The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

Front Cover
Christopher Hitchens
Hachette Books, Nov 6, 2007 - Literary Criticism - 499 pages
Despite the mistaken use of the label "New Atheists," there is a lot of continuity over the past couple of centuries among atheist authors in their critiques of religion, theism, and superstition. Not every argument is identical, and even when the same basic argument is being offered there can be variety in how it is presented. This evolution of atheist critiques of supernatural religion is one of the virtues of Christopher Hitchens' book The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. Well known for his own atheist book God Is Not Great, Hitchens treads some very heavily-traveled ground here in editing a compendium of atheist writings. Do we really need yet another book of essays, isolated chapters, and other selections from atheists, agnostics, freethinkers and skeptics of the past? What could we get out of this latest offering that we didn't get from the past half dozen that we bought - or the others that we simply skipped? Those are good questions, and reasons why I was skeptical of Hitchens' book, but in the end I think he succeeds in making his book more than "just one more" collection of atheist essays.
 

Contents

LUCRETIUS from De Rerum Natura On the Nature
1
BENEDICT DE SPINOZA TheologicalPolitical Treatise
21
JAMES BOSWELL An Account of My Last Interview
46
KARL MARX Contribution to the Critique of Hegels
64
CHARLES DARWIN Autobiography
93
ANATOLE FRANCE Miracle
112
MARK TWAIN Thoughts of God From Fables of Man
116
Bible Teaching and Religious Practice From Europe and Elsewhere and A Pen Warmed Up In Hell
119
An Old Story
178
BERTRAND RUSSELL An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish
181
PHILIP LARKIN Aubade
207
Church Going
209
MARTIN GARDNER The Wandering Jew and the Second Coming
211
CARL SAGAN The DemonHaunted World
218
The God Hypothesis
226
JOHN UPDIKE From Rogers Version
239

JOSEPH CONRAD Authors Note to The Shadow Line
123
THOMAS HARDY Gods Funeral
126
EMMA GOLDMAN The Philosophy of Atheism
129
H P LOVECRAFT A Letter on Religion
134
CARL VAN DOREN Why I Am An Unbeliever
138
H L MENCKEN Memorial Service
143
SIGMUND FREUD From The Future of an Illusion Translated and edited by James Strachey
147
ALBERT EINSTEIN Selected Writings on Religion
155
GEORGE ORWELL From A Clergymans Daughter
166
JOHN BETJEMAN In Westminster Abbey
168
CHAPMAN COHEN Monism and Religion
170
Arguments for and against the Existence of God
246
A Scientific Creation Story
267
A Personal Word
282
the Failed Hypothesis
311
DANIEL C DENNETT A Working Definition
328
PENN JILLETTE There Is No God
349
STEVEN WEINBERG What About God?
366
SAM HARRIS In the Shadow of God
454
A C GRAYLING Can an Athiest Be a Fundamentalist?
473
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2007)

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was the author of Letters to a Young Contrarian, God Is Not Great, and No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family. A regular contributor to Vanity Fair, The Atlantic Monthly, and Slate, Hitchens also wrote for The Weekly Standard, The National Review, and The Independent, and appeared on The Daily Show, Charlie Rose, The Chris Matthew's Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, and C-Span's Washington Journal. He was named one of the world's "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Britain's Prospect.

Bibliographic information