Philosophers Without Gods

Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life edited by Louise M. Antony, 315 pages


This collection of essays is divided into two parts. The first part is Journeys and the second part is Reflections. The essays are relatively short as they are about 10-20 pages.

The essays in Journeys are autobiographical. They describe how the essay writer grew up with religion and how he or she became an atheist. It includes perspectives from Jewish people and Christian people. It was noteworthy that a lot of the stories were similar. I almost thought I had just read some of them. It also stood out to me that a lot of the people were heavily religious before they became atheist.

The essays in Reflections cover a range of ideas related to atheism. One considers whether there can be transcendence without God. A couple consider how we can have ethics and morality without God. Others of them tackle belief and the nature of God. They cover some of the same ground but have different perspectives and opinions on the same questions.

I would recommend this to those interested in atheism or philosophy.

Rage Against God

The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith by Peter Hitchens, 219 pages

As a teenager, Peter Hitchens lost what little faith he had in God - he simply grew out of it, as one more step towards adulthood.  At the same time, he found a new faith in radical politics.  An education as a reporter in '80s Moscow lead to the death of that faith, as he learned that an atheist society could not, despite a mountain of corpses, produce an earthly paradise.  This experience was one of the factors which lead him to a reconsideration of, and then reconversion to, the Christianity he had smugly rejected as a young man.  It also shaped a new understanding of his former fellow travelers, most notably his older brother Christopher, and the motives which underlay their atheism.

This is both the strength and weakness of The Rage Against God.  It is not about the reasons for faith so much as an attempt to reveal that atheism is not a default position which must be reasoned out of, but is itself the product of hidden premises and desires, most often the desire to reshape the world in our own image.  His target is not atheists as a general class, but a certain class of atheists which included his more famous brother.  The autobiographical accounts are excellent, but Hitchens slips a bit when he tries to universalize from his experience.

Rumble

Rumble by Ellen Hopkins, 546 pages

Told in verse, as all of Hopkins’s books are, this tells the story of Matthew, who has lost not only his faith in God, but faith in most of the human race also.  His brother, Luke, committed suicide a few months ago.  He was being bullied because he was gay.  Matthew blames his parents, the kids at school, and would even blame God, if he believed in God anymore.  But mostly Matthew blames himself for not being there when his brother needed him most.  This is the story of Matt’s journey through this process, including his parents’ marital problems, his problems in his own relationship with his girlfriend, and his struggle with his lack of belief in God.  Give this to teens who like books about issues and who like books in verse.