Friday, August 19, 2011

Atheism: the Good, the Bad & the Ugly



Introducing a new ebook now available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

Nothing is sacred--not even atheism! G.M. Jackson, an atheist and author of How to Prove God Does Not Exist and The Jesus Delusion, takes an introspective look at atheism and exposes the delusions many atheists have while preserving their most profound insights. The result is "Atheism--the Good, Bad and the Ugly." (42,000 words.) This book is not for the close-minded nor the faint-hearted. Read it if you dare!

Highlights from the book:

"How would Dawkins like it if we cherry picked all his worst deeds, flaws and shortcomings and left out his attributes? I don't think he would like it much at all, but just for fun, let's be bad like him and do the same number on him he did to God:

"Richard Dawkins is arguably the most unpleasant character in all reality: full of selfish genes and proud of it; married three times, divorced, a fact- withholding, half-truth-telling, beady-eyed, polemic anti-theist; a petty bug-loving, blind-watch-making, feces-collecting, zoological, egomaniacal, Darwinian bully."

"According to Aquinas, God is simple, without composition of parts, such as body and soul, or matter and form. If that is really the case, then in what way are we made in God's image? Aquinas goes on to describe God as perfect, lacking nothing... Wait! Back up! God is allegedly without composition of parts, such as a body and soul, so he is lacking something, or, if he is lacking nothing, then he must have parts: body, soul, etc. Before Aquinas can spit out two sentences, he contradicts and discredits himself."

"Dawkins has something in common with the 9-11 terrorists: both are two sides of the same coin of ignorance. "Religion" was not the cause of the terrorism. The cause was an utter failure to practice religion as it should be practiced. In the case of the 9-11 terrorists, those men failed to heed Islam's prohibitions against suicide and the killing of women and children."

"To be an atheist, you are not required to be intelligent, reasonable, rational, or logical. You can be a dogmatic atheist if you choose. You can be immoral and still qualify as an atheist. This is not to say atheists are stupid, irrational or immoral. There are in fact some highly intelligent, rational, ethical atheists. My point is the 'atheist' label does not subsume intelligence, ethics, logic, morality, etc. Nor would atheism guarantee a new world order of peace, brotherly love and harmony."

"[I]f the superstitious elements of religion were surgically removed so that only the moral code remained intact, that moral code would still allow for acts of war and the tragedies of war. Wars may not be fought in a god's name but would still be fought in the name of 'good' and 'good' is just god with an extra 'o.' "

"If we assume that atheists are right about the God issue, would that make us more intelligent than those who are wrong, i.e., the believers? If God were the only thing a person could be right or wrong about, I would have to agree that men without religion are more intelligent than religious men. But if a stopped clock can be right twice a day, does that really mean it is a superior time piece? By the same token, if atheists are right about God, does that make us right about everything?"

This book also includes dozens of quotes from great minds such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Ayn Rand, Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, Gene Roddenberry, Woody Allen, George Carlin, Epicurus, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and many more.

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