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Permalink Reply by Jim DePaulo on January 28, 2011 at 10:20am

I was at a friends ranch for several days and really needed something to read but the only book in the house was The Red Tent. I was suprised that it was such a good read.

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Permalink Reply by Derek Schrock on August 24, 2009 at 9:28pm

Godel Escher Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter - Explores consciousness, logic, systems etc...
A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram - Explains how complexity arises from simplicity in nature using simple programs.
Life Story by Virginia Lee Burton - It was my favorite picture book as a kid. Shows how things formed and evolved up until present day.
The Ultimate Visual Dictionary of Science by DK Publishing

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Permalink Reply by Sentient Biped on August 24, 2009 at 10:13pm

I can't figure out the intensity of the criticism of this topic. It's just asking what books people really really like! What is the harm in that, for dog's sake? If someone doesn't like the topic, they can ignore it!

Jezzy, on the other hand, as someone who shares the name, "Daniel" refers to "God's judge". Go figure. If you want to use the word "worship" with books (or cats, or tomatoes), then that's fine, most people know damn well you are not on your knees with rosary in front of your Dawkins' masterpiece.

My favorite all-time book is "Off for the Sweet Hereafter" by T.R. Pearson. This book is so painfully funny and so cheerfully sad that I want to laugh and cry when reading it. As noted & quoted in wikipedia, the first sentence is over 400 words long, and I can almost hear the characters talking in that rambling style. The wikipedia article includes great quote, "Lemly had no industry whatsoever and little agriculture to speak of unless mildew counted for something."

This is an older book now, in the tradition of the great US Authors of the old south. The author is respectful, dare-I-say worshipful, of the inherent dignity of the undignified, the inherent worth of the worthless, and the inherent beauty of the homely.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Spicer on August 25, 2009 at 2:19am

Well, it's not a book, but Monty Python's The Life of Brian provides the most concise and easily digestible path to atheism by perfectly capturing the loony essence of Christianity. It's very difficult to take Protestantism vs Catholicism or Sunni vs Shia seriously when all I can think of is "Follow the gourd!" "No! Follow the shoe!"

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Permalink Reply by Sentient Biped on August 25, 2009 at 4:52pm

I worship Monty Python.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Spicer on August 25, 2009 at 5:11pm

As do I. As deities. Clearly, only a group of gods such as these could have designed such a deranged universe as ours. And BBC TV was their prophet. Are we not all merely parrots, pining for the fjords and shuffling off this mortal coil?

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Permalink Reply by Jaime Paredes Muñoz on August 25, 2009 at 7:37am

My favourite atheist boom is "The Gospel according to Jesus" of Jose Saramago ,Literature Nobel Prize 1998.Condemned by the Portuguese Catholic Church.It made me laugh to death.

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Permalink Reply by Ross on August 25, 2009 at 2:31pm

The 33 Strategies of War and the 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

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Permalink Reply by Jaime Paredes Muñoz on September 1, 2009 at 3:55pm

"If angels would exist,God only with angels would solve everything"Jose Saramago"The Gospel according to Jesus,Nobel Prize of Literature 1998.
"What kind of God is this that creates sick children and poisonus cactus?"another quote.
"Jesus asked God:why do you give power and glory?-God answered:because later will come wars called the Cruzades-The Devil said then-ok ,lets make peace now and no wars would be neccesary.God said:no, History has to follow its course.The Devil said: I want to make sure I did tempt God"another paragrah of "The Gospel according to Jesus in which Jesus is just a human being influenced by forces of good and evil,but in satire.

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Permalink Reply by Sentient Biped on September 1, 2009 at 4:00pm

Jaime -
You convinced me, I have to read this book! Damn! I don't have enough time to read the toilet paper label, let alone another book! You are a cruel man!
Now off to the Amazon web page to place the order.

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Permalink Reply by Jaime Paredes Muñoz on September 1, 2009 at 4:05pm

"The Anti-Christ"by friedrich Nietzche,german philosopher 1985,epigon of Schopenhauer,which because of his book "And thus spoke Zaratustrah", and his concept of superman, he was considered by some the ideologue of nazism but he had a jewish girlfriend and only his friend Wagner was anti-semitic.Also his book "the darkening of the idols" in which he explains the consecuences of "the death of the old God" and predicts Europe future.Some of his pupils were Sigmund Freud and Max Weber that creates psichoanalysis and sociology respectively.Nietzsche is the greatest atheist of all times.From Lima ;Peru,Jaime Paredes

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Permalink Reply by Mihai on September 7, 2009 at 4:59am

Instead of "sacred texts" (we are not theists, are we?) I would prefer "dear";
I would suggest Carl Sagan's Contact;

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