The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer
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Synopsis
A huge collection of writings by atheists about religion, faith, non-religion, reason, science, and logic, with biographical information on each author. Some of them are pretty dated, but they're interesting nonetheless.
Table of contents
- Lucretius: De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) – Books I, II, III, V, translation by W. Hannaford Brown
- Omar Khayyám: Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: A Paraphrase from Several Literal Translations by Richard Le Gallienne
- Thomas Hobbes: "Of Religion", from Leviathan
- Benedict de Spinoza: Theological-Political Treatise
- David Hume: "The Natural History of Religion", "Of Miracles"
- James Boswell: "An Account of My Last Interview with David Hume, Esq."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley: "A Refutation of Deism"
- John Stuart Mill: "Moral Influences in My Early Youth", from Autobiography
- Karl Marx: Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
- George Eliot: "Evangelical Teaching"
- Charles Darwin: Autobiography
- Leslie Stephen: "An Agnostic's Apology"
- Anatole France: "Miracle" from Le Jardin d'Épicure
- Mark Twain: "Thoughts of God", from Fables of Man; "Bible Teaching and Religious Practice", from Europe and Elsewhere and A Pen Warmed Up in Hell
- Joseph Conrad: author's note to The Shadow Line
- Thomas Hardy: poem "God's Funeral"
- Emma Goldman: "The Philosophy of Atheism"
- H. P. Lovecraft: "A Letter on Religion"
- Carl Van Doren: "Why I Am an Unbeliever" from Twelve Modern Apostles and Their Creeds
- H. L. Mencken: "Memorial Service" from A Mencken Chrestomathy
- Sigmund Freud: from The Future of an Illusion, translated and edited by James Strachey
- Albert Einstein: Selected Writings on Religion
- George Orwell: From A Clergyman's Daughter
- John Betjeman: poem "In Westminster Abbey"
- Chapman Cohen: "Monism and Religion" and "An Old Story" from Essays in Freethinking
- Bertrand Russell: "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish"
- Philip Larkin: poems "Aubade" and "Church Going"
- Martin Gardner: "The Wandering Jew and the Second Coming"
- Carl Sagan: The Demon-Haunted World, and "The God Hypothesis" from The Varieties of Scientific Experience
- John Updike: from Roger's Version
- J. L. Mackie: "Conclusions and Implications", from The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God
- Michael Shermer: "Genesis Revisited: A Scientific Creation Story"
- A. J. Ayer: "That Undiscovered Country"
- Daniel C. Dennett: "Thank Goodness!"
- Charles Templeton: "A Personal Word" from A Farewell to God, and "Questions to Ask Yourself"
- Richard Dawkins: "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God" from The God Delusion, "Gerin oil", and "Atheists for Jesus"
- Victor Stenger: "Cosmic Evidence" from God: The Failed Hypothesis
- Daniel C. Dennett: "A Working Definition of Religion" from Breaking Which Spell?
- Elizabeth Anderson: "If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?"
- Penn Jillette: "There Is No God"
- Ian McEwan: "End of the World Blues" (original contribution)
- Steven Weinberg: "What About God?" from Dreams of a Final Theory
- Salman Rushdie: " 'Imagine There's no Heaven': A Letter to the Six Billionth World Citizen" (updated and expanded)
- Ibn Warraq: "The Koran" and "The Totalitarian Nature of Islam" from Why I Am Not a Muslim
- Sam Harris: "In the Shadow of God", from The End of Faith
- A. C. Grayling: "Can an Atheist Be a Fundamentalist?" from Against All Gods
- Ayaan Hirsi Ali: How (and Why) I Became an Infidel (original contribution)