Religion
In reply to the discussion: Feisty entry into contentious field of atheist manifestos [View all]struggle4progress
(118,282 posts)and gives me new ideas: books on cryptography, children living in poverty, number theory, critical editions of the gospels, the history of zen in china, root-finding techniques ...
I've never been a fundamentalist or biblical literalist, so I don't need to be read arguments against their ideas. I don't find the existence or non-existence of god an interesting philosophical problem, and it has very little to do with the reasons for my interest in religion. I'm already persuaded that ethics has very a large materialist component; I'm interested in science and consider it an entirely worthwhile collection of subjects. I'll been calling myself a humanist for many decades: whether or not you approve of me saying so, I largely support humanist values
But I find Dawkins and Hitchens banal. I'm usually suspicious when people tout their own rationality: nearly everyone considers himself/herself more rational than everyone else. I'm simply not interested in more silly rants about fairies in the garden, delivered by people with simplistic anti-religious views. I don't generally think I learn much about a person from whether they self-describe as "atheist" or "believer." I've heard the non-stamp-collector slogan so often it almost puts me to sleep
Grayling? Meh! The reviews indicate clearly enough what's there