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An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism
Book by Stein, Gordon
360 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 4, 2008
Dr. Gordon Stein is the editor of this collection of essays, some dating back to the 1800's. This is an interesting collection of older and hard to find essays dealing with religion from an atheistic point of view. Because of the age of the essays, the language is sometimes relatively convoluted.
I think Dr. Stein did a good job of picking essays, all of them are on point, and given that there are probably hundreds of essays that did not make the collection, the job of picking these few was probably difficult.
Given the language and sometimes the subject matter, Dr. Stein does a good job of introducing them, given precedence to the historical perspective rather than clarification of the subject.
Many of the authors found here were the leaders of now defuncted secular humanistic organizations. Not all the writings are of the same calliber, which makes picking and choosing them sometimes difficult (which one's to choose?)
I read this after reading H.L Mencken's "On Religion" edited by S.T Joshi. Maybe after Mencken's biting humor, the essays in Stein's collections were a bit dryer than they really are? Worth the little money it would take to buy it, but there are other collections that would be more important to have in my point of view.
I think Dr. Stein did a good job of picking essays, all of them are on point, and given that there are probably hundreds of essays that did not make the collection, the job of picking these few was probably difficult.
Given the language and sometimes the subject matter, Dr. Stein does a good job of introducing them, given precedence to the historical perspective rather than clarification of the subject.
Many of the authors found here were the leaders of now defuncted secular humanistic organizations. Not all the writings are of the same calliber, which makes picking and choosing them sometimes difficult (which one's to choose?)
I read this after reading H.L Mencken's "On Religion" edited by S.T Joshi. Maybe after Mencken's biting humor, the essays in Stein's collections were a bit dryer than they really are? Worth the little money it would take to buy it, but there are other collections that would be more important to have in my point of view.
February 12, 2011
An initial comment is that anyone with rational belief as a key component in their daily activity and philosophy should read this anthology.
A second note would be the poor binding. In fact the cover separated in a matter of 30 pages. I normally feel rather good about my gentile approach to opening a book... But this simply separated from the glue. Very clean separation; I have a cover and pages.
A second note would be the poor binding. In fact the cover separated in a matter of 30 pages. I normally feel rather good about my gentile approach to opening a book... But this simply separated from the glue. Very clean separation; I have a cover and pages.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews