Books

The rise and rise of Kindle

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We in the UK knew this day would come, the trend was obvious, well now it finally has. Amazon says it sells more books for Kindle than paperbacks and hardbacks combined on Amazon.co.uk, TechWeek Europe reports. So what are the numbers? Amazon said that for every 100 print books bought through its UK site, it sold 112 Kindle … Read more

Book Pointer -> “Forged” by Bart Erhman

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If you are a believer, then you should seriously consider reading a book by Biblical scholar, Bart Erhman. His latest publication “Forged” is a great introduction to the reasons why scholars are persuaded that a significant number of works in the New Testament are not by their purported authors. He also explains why some of the ideas we embrace today do not actually come from the bible at all, but were instead added in later.

As an example, we have a truly crazy idea that many accept as reality. Its the bizarre concept that there is one God that has three different forms, Father, Son and Spirit. We are all familiar with this concept today, it is part of our cultural baggage. However, what really surprised me is that this idea does not exist anywhere in the bible at all … except for one reference in 1 John 5:7-8.

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Top 5 Non-Religious Books on Living a Good Life

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There is a prevailing, and fairly common belief, that we need religion to live a truly ethical and moral life, and that a life without a god (pick any, they all claim it), leads you down the road to immorality. It is pure nonsense of course, and tempting as it might be to explain why, my immediate motivation for this post is not to go there, but rather to highlight a rather interesting list of secular books on the topic of living a good, and yet completely godless, life.

Well-known British philosophy professor, A.C. Grayling, has had a lifetime ambition to distill into one volume the very best secular thoughts, and so after many decades of work, he finally completed it, (if curious, you can click here for more details on his new publication “The Good Book”). Anyway, my point is not to point you at that specific book, but since I’m on the topic, do check it out. Instead I want to make the observation that he spent a heck of a long time  plodding through thousands of texts to complete his book, so he has now got specific recommendations – a Top-5 list of books “on how to live a satisfying and morally good life.” …

I was quite surprised at a couple of them.

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How can you be a militant atheist? It’s like sleeping furiously – AC Grayling

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The philosopher, AC Grayling, was interviewed in last Sunday’s  Guardian about his new book, “The Good Book: A Secular Bible”.  You really should read both the interview, and of course the book itself. To temp you, here is a small extract from the interview:

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The Good Book mirrors the Bible in both form and language, and is, as its author says, “ambitious and hubristic – a distillation of the best that has been thought and said by people who’ve really experienced life, and thought about it”. Drawing on classical secular texts from east and west, Grayling has “done just what the Bible makers did with the sacred texts”, reworking them into a “great treasury of insight and consolation and inspiration and uplift and understanding in the great non-religious traditions of the world”. He has been working on his opus for several decades, and the result is an extravagantly erudite manifesto for rational thought.

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