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[Fallsburg]

Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God-Emperor.   That's four!

(I've heard that Chapterhouse is alright but I'm totally fine with capping the series off at God-Emperor, its logical conclusion.)

And Heretics and Chapterhouse. That's six!   

Heretics is ok.  Maybe on the level of Children.  I have a soft spot for Chapterhouse.  I suspect it actually sucks, but I can't bring myself to say that.

I justed started A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge.  I would totally recommend his A Fire Upon the Deep to any sci-fi fan.

[Tumetsu]

Almost completed Dawkins' God delusion. Probably will finish it tomorrow. So far I have been actually positively surprised by this book. I expected vehement raging attack against religion, Dawkins' arguments are IMO good and sophisticated, though surely he jabs a few time in a way which might hurt theist badly

Next I'll probably pick up Ultimate history of videogames or Design of everyday things which I ordered recently and which arrived yesterday. Related to scifi discussion here I should take some time to read Larry Niven's Ringworld books. My friend was hyped of them a year ago

[eigenbom]

Dawkins always seems quite calm. His response to something he disagrees with is usually ... "that's a commonly held misunderstanding ... here's why ...", sure to raise the ire of any opponent. :D

[JobLeonard]

Almost completed Dawkins' God delusion. Probably will finish it tomorrow. So far I have been actually positively surprised by this book. I expected vehement raging attack against religion, Dawkins' arguments are IMO good and sophisticated, though surely he jabs a few time in a way which might hurt theist badly

You will probably love "Religion for Atheists" by Alain de Botton.

[Capntastic]

You will probably love "Religion for Atheists" by Alain de Botton.

While I've only heard of this book second hand, I have to disagree. De Botton tries to make the point that atheists need religious ideology engrained into their day to day life to maintain their moral compass, more or less.  It misses the mark so hard to the point that the idea that de Botton is a false flag author doesn't seem too absurd to me.  I mean, the guy straight up claims that atheists categorically hate being part of a community.

Here's from the Q&A on his own Amazon page for the book:

"Q: Is it possible to be a good person without religion?

A: The problem of the man without religion is that he forgets. We all know in theory what we should do to be good. The problem is that in practice, we forget. And we forget because the modern secular world always thinks that it is enough to tell someone something once (be good, remember the poor etc.) But all religions disagree here: they insist that if anyone is to stand a chance of remembering anything, they need reminders on a daily, perhaps even hourly basis."

He is saying that atheists are incapable of making correct or justifiable moral choices without adhering to religious tenets.  Regardless of one's views pertaining to religion, it straight up paints an incorrect view of secular life, to the point of parody.  QED, it's a bad book.

[JobLeonard]

While I've only heard of this book second hand, I have to disagree.

...

He is saying that atheists are incapable of making correct or justifiable moral choices without adhering to religious tenets.  Regardless of one's views pertaining to religion, it straight up paints an incorrect view of secular life, to the point of parody.  QED, it's a bad book.

Wow, you sure know much about a book you haven't even read! Honestly, concluding that it's bad based on one quote pulled out of context sounds pretty damn irrational to me. Here, a more fleshed out interview with him from the recent New Scientist issue on religion:

Your opening gambit in your new book, Religion for Atheists, is to say, of course religions are not true, and you leave it at that. Does the question not interest you?
No, because I think most of us don't make up our minds in a rational way. You don't say "I'm an atheist because I've looked at all the evidence and this is what I think." Similarly you don't say "I'm religious because I've surveyed all the evidence."

So you don't agree with the "tough-minded critics" who characterise religious people as simpletons and maniacs?
No, not at all. I think that's very much the Dawkins view that essentially religion is a species of stupidity, and this seems to be very narrow-minded.

The central idea of the book is that religion supplies lots of useful and supportive structures that atheists have rejected along with the supernatural. Can you expand on that?
I think the origins of religion are essentially to do with the challenges of living in a community and the challenges of bad stuff happening to us, of which the ultimate is death. Religions are rooted in these needs. They are an attempt to control ourselves, heal ourselves and console ourselves. Some of these manoeuvres are accessible to non-believers and some are not. Belief in the afterlife is simply not there for a non-believer. However, the communal rituals might be utterly accessible to non-believers, and rely in no part on anything supernatural. There are some that can be incorporated into secular life without too much difficulty.

What kind of rituals do you mean?
I suggest various fanciful and not so fanciful interventions. How do you bind a community? It's very simple - you need a host. You need someone who introduces people to each other. The modern world is full of gatherings, but they're not hosted so they remain anonymous. You go to a concert but don't interact with anyone. You go to the pub, but you don't talk to anyone apart from the mates that you walked in with.

I also look at morality and the need that religions feel to remind people to be good and kind. This is seen as a bit suspicious by secular society. But we are weak-willed. We have aspirations to goodness but just don't manage it. So it seems important to have reminders of these aspirations.

Why have atheists let themselves throw these things away?
I think it's because of a great intellectual honesty: I cannot scientifically appreciate God so I'm going to have to leave all that behind. I'm going to have to give up all those benefits because something doesn't make sense. That's a very honest and very brave, lonely decision.

And yet you say that we have secularised badly. What do you mean?
All sorts of things have become impossible because they seem too religious. There are any number of moments in secular life when atheists say "oh, that's getting a bit religious isn't it". I think we need to relax about approaching some of these areas - they don't belong to religion, religion happened to sit on them. They're for everybody.

Aren't you just reinventing movements that already exist, such as humanism?
Yes, there have been attempts. Part of what has gone wrong is that people have wanted to start new religions, or rival institutions. The point isn't so much to start replacement movements as to integrate practices, attitudes and states of mind into secular life.

Not all atheists have reacted well to your suggestions...
I said that atheists should have temples. Immediately 8 million people on Twitter and Facebook decided to let me know what a terrible idea that was. But the core of their objection was not the idea of putting up a building, but the idea that it would be a replacement for a church.

Some atheists argue that we ought to be able to find enough meaning in the grandeur of the natural world. Do you agree?
That's precisely what I think, but I think we need to structure the encounter with that grandeur a little bit better. Essentially, religions are choreographers of spiritual moments, or psychological moments, and on the whole atheists have not been choreographers at all. I think the genius of religions is that they structure the inner life.

You have this rather wonderful idea of projecting images from the Hubble space telescope in Piccadilly Circus...
Again, it's about structure. We can go to the NASA website, but how often do you go?

In the chapter on religious pessimism - its emphasis on the darker side of existence - you critique the optimism engendered by science and technology. Why is that a bad thing?
The direction of science is towards progress, and so it gives us a feeling that science is about to solve everything. My sense is it will solve a lot of things but the timescale is going to be vast. It could be 400 years, it could be 900 years. The scientific world view doesn't necessarily prepare you for all those things that science is not going to solve in time for you - ultimately, of course, life and death. Whatever the awe-inspiring progress, for the moment at least, we're in just as much trouble as our medieval ancestors.

Religious pessimism is attractive because one of the things that makes life difficult is the assumption that everybody else's life is OK. Pessimism lays out how it is at its worst. No one lives in that bit all the time, but we probably all have to travel there. So it's quite useful to have that as a resource.

You see this book as the start of something. Where do you go next?
I'm aiming for practical interventions. This is not just theory.

People are looking all the time for things that are missing in the modern world that they might invent some piece of technology to solve. But in the area of how societies are arranged, there is tremendous conservatism. I'm simply trying to get the conversation going in that area.

If there's one thing to take away from the book, it's that even if you give up on the sky daddy, there are still lots of things on the menu that are available to you. I want to make sure atheists are deriving some of the benefits of religion. That's really my ambition.

He is an atheist himself, starts be book with the assertion that there is no god and that he doesn't want to waste time on discussing that, but instead wants to take back the "good bits" of spirituality and religion. And I am a "devout" atheist, but even I think there are good bits in spirituality and religion. 

Now, I don't know about you, but I think this doesn't fit at all with the picture you are painting of him or his book.

[Capntastic]

Wow, you sure know much about a book you haven't even read!

I've heard enough from people who have read it, and read enough about it (reviews, articles, excerpts) to know that it's premises are flawed.  It is entirely possible to be familiar with a work on a basic level without having personally read it.  I don't hinge my entire argument on the one part I quoted above, either- I just used it to show that he truly makes the claim that without adhering to specific tenets, atheists are somehow unable to form the answers to day to day moral issues.  It's absurd, and it does not follow that his conception of a person, incapable of forming rational decisions, would somehow be able to do so merely by following a religion.

He very much seems to be working backwards from the idea that 'hey maybe some religions do have some good to them' and trying to make up concrete reasoning for why those good things are only available through religious ideology.

I mean, even in your 'more fleshed out' interview he states, clearly, that atheists don't form their non-belief due to evidence-based decision making, that people can't consistently be good or kind without religion, that communities need religion as a basis.  That's actually super offensive.

You propped this book up as a followup to Dawkins, which almost implies it'd be the same sort of fact-based, non-spiritual, scientific stuff.  Instead it's just some guy, prolific and well read as he is, portraying atheists as these almost inhuman, soulless beings incapable of acting within a community, etc. 

I mean, if you can show me that this dude isn't just making sweeping truth claims without any basis in reality, go ahead, I'll be glad to consider them.  Does he even have any reason to assert that atheists are inferior at behaving within communities, or coming to decent moral decisions? As it is, the book just seems sort of like it's coasting on how fringe it is, compared to the views of most atheists.  Bragging about how many atheists disagree with his idea of there being atheist temples sort of cements that, as well.

So yes, if you've read the book, and you're keen on defending it, you should be able to address some of the specific issues I see with his entire premise.  Feel free to do so in PM if you'd like.

[Paul Eres]

Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God-Emperor.   That's four!

(I've heard that Chapterhouse is alright but I'm totally fine with capping the series off at God-Emperor, its logical conclusion.)

i heard from fartron or crowe or someone that only the first one is worth reading, and i've only read the first one; i did like the reviews of the god-emperor on amazon though so i may eventually read those

anyway right now i'm reading a door into ocean by joan slonczewski because apparently it has some similarities to SD's story and i like to know about similar stories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Door_Into_Ocean

[Fallsburg]

i heard from fartron or crowe or someone that only the first one is worth reading, and i've only read the first one; i did like the reviews of the god-emperor on amazon though so i may eventually read those

anyway right now i'm reading a door into ocean by joan slonczewski because apparently it has some similarities to SD's story and i like to know about similar stories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Door_Into_Ocean

Honestly, Dune is probably the only one that I would unequivocally recommend.  It is just a great book.  The others are all a bit rough and never live up to the promise of the first one, but they aren't bad per se.

[Capntastic]

i heard from fartron or crowe or someone that only the first one is worth reading, and i've only read the first one; i did like the reviews of the god-emperor on amazon though so i may eventually read those

I forget the deal, but Frank Herbert originally wanted to handle Dune in a different structure, either he wanted to do the first book as two or three books, or the second two books as one book, or something.  Basically, the second two books are sort of the middle children, in terms of story structure, for a number of reasons.  Dune, as a self contained story, comes across as complete.  The second two books indicate that this is not so at all, but are also about the logical conclusions of the events of the first book (Specifically regarding what happens when you have a messiah-emperor snagging the throne of the galactic empire, etc).  There's a lot of delving into the intricacies of the galaxy beyond Arrakis, the fleshing out of some of the core factions, and some neat interactions.  The problem is that, after the huge world-changing events of Dune, none of these things have any comparable thrust.

Of course, it all builds up to God-Emperor, which is equally as solid as Dune, in terms of scope, if not more so.  It pulls a lot of the themes woven into the first three books directly into the foreground.  The majority of it is dialogue, or monologue with a mostly-silent sounding board, but given the sort of story it is telling, it's the only way to really handle a lot of it.

The reason I am afraid to snag a copy of Chapterhouse is because I hear it sort of unravels a lot of the force God-Emperor has as a monolithic ending point to the series, and never successfully ties it back together.

Edit, re Fallsburg:  While I can see why someone would be down on Messiah and Children, God-Emperor is arguably as good or better than Dune, solely for taking the same themes and widening the scope while building upon them in an intricate manner.  The problem is that it is fundamentally a different sort of story, and lacks a lot of the adventurous quality of the first book.  Someone put it clearly to me that the second, third, and fourth Dune books lack a lot of the wish-fulfillment aspects of Paul-Being-The-Best, and while I wouldn't put it quite that way, I can easily see why a ton of people wouldn't cope well with the shift from Desert Adventure Knife Fights to People Talking And Making Allusions for 400 Pages.

Edit, MORE WORDS:  It's important to note that the setting of Dune, and the situations it presents, are truly enhanced by the deep level of worldbuilding.  You have certain ecological rules, technological rules, cultural rules, firing on all cylinders to the point that subtle actions carry a huge amount of context with them.  I feel that this is where the series really goes all out.

[JobLeonard]

So yes, if you've read the book, and you're keen on defending it, you should be able to address some of the specific issues I see with his entire premise.  Feel free to do so in PM if you'd like.

I haven't read the book, but the point is that I disagree with you on what his premise is in the first place. And unless I'm breaking forum rules I would like to keep our civil discourse public.

I just used it to show that he truly makes the claim that without adhering to specific tenets, atheists are somehow unable to form the answers to day to day moral issues.  It's absurd, and it does not follow that his conception of a person, incapable of forming rational decisions, would somehow be able to do so merely by following a religion.

That would be a fine counterargument, if that actually was what he was saying. I think that what he's aiming at is that morality is inherently based on emotional choices - the desire to feel good and avoid doing what feels bad. In other words: it is irrational. The prisoner's dilemma would suggest suggest that there is some truth to that, not to mention the growing mountain of evidence from psychology that we are social, emotional beings first, and ration beings second.

So just saying "this is good, this is bad" doesn't work, because humans aren't motivated by fact-based checklist - they need to feel that something is good or bad, and rituals are a way religions have achieved that. "We the atheists" should steal those tricks.

I mean, even in your 'more fleshed out' interview he states, clearly, that atheists don't form their non-belief due to evidence-based decision making

Sorry to burst your bubble, but again the evidence coming from psychology is that that is actually the case. There's a bunch of articles about it in the same issue of the New Scientist I got this interview from (it's a special issue about religion).

...that people can't consistently be good or kind without religion, that communities need religion as a basis. That's actually super offensive.

That would be super offensive if that was what he said. He says we need to use the methods invented by religion for structuring morality to properly function as a society. Which is not at all the same as saying that we need to believe in God.

You propped this book up as a followup to Dawkins, which almost implies it'd be the same sort of fact-based, non-spiritual, scientific stuff.

Well, as my girlfriend always says: "Almost doesn't count." (Wait, did I just mock myself?)

Please don't make assumptions on what my intentions are, because you're very wrong. I wasn't implying it was fact-based, non-spiritual or scientific. I suggested the book because I expect it to be interesting material on the same subject - namely, religion. I was planning on reading it myself. Yes, I know, it's rather awkward that it turned into me defending a book I haven't read (well, I'm defending the premise more than the book, actually). I have seen multiple lectures by Alain de Botton (two on the RSA youtube channel, one on Vimeo), read some articles by him, and I quite enjoy his way of thinking.

Instead it's just some guy, prolific and well read as he is, portraying atheists as these almost inhuman, soulless beings incapable of acting within a community, etc.

I mean, if you can show me that this dude isn't just making sweeping truth claims without any basis in reality, go ahead, I'll be glad to consider them.

Does he even have any reason to assert that atheists are inferior at behaving within communities, or coming to decent moral decisions?

I see only one person making sweeping truth claims here. No, I'm not going to defend "his" claims, because he isn't making them to begin with.

The suggestions he makes (one of the RSA lectures basically is an abridged version of the book) actually fit quite well with the recent turnaround in psychology about what makes people tick (again, we're basically just (predictably) irrational, socially oriented beings, with rationality tacked on, and we'd be much better of if we designed our systems to cope with that).

BTW, there certainly is a case to be made about how reductionist, rational thinking can go very. very wrong. The justification for a lot of very crappy modern art and horribly unlivable architecture comes to mind.

As it is, the book just seems sort of like it's coasting on how fringe it is, compared to the views of most atheists. Bragging about how many atheists disagree with his idea of there being atheist temples sort of cements that, as well.

You read that paragraph as him bragging, I read that as him saying that people misunderstood his point.

[Tumetsu]

If it is religion you want to read about, I strongly suggest Pascal Boyer's Religion explained. It approaches the issue from psychology and anthropology. The bottom line is that religion and rituals of it are by products of our "mental modules".

After reading it and God delusion I can't invent any convincing reasons for need of religious rituals with atheism. But for now I think I have read enough about religion and instead will read Ultimate history of videogames and check some other books of Dawkins.

[Paul Eres]

that's the first time i've heard modern art called "rational"

[peanutbuttershoes]

Galatians

[Dragonmaw]

i heard from fartron or crowe or someone that only the first one is worth reading, and i've only read the first one; i did like the reviews of the god-emperor on amazon though so i may eventually read those

I believe I was the one that actually told you this.

I greatly enjoyed Dune, but no other book in the series I feel has come even close to mixing politics, mysticism, and adventure in quite a cohesive way. I've read Dune probably 30 times by now, and each time I re-read it it's like a fresh new story. I love it.