Rate this book

50 Voices Of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists (2009)

by Russell Blackford(Favorite Author)

3.67 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1405190469 (ISBN13: 9781405190466)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

review 1: This book would be more interesting if I could find sense in the order of the essays. It feels like they had 50 essays and just drew randomly. They aren't arranged in any kind of theme. No "I was a Born Again, but saw ..." No "I was never really a theist".. Just whatever.SO being a collection of 50 essays by 50 authors with nothing in common other than the fact that they're atheist the level of writing of course varies greatly too. There are some essays that are very academia oriented: many citations, a clear thesis, a clear conclusion. There are others that read more like a blog post. There are some that I wonder who they though their audience was.There are some interesting points in here, but it's hard to recommend books like this because they are so crap shoot. I skimm... moreed a lot of the later essays.I will recommend the Michael Shermer essay because he's actually an accomplished writer who finds a good ground between academic and popular writing.
review 2: As might be expected from 50 different essays, I have mixed reviews. Some were not accessible. Most accessible were the personal stories. The common theme (too common around the middle of the book) was that most of the essayists could not reconcile the idea of a benevolent, all-powerful god with the amount of suffering in the world. There are other arguements made, but this is the key one. If you've lost interest about the middle of the book, skip forward, I found the second half more variable than the first (including essays from people leaving religions other than Christianity). I particularly like Susan Blackmore's and Peter Singer's (with Marc Hauser) essays - I need to read more Peter Singer. Michael Tooley's was particularly interesting: examining Jesus's ethics.I'd give it 3.5 stars, if the ratings allowed 1/2 stars. less

Download links for: 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists

Advertising