious faith.

The biggest clues to Harris' agenda are revealed by the 'authorities' he invokes to buttress his opinions: the discredited pro-Israeli 'scholar' Daniel Goldhagen; the tub-thumping neo-conservative Thomas Friedman; the Zionist Alan Dershovitz (a man demonstrably shown to have manipulated historical sources in constructing a fervent defence of Israel), and Samauel Huttington.

It is not suprising given these bed-fellows that Harris allows himself to entertain the most bellicose, 'intolerant', ... Read More:

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Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Religious Studies
by: Denis Alexander

July 18, 2008
This is a curious book. On the positive side, Alexander provides a lucid and mostly persuasive account of the evidence for 'descent with modification', and a vigorous statement of the compatibility of science and Christian belief. Atheists like Dawkins, he repeatedly insists, are simply reading their own ideological convictions into the evidence. Scientists who are theists are engaged in exploring the glorious complexity of the created universe, and nothing in their discoveries is any evidence that Christian theism is incorrect. He draws on the evidence of convergence to suggest that evolutionary history is not as much of a 'drunkard's walk' as Gould supposed. And he also notices, as too many critics of 'creation science' have not, that it was Social Darwinism (and American eugenics) that gave evolutionary ... Read More:

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Why There Almost Certainly Is a God: Doubting Dawkins

Childrens Toy Shop > Books > Religious Studies
by: Keith Ward

August 01, 2008
In this post-Dawkian world of militant, bulldog Atheism, we've seen a whole host of Christian apologists spring up with varying degrees of success, trying to claw back some of the authoratitive ground they once so fondly held. Ward's book attempts to find answer to just the philosophical arguments contained within THE GOD DELUSION (chapters 2 - 4) and therein lays both its strength and weakness.

WHY THERE ALMOST CERTAINLY IS A GOD shows less of the certainty of faith, at least in its title, than was possible before the arrival of the intellectually pugnacious Dawkins - although by the end, Ward, who remembered initially "how important it is to be critical of all our beliefs" has the graciousness to admit that, finally, what he's just toured the patient reader through "must seem like a wish-fulfilling ... Read More: