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Summary: Atheism and Religion
Review: This book provides an interesting, though very broad introduction to atheistic thought. Smith does a good job of refuting certain misconceptions about atheistic ideas and the people who hold them, but I am not quite sure that he really treats his opponents in a charitable manner. His attack is centered on the Judeo-Christian philosophical and theological concpetion of God, and he does not seem to consider theistic beliefs which might be held (or felt?) by those persons who do not intellectualize their theism. Smith does not addreess the kind of "oceanic feeling" which might lead people to theistic/mystical/spritual sentiment. However, Smith does well with refuting dogmatic and contridictory views that many (less sophisticated) theists might take. A good introduction certainly, but one should definetly look at other more philosophically thorough opinions on both side of the debate. Four stars. RMH
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Summary: The Doorway to My Exploration on Atheism
Review: Reading this book was the first venture into my exploration of an alternative to Christianity, and I must say, I was surprisingly satisfied with the knowledge and insight I gained upon my completion of it. The book opens with a nessecary, albeit tedious, explanation of what the term 'atheism' stands for, and what it does not (i.e. anti-religion). Afterwards, Smith wastes no time in getting to the core of the book -- examining and disproving the concept of a supreme being (God), including the 'classical' arguments for the existence of a god (creationism theory, for example). It deserves to be noted that the book deals mainly with Christianity, and the flaws thereof. As this is the only religion I am familiar with, I found that all the more appealing. However, a reader with little concern for or familiarity with Christianity may wish to consider other sources on Atheism. As a first-time read on the study of Atheism, I would have to recommend picking this one up. The books' comparison on reason vs. faith was a bit monotonous for me, but overall I found it highly interesting and enlightening -- particularly the final chapter, entitled "The Sins of Christianity." Worth checking out.
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Summary: A Rational Condemnation of Mysticism
Review: Just a well written book. It totally destroys the theists at their very root by showing how they can't even define the word god and takes it from there. It also then goes on to make the destinction between reason and faith clear as possible to avoid any confusion that the Christian might use to his advantage. Don't be suprised if Christains give this book a one or two, Smith leaves them no room with which to pull off equavocations by making sure to keep precise definitions. Many will call Smith's style dogmatic... totally ignoring what the word means. However Smith's style is just confident...and honest, if not too kind to a belief system that has failed to come up with one shred of evidence to support itself in 2000 years.
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Summary: Subjective and flawed
Review: This is truly a work for the uninformed sophomore. It is hailed as the port-hole of rational and logical thinking by many of the reviewers here. But the unfortunate fact of the matter is that it does nothing of the kind. The author shows a distinct lack of knowledge in theology and logic.Here's one simple example which will illustrate the point. The author discusses at length the law of Cause and Effect. He rightfully laments on the necessity of this law to the theist, since the theist pre-supposes that if the universe exists (effect) then there must be a Cause to account for this effect. The theist attributes this cause to the supernatural phenomenon of God. However the author dismisses this as irrational. He extends the Cause and Effect argument to the sphere of God and claims that the law prohibits the existence of a God (effect) without a cause. This one single gem of an argument crumbles the foundations of this book. Why? Because the author assumes that God acts within the constraints of time. According to the theory of relativity however, time itself began with the universe and is a dimension of the universe (there is good experimental support for this). Hence to extend the law of Cause and Effect to include God (the supernatural or the first cause) is absolutely nonsensical. By extension, questions such as "where did God come from?" therefore become meaningless, since God acts outside of the created creature called Time! Another of the author's points of attack is "Faith." He spends enormous time refuting this very notion and slamming it as irrelevant to the healthy atheist. But all this is in vein since it seems as though he is unaware of one simple fact: that he, himself has absolute faith in the non-existence of God! He cannot by any means prove that God does not exist, simply because he has no access to all the available information in the universe. But logical flaws are not the only problems in this book. The author expects the reader to perceive him as objective. Nothing could be further from the truth. Almost from the outset, the author's anti-Christian bigotry shines. He spends enormous time elaborating on the 'sins' of Christians, the cruelty of the Christian God, and suffering inherent to the world. Never does he ponder the God given free will of human kind and the capacity of humanity to do evil as well as good. Never does this objective author consider, the murderous exploits of atheism during the 20th century. Nice atheists such as Pol Pot and Joseph Stalin were responsible for the brutal murder of at least 100,000,000 human beings during this time. I have never seen any objective writings when it comes to the subject of God and this book certainly changes none of that. As I said before, it most certainly does appeal to the uninformed. However it is flawed, both logically and theologically.
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Summary: is this the best atheists can do?
Review: Smiths book has been called one of the best books for the atheist position. I fail to see why. Aside from the angry tone of the book all of his arguments can be refuted. To take a few examples. Lets start with his argument for existance. Smith argues that postulating Gods existance is unnecessary. Smith believes that God is a contingent being. That is, God may or may not exist. Lets assume for the moment that Smith is right. God does not exist. What then is there? Well we have simply existance. Now it is axiomatic that something cannot come from nothing. Existance therefore must be eternal. If its eternal, then it must have no beginning or end. It must be infinite. What is infinite must have all positive things in it. There is no such thing as a negative truth, thus there can be no evil in this existance. What is this awesome existance? God. Smith proves Gods existance in spite of himself. What atheists try to do is to say there is no God, there is only the universe. If they are pressed to explain existance, they give to the universe the attributes of God ie; eternity, infinity, etc. What then is the diffrence? Is the universe God? No, because it is not perfect. It is not eternal nor is it infinite. How then do atheists explain the existance? They can't. Either they admit God is, or their explanations are unintelligble. Atheism is unintelligble. That disqualifies it from even philosophical inquiry. Smith claims that theistic claims are unintelligible, but its the atheists that have no meaning to their claims. Smith then argues against Gods existance, by claiming that God cannot be all good and yet evil exists. It is true that God is all good, but this also means that God is all just. If God did not punish evil resulting from man's wrong use of free will, then it could be claimed that God doesnt exist. Smiths book is good in that it gives the contrary viewpoint, but it does not present a convincing case against God.
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Summary: A great book, a truly great book!
Review: The book demonstrates that the belief in god is irrational. It is concise, clear, and you don't need to be a philosopher to read this book. If you are curious about atheism, do not be afraid to buy this book; you owe it to yourself to know the truth. Here is what the book covers: Chapter 1: "The Scope of Atheism." This chapter explains what Atheism is (lack of belief in God/god) and addresses the slander of Atheism, destroying any myths that equate Atheism with lack of morality or corruptness. Chapter 2: "The Concept of God." What is god? How do you know? This chapter explains the incoherence of the concept of god and believing on something that cannot be known. Chapter 3: "The God of Christianity." This chapter starts out by proving the contradictory nature of the Christian God and ultimately proves that it is unreasonable to believe in its existence. Chapter 4: "Reason versus Faith." This chapter demonstrates the irrational nature of faith and it inability to rescue the concept of God/god. Chapter 5: "The Skepticism of Faith." Here the author explains that faith is not a cognitive tool and cannot be used to accept the existence of God. The focus is on the Christian God and the need for the Christian to explain what he/she knows and how he/she knows it. Faith is simply not acceptable. Chapter 6: "The Varieties of Faith." This chapter covers the theories of faith, Christianity's demand for blind obedience and the need to abandon faith and return to reason. Biblical references to make the chapter even more interesting. Chapter 7: "Revelation." A truly great chapter that covers the Bible and its contradictions, inaccuracies, etc; miracles and how they must be accepted on faith, and basically that revelation does not rescue the concept of God either. Chapter 8: "Natural Theology." Here is an introduction to the arguments for God, and how attempting to prove God's existence only leads to further doubts. Chapter 9: "The Cosmological Arguments." Knocks down the most common theological Arguments of God's existence. It covers "The First Cause Argument," "The Sustaining First Cause," "The Contingency Argument," and "The Entropy Argument." Chapter 10: "The Design Arguments." Takes care of the attempts to explain the existence of the universe by attributing its creation to God. The chapter explains that the universe displays "order," not "design," and that it orderly nature eliminates the need for a supernatural explanation. Chapter 11: "Ethics Rationality and Religion." Christians argue that "if you don't know that Jesus loves you, how can you have any sense of self worth?" This chapter correctly explains Christianity is only conductive to human misery. Remember the Catholic's Inquisition and the Protestant's Witch trials? Chapter 12: "The Sins of Christianity." A remarkable, beautiful attack on "religious morality," a memorable attack on Christianity's notorious doctrine of hell. I could totally relate to the gruesome, abusive story of the little Child in the oven stamping its little feet on the floor because he was a sinner when he was alive. I could remember it vividly, a catholic priest told me the same story as a child. After 12 years of Catholic school I had serious doubts about religion, nonetheless, I was very afraid of even buying this book, let alone read it. Nonsense. Buy the book and learn the truth. The author finishes the book with a great message: "Human misery is a sad spectacle. But it is sadder still when disguised as moral righteousness."
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Summary: An excellent inroduction to the truth
Review: As a "born-again" atheist, I found this book to be an excellent introduction to the subject of non-theism. It's arguments are lucid and logical, it's critique of Christianity devastating. Any doubts about atheism that I had before reading this book, are now gone. If reality means anything to you whatsoever, then GET THIS BOOK!
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Summary: Great intro to logic and objectivist metaphysics
Review: I can see by reading other reviews that many people did not read this book, or worse, completely misunderstood it. First, I do not think it is a great introduction to Atheism; the book is about 20 years old and needs to be revised (philosophy does change). This book is a wonderful introduction to the so-called "laws of logic." In fact, I have not yet read a better argument for Objectivist metaphysics. Objectivist metaphysics is simply reality. We gain knowledge of reality from our senses, thus Smith argues that faith is not a method of cognition, but of feeling. And feeling does not make it so (whatever "it" is). This is not empiricism, as I read one reviewer call it. This is reality based metaphysics. As Smith already made the point, I'm not going to argue. However, a better inroduction to Objectivism would be, "Objectivism: the philosophy of Ayn Rand." I have two suggestions for people interested in Atheism: First, "What is Atheism" by Doug Krueger. The second is, "Arguing for Atheism: an introduction to the Philosophy of Religion" by Robin Le Poidevin. Le Poidevin's book is recent (1997) but is fairly complex. He discusses issues much harder to comprehend than in Krueger's book, but Le Poidevin goes into much greater depth, as well as breadth. Fair warning though, Le Poidevin's book is a college philosophy text, so you better have some background in the subject.
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Summary: Does a god exist?
Review: This question which Smith posits at the very beginning of his book and then sets out to answer is well addressed throughout this refutation of theistic belief which Smith has divided into four principle parts. In Part 1, Smith attacks the general concept of God as an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, infallible, and supernatural being. He explains the meaning of such terms as theist, agnostic, and atheist, and the implications of being each. In drawing excerpts from the writings of many theistic authors, he shows the notion of a god to be internally inconsistent and rationally unintelligible, and because theism cannot seek rational justification, he thus sets up his attack on faith. The efficacy of faith as a means to acquire knowledge is discussed in Part 2. Faith, the shortcut to knowledge, is shown here to be inconsistent with reason in that faith calls for an abandonment of rational thought processes in favor of acceptance of an idea without empirical evidence. If faith is to be epistemologically inconsistent with reason, Smith argues, it must be shown to be valid through reason. Smith exposes the inherent incosistency between miracles and causality, and goes on to reveal contradictions within the Bible, thus forcing the Christian to relinquish his idea of the Bible as the absolute truth of God. By showing faith to be illogical and irrational, Smith cuts the ground under from the acceptance of many religious doctrines and the belief in a god. Part 3 is dedicated to the refutation of the arguments put forth by theists for a god's existence. Each argument is presented and then addressed, and these various "proofs" offered by theists are shown to be fallacious and philosophically invalid. In Part 4, Smith demonstrates that the Christian basis for morals is misfounded. His chapter on "rational ethics," which counters Christianity's moral basis, seeks justification for a moral system and shows that virtues which are beneficent to man are those that should be followed. Smith discusses the terrible psychological consequences of the Christian moral system and how, rather than helping man in achieving happiness, it helps to perpetuate misery. He quotes multiple passages from the Bible and shows their underlying, implicit statements. Smith concludes, "Human misery is a sad spectacle. But it is sadder still when disguised as moral righteousness." This is an excellent exposition to atheism and is highly recommended for both theists and atheists. It is specifically designed for the layman of philosophy. As your exposition to philosophy becomes greater, though, you will progress beyond this book, so to speak. It is a wonderful starting point, nevertheless. Additionally, for a more eclectic look at ethics, I suggest reading Nietzsche as well as several of the Socratic dialogues, specifically Protagoras and Meno. You will not go wrong buying this book.
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Summary: Very Good Summary and Explaination
Review: George H. Smith does a tremendous job of defining atheism and theism and provides a very good introduction to the philosophy of atheism for the layman. In the first part of his book, Smith demonstrates that the burden of proof is on the theist and that the theist must first define god or ascribe characteristics to god in order to provide evidence for one. This is his argument for implicit atheism (that is, lack of belief in god or gods). He goes on in the second part of the book to show the inadaquacies of both the God of the philosophers and specifically the God of Christianity. He shows the incompatability of the various characteristics of the Christian God and the retreat into meaningless agnosticism made by the philosophical theists. This is his argument for explicit atheism (denial of existence of god or gods). This book should provide the atheist with more insight into philosophical atheism and should provide the theist with an advanced (even after 20 years) argument for atheism and something to think about.
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