Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

The Portable Atheist

Looks like another item is going on to my wish list of books to read: The Portable Atheist, an anthology of pieces selected and introduced by Christopher Hitchens. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction. As usual, Hitch is not backward in coming forward:
And who, really, will turn away from George Eliot and James Joyce and Joseph Conrad in order to rescrutinize the bare and narrow and constipated and fearful world of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Osama bin Laden?  
And…
It is in the hope of strengthening and arming the resistance to the faith-based, and to faith itself, that this anthology of combat with humanity’s oldest enemy is respectfully offered.  
Of course, as he realises full well, we have met the enemy, and the enemy is us…

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3 responses to “The Portable Atheist”

  1. Gelert Avatar
    Gelert

    Why should there be resistence to faith and the faith based? I’m sure that as much evil is done in the world in the name of any variety of things, as is done in the name of God. Why the assumption that one must turn from any of those authors in order to read the other? Why the ignoring of anything but the negative things in the faithful? Just curious.

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  2. Geoff Avatar
    Geoff

    It’s the old saw: good people do good things, and evil people do evil things; but to make good people do evil things – that takes religion. It’s the certainty that they are doing good because their god/holy book/priest/shaman told them so that makes me so angry at my species.

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  3. Gelert Avatar
    Gelert

    and with that I would agree wholeheartedly. I just think that evil done in the name of ‘good’ must be seen to be bogus, but that its not just ‘god’ that is used in this way by some human beings. Is it the fault of god? or the abused ideology? or the fault of the twister?
     

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