Seth J Bleyenberg

Book 1 For The Modern Atheist

Revisado: 12-22-23

Too much time is spent today by atheists dancing on the playing fields of apologists. Christianity's source material is packed with ridiculous claims and God is a non-explanatory excuse for anything they wish to be true to be so. If atheists of the post-scholastic world are to deal with religion in the abstract, they should deal with it from their own angles rather than burying themselves in insipid quarrels over Bible contradictions and acceptable first causes and similar red herrings.

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Much better than reviews made me expect.

Revisado: 08-26-22

It was clear, concise, and reasonably comprehensive. I really think the bad reviews are from people who are simply offended by the material and writing a bad review on principle.

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5 Stars with a Hedge...

Revisado: 03-29-22

This book is a must-read for a serious minded person - in my humble young opinion, but with one hedge: namely that Becker is far too overconfident in proclaiming the scientific fact of many psychoanalytic ideas. They are established to him in the sense that they can be fit into a coherent framework of altered Freudianism. He could use a dose of Popper. Perhaps some Foucault. On the other hand, this type if freethinking and examination of inner life and intuitions has been sucked out of modern thought, or so it seems to me. There is a lot of insight into human anxiety in philosophy and psychoanalysis that has been thrown out due to the methods people took to get there. I think a full intellectual life requires thinking beyond the bounds of strict empirical knowledge.

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Fundamentally Changes My View of the World

Revisado: 01-18-22

Evolution and evolutionary psychology in general changed my view of human action. This book explained for me the psychological reasons (rooted in evolutionary biology) that culture has developed the sexual norms and morals of our world today. I have always been confused by the strong emotions surrounding sex. Now I understand.

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Unrelatable and unenlightening

Revisado: 11-15-21

Maybe I'm just dull, but I expected more from a book with this reputation. I rarely felt the way Jane felt about any situation. The difference in our times accounts for this, I'm sure, but it made the experience of the book lackluster.

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Captivating

Revisado: 11-10-21

If I could give a higher rating I would. Fry puts some of my other 5 star ratings to shame. Bravo!

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Masterful

Revisado: 10-30-21

Russell did a brilliant job transporting me back into the minds of previous epochs. While he did insert his perspective at times, he always established first the environment and influences that built the philosophers. It is amazing to see the threads of Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, and Christianity founding both helpful and harmful dogmas that persisted for many centuries. I love noticing the things that previous philosophers understood as "given" that we would never presume today, and wondering what doctrines are binding my mind to the present moment. It is distressing to see philosophers of the past making obeisance to a Christianity that would happily burn them for dissenting thought. I was upset that so many philosophers could be so ground-breaking in certain analyses while remaining entirely credulous as far as religion was concerned. I am convinced it is a testament to the uniformity of belief in their societies and a terrifying knowledge of the social consequences of renouncing it; some of which they faced after writing merely indirect challenges. This area is my emphasis, though, not Russell's.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

Held Back By Questions of Purpose

Revisado: 10-06-21

Before anything else: great book and definitely worth the read/listen. I do wish he spent more time elaborating his naturalistic view of religion. I appreciate his attempt to explain why he thinks the spell of religion ought to be broken and dissected, but I wish it wasn't such a large part of the book. Maybe my impressions were wrong, but I thought this would be a more balanced and in-depth version of Darrell Ray's later "The God Virus". I thought that the chapter or two on a naturalistic explanation of religion that borrowed heavily from Boyer and from Dawkins' memetics would be the whole book. That is my primary area of interest. If you want a book from an experienced atheist philosopher fielding potential objections of advocates for religion, this is your book. Maybe it deserves 5 stars. As someone who is already an atheist and even an anti-theist, I was hoping for something different.

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Masterpiece

Revisado: 06-01-21

I can't give less to a masterpiece. Although Dostoevsky makes a virtue of proudly proclaiming the unfalsifiable and fantastic as truth, and despite his convenient character personalities for atheists, he writes what he sees and is insightful enough that everyone should read his work.

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Awesome Commentary on Awful movies

Revisado: 01-25-21

This podcast is hilarious. Probably the best therapy for ex-Christians like myself living in our Christian world.

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