Atheism

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.

Contrary to what many people believe, secularism is not the same as atheism. Atheists are among the most vocal proponents of secularism, both offline and online. That might be the source of confusion.

Time for part 2 of our Atheism Q&A. If you did not read Atheism Q&A Part One, starting there is suggested.

Continuing with the introductions to the arguments for the existence of God, we'll now look at one of the most common arguments for God – the basic idea that the possibility of eternal bliss of paradise as a reward for belief or the possibility of terrors that can result as a consequence of non-belief are good reasons to believe. In essence, the average person's version of the argument says that we should believe, just in case there is a God. It's just safer.

Let's talk about the teleological argument or the so-called argument from design. The reason we're only scratching the surface now is that we want to have an overview at various arguments for the existence of God so we know what are the basic forms and basic types of objections. Then we'll go even deeper into each one in the future.