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For thousands of years, the faithful have honed proselytizing strategies and talked people into believing the truth of one holy book or another. Indeed, the faithful often view converting others as an obligation of their faith—and are trained from an early age to spread their unique brand of religion. The result is a world broken in large part by unquestioned faith. As an urgently needed counter to this tried-and-true tradition of religious evangelism, A Manual for Creating Atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith—but for talking them out of it. Peter Boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than 20 years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.
From politics and religion to workplace negotiations, ace the high-stakes conversations in your life with this indispensable guide from a persuasion expert. In our current political climate, it seems impossible to have a reasonable conversation with anyone who has a different opinion. Whether you're online, in a classroom, an office, a town hall—or just hoping to get through a family dinner with a stubborn relative—dialogue shuts down when perspectives clash. Heated debates often lead to insults and shaming, blocking any possibility of productive discourse. Everyone seems to be on a hair trigger. In How to Have Impossible Conversations, Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay guide you throug...
The first book on Christian apologetics written by a leading atheist figure that teaches Christians the best and worst arguments for defending their faith against attack The Christian faith has been vigorously defended with a variety of philosophical, historical, and theological arguments, but many of the arguments that worked in an earlier age no longer resonate in today's educated West. Where has apologetics gone wrong? What is the best response to the growing challenge presented by scientific discovery and naturalistic thought? Unlike every work on Christian apologetics that has come before, How to Defend the Christian Faith is the first one written by an atheist for Christians. As a former Christian defender who is now a leading atheist thinker, John Loftus answers these questions and more. He shows readers why Christian apologists have failed to reach the intelligent nonbeliever and offers practical advice for Christians, whether they want to better defend their faith against atheist arguments, or actively convert more individuals to Christianity.
The academic world has been plagued in recent years by scepticism about truth and knowledge. Paul Boghossian, in his long-awaited first book, sweeps away relativist claims that there is no such thing as objective truth or knowledge, but only truth or knowledge from a particular perspective. He demonstrates clearly that such claims don't even make sense. Boghossian focuses on three different ways of reading the claim that knowledge is socially constructed - one as a thesis about truth and two about justification. And he rejects all three. The intuitive, common-sense view is that there is a way things are that is independent of human opinion, and that we are capable of arriving at belief about how things are that is objectively reasonable, binding on anyone capable of appreciating the relevant evidence regardless of their social or cultural perspective. Difficult as these notions may be, it is a mistake to think that recent philosophy has uncovered powerful reasons for rejecting them. This short, lucid, witty book shows that philosophy provides rock-solid support for common sense against the relativists; it will prove provocative reading throughout the discipline and beyond.
For all the discussion in the media about creationism and 'Intelligent Design', virtually nothing has been said about the evidence in question - the evidence for evolution by natural selection. Yet, as this succinct and important book shows, that evidence is vast, varied, and magnificent, and drawn from many disparate fields of science. The very latest research is uncovering a stream of evidence revealing evolution in action - from the actual observation of a species splitting into two, to new fossil discoveries, to the deciphering of the evidence stored in our genome. Why Evolution is True weaves together the many threads of modern work in genetics, palaeontology, geology, molecular biology, anatomy, and development to demonstrate the 'indelible stamp' of the processes first proposed by Darwin. It is a crisp, lucid, and accessible statement that will leave no one with an open mind in any doubt about the truth of evolution.
Between the poles of strong atheism and strict theism lies agnosticism, the argument that gods are very unlikely, but cannot logically be ruled out as utterly impossible. Agnosticism is considered a cautious, tentative and scientific approach to the question of the existence of gods - Stefan Molyneux's seminal book "Against the Gods?" makes a powerful case against agnosticism and for the positive acceptance of the nonexistence of supernatural beings. It is not rational to even entertain the possibility of the existence of irrational entities. We do not accept agnosticism about unicorns, fairies, square circles, pixies or the proposition that two and two make five - why do we create a special exception in the realm of deities? Surely it is because the social cost of rejecting Gods is far higher than the social cost of rejecting goblins. "Against the Gods?" provides essential ammunition to those fighting the virus of faith, and clears the mental fog of the irrational middle ground between atheism and theism.
Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly Bestseller! Times, Sunday Times, and Financial Times Book-of-the-Year Selection! Have you heard that language is violence and that science is sexist? Have you read that certain people shouldn't practice yoga or cook Chinese food? Or been told that being obese is healthy, that there is no such thing as biological sex, or that only white people can be racist? Are you confused by these ideas, and do you wonder how they have managed so quickly to challenge the very logic of Western society? In this probing and intrepid volume, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay document the evolution of the dogma that informs these ideas, from its coarse origi...
Philosophy’s Future: The Problem of Philosophical Progress diagnoses the state of philosophy as an academic discipline and calls it to account, inviting further reflection and dialogue on its cultural value and capacity for future evolution. Offers the most up-to-date treatment of the intellectual and cultural value of contemporary philosophy from a wide range of perspectives Features contributions from distinguished philosophers such as Frank Jackson, Karen Green, Timothy Williamson, Jessica Wilson, and many others Explores the ways philosophical investigations of logic, world, mind, and moral responsibility continue to shape the empirical and theoretical sciences Considers the role of contemporary philosophy in political issues such as women’s rights, the discrimination of minorities, and public health
Suppose your life sucks. Your husband has done a vanishing act, your stepson is being bullied and your daughter has a once in a lifetime opportunity - that you can't afford to pay for. So imagine you found and kept some money that didn't belong to you, knowing it would pay for your daughter's happiness. But how do you cope with the shame? Especially when the man you've lied to decides to help you out in your hour of need. Jess is in hell - Ed has saved her family - but is their happiness worth a lifetime's soul-searching? 2014.
In today's modern world, we are largely isolated from the kind of savagery our ancestors faced on a daily basis. Although violence was as natural to our evolutionary development as sex and food, it has become foreign to most of us: at once demonized and glamorized, but almost always deeply misunderstood. Our hard-earned and hard-wired instincts—our evolved and trained ability to survive and overcome violent encounters—have been compromised. Yet, as even a cursory look at news headlines or a police blotter will reveal, the threat of violent crime is ever-present, and those we've entrusted to protect us cannot always be relied upon. The Gift of Violence tells the story of this vulnerabilit...