Favourite Atheist Philosopher/Writer

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Favourite Atheist Philosopher/Writer

Post by Jason » Wed Aug 08, 2018 1:58 pm

Got any?

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Re: Favourite Atheist Philosopher/Writer

Post by Hermit » Wed Aug 08, 2018 2:21 pm

Alan Chalmers
Umberto Eco
Antonio Gramsci
Karl Marx
Douglas Adams
Carl Sagan
...
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Re: Favourite Atheist Philosopher/Writer

Post by Rum » Wed Aug 08, 2018 2:50 pm

Christopher Hitchens by some margin for his pyrotechnical grasp of the English language even if he was a bit of a twat at times.

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Re: Favourite Atheist Philosopher/Writer

Post by Svartalf » Wed Aug 08, 2018 2:55 pm

Frack, I did not even know Eco was an open atheist.
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Re: Favourite Atheist Philosopher/Writer

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Wed Aug 08, 2018 2:59 pm

Ambrose Bierce
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Re: Favourite Atheist Philosopher/Writer

Post by Scot Dutchy » Wed Aug 08, 2018 3:26 pm

Never thought about. My atheism is not a philosophy. It is nothing.
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Re: Favourite Atheist Philosopher/Writer

Post by Brian Peacock » Wed Aug 08, 2018 3:36 pm

For the sheer well-written-ness of their prose, Hitchens (of course) and A.C. Grayling.
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Re: Favourite Atheist Philosopher/Writer

Post by Jason » Wed Aug 08, 2018 4:10 pm

Interesting. bought an A. C. Grayling book to check out. Thanks. :tup:

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Re: Favourite Atheist Philosopher/Writer

Post by Animavore » Wed Aug 08, 2018 9:00 pm

Still think Bertrand Russell is the best atheist philosopher to this day. Along with some of the other early philosophers and writers like George Ingersoll and Jean Meslier.

The thing is that most of these people dealt with the main theist ages ago and the theists haven't come up with any new ones to further debunk. There's nothing left to do except go around in circles.

That said; I like A.C. Grayling, but as a humanist philosopher who's great at writing food-for-thought tracts and letting you come out with your own conclusions. He does have a bandwagonning book specifically on atheism called Against All Gods which I have no interest in reading.

There is a great book called Darwin, God, and the Meaning of Life by Steve Stewart-Williams. An excellent train of thought leading to an inescapable conclusion from what Darwinism means for God (ie. He's fucked), and what that means for morality following from there.

For another angle Michael Onfray's Atheist Manifesto is an interesting treatise on hedonism.

Sean Carroll recently wrote a great book called The Big Picture. A bravely positive argument on why materialism is the best fit for the scientific evidence. This is the opposite of most athiest books which argue a lack of evidence for gods and immaterialism. Carroll shows how all of the universes energy is accounted for leaving no room for undetected sources.

Carroll is also the only atheist I've seen destroy William Lane Craig in debate. And Craig refuses to debate Jeffrey Lowder on the spurious reason that he's not a professional theist/philosopher. Now that last guy can argue. John W. Loftus, an ex-student of Craig he also refuses to debate on another spurious reason that it would be improper to debate an ex-student, too.
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Re: Favourite Atheist Philosopher/Writer

Post by Jason » Wed Aug 08, 2018 9:04 pm

Very good, much thanks Ani. :D

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Re: Favourite Atheist Philosopher/Writer

Post by JimC » Wed Aug 08, 2018 11:23 pm

Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell is worth a read...
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Re: Favourite Atheist Philosopher/Writer

Post by pErvinalia » Wed Aug 08, 2018 11:41 pm

Favourite authors who were atheist - Carl Sagan and Bertrand Russell. Haven't read any atheist tracts from them, though. In fact the only atheist literature I've ever read was Dawkins and a bit of Dennett.
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Re: Favourite Atheist Philosopher/Writer

Post by Brian Peacock » Wed Aug 08, 2018 11:54 pm

Animavore wrote:
Wed Aug 08, 2018 9:00 pm
Still think Bertrand Russell is the best atheist philosopher to this day. Along with some of the other early philosophers and writers like George Ingersoll and Jean Meslier.
Yep. All the 'atheist books' since "Why I am not a Christian" have basically rehashed it in one way or another.
That said; I like A.C. Grayling, but as a humanist philosopher who's great at writing food-for-thought tracts and letting you come out with your own conclusions. He does have a bandwagonning book specifically on atheism called Against All Gods which I have no interest in reading.
Against All Gods is a collection of shortish essays and articles written for the British Humanist Society magazine. A good pickerupper. He's also written a quite cheeky tome called 'The Good Book' which sets out to reflect a scientific view of the world allied to a grounded secular ethic - in the form of a cod-religious text (chapters and verses etc). It's actually quite amusing in concept, and not a bad read in parts. More of a dipper than a straight read through.
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"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: Favourite Atheist Philosopher/Writer

Post by Tero » Thu Aug 09, 2018 2:21 am

I read mostly biologists and I can’t imagine any of them are anything but atheists. It does not come up much in the texts.
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Re: Favourite Atheist Philosopher/Writer

Post by Sean Hayden » Thu Aug 09, 2018 7:26 pm

You can't beat Nietzsche on Christian morality.

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