Overthinking Clearly

You only need to take a brief look at the "Reading" Category of this page to realise that I am not one of those atheists who is adamant that there is no god and who uses poor or not well-researched arguments, even if they favour my world-view. So, I was a bit sceptical when I stumbled upon this book. After all, it is called "The Non-Existence of God". But the author is not your garden-variety Facebook atheist, so I ignored my initial reactionary dismissal that this is one of those books which attempt to make grandiose or scandalous claims to boost sales. After reading some reviews online, I decided to buy the book and see it for myself.

So what exactly did I read in this book to take me from a position of scepticisms to recommending it as a part of my reading list? Let‘s find out together.

Here we have something a bit different - a book that is not so much about the claims whether there is a god or not but its goal is, as the title says, to explain the basics of Atheism. 

To do this, the Author examines the definition of atheism, the history of atheism, speaks about various notable atheists from history and examines whether they really were atheists in the same sense of the word as we use the word today, or were they “merely” skeptics or something else entirely. 

If you are like me and ask yourself the Big Questions fairly frequently, you probably asked yourself perhaps the biggest question of them all: Is there a God?

Not only that, but it is also possible you wandered around and changed your mind here and there. Perhaps once you were a theist, then you suddenly became an atheist, then started to call yourself an agnostic, all based on the best available data you had at the time.

Stephen Hawking is the first scientist/author that has had a profound impact on my life. Yes, even before I was profoundly changed by watching Carl Sagan`s Cosmos on TV, the first popular science book The Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking has awakened my interest in the Universe, Science and the art of being a curious human being.

It is not easy being good. It is not easy to live ethically. What does it even mean to live ethically? How can a busy person take their time to try to tackle something so vas and at a first glance, overwhelming?

Yes, simply accepting what you are taught by your teachers, parents and religion is one way to go, but in order to really try to live a genuine and honest life, the key lies in deciding these things for yourself. We are not saying here that how to live ethically is always something that can be decided by each person and for each situation, as that would mean embracing moral relativism. Instead, we should embrace rational thinking about these issues and decide how we are to behave and what to believe based on arguments that are presented. It's certainly a more honest way to live that simply accepting what you are told.

This book was first published in 1975 and it's considered by many to be profound and groundbreaking. And with good reason. Let's explore some of these reasons here and try to look at why is it so profound, why after 45 years it's still very relevant and why you should read it.

No, it's not a group of humans hanging around at beaches and swimming pools naked. That's naturism. Naturalism is a bit less fun than that. But only a bit, as philosophy is fun.