David Eller's Book, Atheism Advanced, Looks Like A Superior Book!

Frank Zindler just sent me Dr. Eller's new book Atheism Advanced, and it looks fantastic! [Eller is a cultural anthropologist who wrote the college textbook, Introducing Anthropology of Religion (Routledge, 2007)]. The book is 468 pages long, well documented, and looks very well argued. I rarely recommend a book before actually reading through it, but this one looks like it's good enough to be an exception. I'll try to write more about it later, but read for yourselves the astounding reviews on amazon to see what others are saying about it. Anyone else read it yet?

In the tradition of Frederick Nietzsche, Eller begins in the introduction with a few aphorisms which sum up some of the arguments throughout his book. Here’s a small representative sample of eight pages of them:

An atheist is not a person who knows too little about religion. An atheist is a person who knows too much about religion.

You say your god is unknowable? But the unknowable and the non-existent are indistinguishable.

If atheism is a religion then not collecting stamps is a hobby.

The best argument against religion is all the other religions.

In the absence of evidence, the scientist says, “I don’t know,” but the religionist says, “I believe.”

One does not have to prove a negative. One must assume a negative.

Old gods don’t get disproved. They get forgotten.