What are
/r/exatheist's
favorite Products & Services?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
The most popular Products mentioned in /r/exatheist:
The most popular Services mentioned in /r/exatheist:
Steemit
The Great Courses
Scholarpedia
The most popular reviews in /r/exatheist:
Check out A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos by Geraint Lewis and Luke Barnes. (https://www.amazon.com/Fortunate-Universe-Finely-Tuned-Cosmos/dp/1107156610) It's well-balanced, one author is an agnostic and one is a theist.
The best chapter is chapter six IMO, 6. All Bets are Off!, where they talk not about the fine-tuning of constants or initial conditions, but about the fine-tuning of the very form of the laws themselves.
Hey /u/AidanDaRussianBoi,
When I first started doubting my faith, I spent a lot of time on reddit forums and on Google seeking help. Honestly, most of the time it just made things worse.
I was lucky enough to find a really great church that welcomed doubt and encouraged open discussion. My pastor recommended <em>The Reason for God</em> by Timothy Keller - it changed my life. I highly, HIGHLY recommend reading it, especially at your age.
> If you define it as most people do, including myself, which is the position of not believing in a god, then it doesn't really try to explain anything
I don't think most people entirely define it that way. I think most internet atheists define it that way. A more universally agreeable (or at least honest) definition is "an atheist believes there is no God".
I don't think you'd reject the hypothesis "god probably does not exist". That being the case, you most certainly are trying to explain that there isn't a creator God, which has trivially implied consequences that you rightly can be accused of explaining.
If you do reject that hypothesis, then perhaps "atheist" is not the correct label for you, since you haven't concluded God doesn't exist and you haven't concluded that God's existence is even unlikely.
Check out the work of Dr. Graham Oppy, atheist philosopher. One of his stances is that atheism is most honestly and intellectually described as "the belief in no God", and he comes to that because believing there is no god is distinct from being unopinionated on the topic due to ignorance or disinterest (which he labels "innocent"). The distinction is important because it's often used as a foundation of "burden of proof", a foundation that is flimsy because it is necessarily presumptive of the atheist conclusion.
His book Arguing about Gods examines the arguments and presumptions for both sides critically and concludes that the are reasonable believers of each side and that no argument from either side would convert the reasonable believer of the other. That conclusion gets punted, muddled, or just thrown out when an atheist tries to assert they make "no explanation", like being an atheist is special in the whole realm of truth, even though it does not at all resemble its near-namesake: classical skepticism.
Your conversion reminds me a little bit of born and raised Jew, Roy Schoeman; who although an atheist at MIT and Harvard had a profound conversion, based on two deeply mystical experiences https://youtu.be/EWDevlijGUI. His one book was fascinating…
Salvation Is from the Jews: The Role of Judaism in Salvation History from Abraham to the Second Coming https://www.amazon.com/dp/089870975X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_ECYD940JB4Y70SC7YMSE
You too.
Here's a great book you may consider reading:
This whole "lack of belief" atheism is a fairly new and rationally unsupportable attitude.
Dr. Graham Oppy's various works on atheism would probably help you a lot. Maybe start here.
If you want something a bit lighter, here's an excerpt from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
> to be an atheist on this definition, it does not suffice to suspend judgment on whether there is a God, even though that implies a lack of theistic belief. Instead, one must deny that God exists
It then goes on to argue the incoherence of defining yourself by a "lack of belief" that is simultaneously identically-founded and utterly different from agnosticism.
If you believe theism is in any way "extraordinary" or that the evidence supporting theism is insufficient (even though it exceeds the evidence of some things you probably do accept to be real), then you believe something, not lack it.
Continually demanding theists prove to you that God exist is, at its core, the very incoherence we talk about. This is not a debate sub, but nobody here who cares about the rational side of epistemics is going to take you seriously. You are not a solipsist, are you?
I find pascal's wager to not be very convincing or reasonable. I address it in depth in my book, but to put it briefly: the big issue is that the wager assumes there are only two possible beliefs: secular atheism, or nicene christianity. Of course, there are more religions than that! It also assumes that we can choose our beliefs, which we cannot.
It's basically really only a way to make nicene christians feel good as a result of their already existing beliefs (thinking the wager is on "their side"). The correct "position" would be to try and satisfy as many afterlife criteria as possible, so that no matter which one you end up at, the result is decent.
Or rather, perhaps just figure out what is actually true, so that we can be certain about our destination.
Here's a great book and interview by the author:
I'd recommend my own book. Though that's a bit biased of me. So I'll go ahead and point to The Eternal Verities: For Old Souls in Young Bodies being the book that ultimately tipped me from atheism to theism.
This picture actually looks like an article where an expert on sexuality and psychology is starting to discuss how different the world is with regard to finding porn.
It seems more like a preface to "since your kids will see LOTS of porn whether you like it or not, this is the talk you need to have about what is entirely inapprioriate" and not "you should show your kids porn".
Do you have the entire article in a digital format? I'm curious, now.
He has a fairly reputable sexual education book on the topic of a purely educational basis on sex ed instead of the old-school abstinence only mindset. I went to a Catholic School in the 90's and my sex-ed looks more like what he suggests.
This seems like one of those knee-jerk "burn Harry Potter" books thing. Did you get the image from some anti-gay blog rant somewhere?
> What are your thoughts on the anthropic principle?
I used to believe it was a good argument to hedge theism until I learned more about science and how unlikely everything is.
As an Engineer, I've come to realize that our entire Earth and Solar System is an amazing design. There are at least a dozen major and unnecessary features of the Earth that have to be for humans to fill the planet. For example, the Himalayas act as an air-conditioner for the northern hemisphere, and the Atlantic current keeps Europe from freezing. There are many of these unnecessary and unlikely features that point to design.
> cosmological homogeneity, like the presence of large quasar groups?
All the science that I've seen is astounded at how isotropic it is. I've also read that there are concentric rings of quasars that have the Earth in the center. I believe this book is about that:
https://www.amazon.com/Rare-Earth-Complex-Uncommon-Universe/dp/0387952896
Here's the book. That video is an interview with the author, Dr. Michael Rota.
He talks about the version of the wager that if Christianity is 50% true, a person ought to be a Christian.
> Did you ever read the whole Quran by yourself?
Yes. I also studied a lot of Hadiths.
I found the following book to be a great resource. I collates the life of Muhammad with the Quran, which puts a lot of things in context.
https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Koran-Readable-Understandable-Islamic/dp/0978552881
Thanks for sharing that. Think you might like this book.
I'm mainly a computer science guy, so a lot of the deep stuff is beyond me as a layman.
Since you are into the theoretical physics, and brought up substantialism, I wonder if you are familiar with Wolfgang Smith's Quantum Engima. There was a movie/documentary made recently about his work, and the book below. I'm still sorting it out, but his thesis of reclaiming reality from Cartesean reductionism makes a lot of sense.
Here's a brief interview:. https://youtu.be/7BKjTOlXqF8
The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key 3rd Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1597310077/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_C9ZCN45FAMYGSZRC64JE
(Not the original commenter.)
I also really like DBH. Hart is especially fond of the Hindu philosopher Ramanuja and his Vishishtaidvaita Vedanta school. Hart has recommended The Face of Truth by Julius Lipner (https://smile.amazon.com/Face-Truth-Metaphysics-Vedantic-Theology/dp/0887060382/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1SFUGM0Z46GM6) in the past as a good introduction. (I have the book but haven't started reading it yet so I can't say much more.)
This is going to sound crazy, but maybe also read a good atheist philosopher on religion? I say good because I don't respect most of them.
Specifically the book "Arguing About Gods" has been on my "todo list" because it covers this exact issue. He looks at all the arguments for and against God, and concludes that none are strong enough to convert a reasonable person to the opposite.
That is to say, he (an atheist) concludes that a reasonable theist should not become an atheist from the claims and arguments of atheism because they are not strong enough. Ditto for reasonable atheists (of which he considers himself).
At this time, he's the only atheist Philosopher of Religion I respect at all. I'm sure there's more than him.
Additionally, perhaps philosophy isn't the way for you at all, and you should pick up a book on comparative religions? The World's Religions is fairly reputable for that.
It's complicated because the ritual occult practices can be mutually exclusive of belief in God. A typical Chaote argument is that we're all wrong because reality isn't as simplistic as we are... but that our belief is the fuel.
And so, yeah there's some atheists out there, and some theists, who practice "witchcraft".
Then there's the more new-age popular "witchy" stuff like Tarot and Astrology (that I think you're talking about). They tend to all make implicit claims about the nature of oneself or the order of the universe, especially "magick" where you directly ask a divine being for intercession! I would argue that a so-called atheist who takes those seriously is really an agnostic jumping on the atheist bandwagon. Does that make sense?
When I dipped my foot into witchcraft, that was when I concluded atheism was incorrect. If I had stayed atheist, I might have gotten into one of the less claim-heavy, more-methodical schools like Chaos Magick.
That said, there's stuff like this, which seems to contradict me anyway.
> So let us know when you publish your scientific paper and it is accepted as science.
Sound logical proofs for God have been published for thousands of years. Here's a book from a former Atheist that explains 5 of them academically, based on cause and effect :
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1621641333/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_P5PA4DXXP1F0F43W9CDA
Evidence for God is all around us. The difference between atheists and theists is how we interpret what is around us.
Christians know better than to make the assumption that things are "natural".
Is the name for an argument that he proposed in 2 books, Mere Christianity and Surprised by joy
Also recompiled in this book
Those were my reasons as well. I hope you keep searching for truth. If you haven’t checked out the Bible project yet, it’s a great series on YouTube for getting a good understanding of the Bible.
Also here’s a book that helped me understand the “weirdness” and apparent tyranny of the Old Testament God:
https://www.amazon.com/God-Moral-Monster-Making-Testament/dp/0801072751
Another good book for atheists and theists to understand what classical theism defines “God” as (was a real eye opener for me):
https://www.amazon.com/Experience-God-Being-Consciousness-Bliss/dp/0300166842
It sounds like a fancy way of describing the sin of sloth.
I like Mr. Hart, except for his universalist theology (all are saved). It's so strange that he can hold such different ideas at the same time (justice, sanctification, salvation, etc). I wonder if he tells himself that because of some relatives who died.
https://www.amazon.com/That-All-Shall-Saved-Universal/dp/0300246226
Sounds like you need to read Craig Keeners 2 volume work on miracle accounts! https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Credibility-New-Testament-Accounts/dp/0801039525
> I would recommend contemplating the power and majesty of God.
Or...
It's not free, but his little book, <em>Knowledge and Christian Belief</em> is very cheap, and is a shorter version of his Warranted Christian Belief.
Hi /u/Pigflatus, please read The Reason for God by Timothy Keller as soon as possible.
A lifetime of internet searches and forums won’t help you as much as a single good book.
A little aside, but since you're Catholic you might find Frank Sheed's Theology and Sanity (https://www.amazon.com/Theology-Sanity-Frank-Sheed/dp/0898704707) an interesting introduction to the more "intellectual" side of Catholicism. I'm reading it now and it's a very good and readable introduction to theology. There is also has a shorter version called Theology for Beginners (https://www.amazon.com/Theology-Beginners-Frank-Sheed/dp/1887593926).
You should try this book. Justin is well known for hosting debates between atheists and believers, his book might answer some questions you have. https://www.amazon.com/Unbelievable-After-Talking-Atheists-Christian/dp/0281077983/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Justin+Brierley&qid=1608938411&sr=8-1
The book that brought me back to faith was <em>The Reason for God</em> by Timothy Keller. I strongly recommend it to anyone who is having a crisis of faith like I had. Please check it out as soon as possible.
> what denomination supports uniniversalisim i think its eastern orthodox but im probably wrong
Universal salvation has formally been condemned in the Catholic Church, but a few rogue Catholic theologians have tried to push it still. (e.g. Von Balthasar)
I expect that the Eastern Orthodox are somewhat fragmented about that, since each Patriarch has authority. David Bentley Hart is an Eastern Orthodox and wrote a book purporting Universal Salvation, so there's that :
https://www.amazon.com/That-All-Shall-Saved-Universal/dp/0300246226
> So what is God?
God is eternal and infinite mind, without form or dimension as we know it.
> Is there good reasons to believe in it/him/her?
Yes, all true lines of logic and reason point to God's existence, creating this Universe, Life and Consciousness. The most common error that most atheists make is presuming that the Universe is "natural". There is no proof for that. It's a big topic. I would recommend reading the following book, and several others :
https://www.amazon.com/Five-Proofs-Existence-Edward-Feser/dp/1621641333
Each person is different, so I can't recommend just one line of reasoning. I recommend them all. The most obvious thing to me is that since the Cosmos has infinite time and infinite energy, then it has infinite potential for consciousness. Theism purports that the cosmos (existence itself) has consciousness. That solves many logical puzzles, like efficient causality, cause and effect, infinite-regress, etc.
Philosophy and Science can get you to realize that some god likely exists. The facts of history then can get you to Christianity.
It took me about 10 years of studying step-by-step before I accepted the idea that a God could exist, so don't be surprised if it takes you a long time.
Here's a good short intro video that dispels a lot of misunderstandings about God :
Who/What God is and is NOT : https://youtu.be/1zMf_8hkCdc
I'm gonna say something that might help a bit, or might do the opposite... but it's something to consider.
You're not thinking about one thing, but two. You're not just thinking about religion. You're thinking about God, and you're thinking about death and afterlife.
These are not exclusive things, and you really should be careful making a decision about either using the other in a vacuum.
On one hand, there are a many religions where the God or Gods did not consider blessing/cursing us with an afterlife.
On the other hand, there are several hypotheses about an atheist afterlife.
You don't have to be Catholic to think he's on the shortlist of mandatory philosophers.
>The doctrine of God’s simplicity reaches the zenith of expression and sophistication in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. He regards the DDS as the centerpiece of the Creator-creature distinction and he makes recourse to the doctrine both explicitly and implicitly throughout the vast corpus of his theological and philosophical writings. Several factors enabled Thomas to nuance the doctrine in ways that his Christian predecessors had not. The most important of these was reappearance in the Latin West of the writings of Aristotle. ... Thomas was enabled to articulate a more detailed account of just how it is that God is not a composite being. <em>God without Parts</em>
You are more than welcome. Thank you for sharing your journey with us and being a part of this community.
If I could recommend just one book to you, I would highly recommend <em>The Reason for God</em> by Timothy Keller. I've read a lot of books about this topic, but that is the one that truly changed my life.
I know next to nothing about NDE's. I think my brain is still too seeped in materialism to view them with anything close to an open mind.
I know that Gary Habermas discusses them a lot. Here's a book by him: Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality
My group maintains a decent sized recommendation library here: http://orderoftheserpent.org/library.html
Additionally I wrote a book on the topic, which can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Behold-Darkness-Complete-Introduction-Religion/dp/1793962340
Always happy to answer anything specific :)