Selected Product: | 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People With the Courage to Doubt Hardcover Author: James A. Haught Publisher: Prometheus Books Release Date: 1996-06 ISBN-10: 1573920673 ISBN-13: 9781573920674 List Price: $32.98 Average Customer Rating: | | God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything ISBN-10: 0446579807 ISBN-13: 9780446579803 List Price:$24.99 The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever ISBN-10: 0306816083 ISBN-13: 9780306816086 List Price:$17.50 Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism ISBN-10: 1569755671 ISBN-13: 9781569755679 List Price:$14.95 God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist ISBN-10: 1591026520 ISBN-13: 9781591026525 List Price:$18.98 The Quotable Atheist: Ammunition for Non-Believers, Political Junkies, Gadflies, and Those Generally Hell-Bound ISBN-10: 1560259698 ISBN-13: 9781560259695 List Price:$15.95 |
To use our price comparison to get the cheapest price, please click on the "Find the Cheapest Price" button located above for 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People With the Courage to Doubt by James A. Haught (ISBN-10: 1573920673, ISBN-13: 9781573920674). At this time we have not yet written a review for 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People With the Courage to Doubt by James A. Haught (ISBN-10: 1573920673, ISBN-13: 9781573920674). Please continue to keep checking back to this page as we are constantly adding reviews. Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com The English speaking world rarely acknowledges the many and varied gifts that "disbelievers" have bestowed upon humanity. Churchmen generally contend that great figures in history, such as America's founders, were conventional believers. But author James A. Haught demonstrates that this just isn't true. In 2000 Years Of Disbelief: Famous People With The Courage To Doubt, he offers a spirited collection of biographical sketches and choice quotations to set the record straight -- intelligent, educated people tend to doubt the supernatural. It is hardly surprising to find a high ratio of religious skeptics among major thinkers, scientists, writers, reformers, scholars, champions of democracy, and other world changers -- people called "great" in history. The advance of Western civilization has been partly a story of gradual victory over oppressive religion, and these brilliant doubters were men and women who didn't pray, didn't kneel at altars, didn't make pilgrimages, and didn't recite creeds. Included in this handy reference are such internationally famous figures as Isaac Asimov, W. E. B. DuBois, Will Durant, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Edward Gibbon, Langston Hughes, Thomas Jefferson, Omar Khayyam, Abraham Lincoln, James Madison, John Stuart Mill, Ayn Rand, Gene Roddenberry, Margaret Sanger, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Voltaire, and many others whose own words reveal their rejection of the supernatural. EXCELLENT COMPILATION OF GREAT THINKERS! | Customer Rating: | | The book let us know that disbelievers are not alone and are in great company. This book will contains lots of thoughts of many of the great minds of history. It is recommended reading material. | scepticism throughout history | Customer Rating: | This is my favorite collection of freethought quotations which I return to regularly. The book provides a broad range of ideas from many of the most gifted and famous people of history.Organized sequentially from ancient greece to modern times it provides a stimulating perspective of the long struggle against dogma,ignorance and superstition.It is comforting to realize that some of the world's most intelligent people held similar views and were able to express their doubts with wit and eloquence. I also recommend a recent book of essays by the same author "Honest Doubt" where he puts forth his own thoughts on many of the same subjects in a highly persuasive fashion. | Eye-opening | Customer Rating: | This is an eye-opening survey of prominent historical figures who did not believe in a god. Readers are sure to find many surprises here.
--Guy P. Harrison, author of 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God | good collection, but light in details | Customer Rating: | 2000 Years of Disbelief is a good collection of famous people from the ancients to the modern ones, who criticized religion. The book is organized into time periods such as renaissance, European enlightenment etc and covers a large number of thinkers. There is a short information for each thinker's life, opinions and then comes quotations from his/her books or sayings.
It is a good collection but it is somewhat light in explaining the ideas of the philosophers or the general conditions in their times that lead to their doubt or disbelief. About two thirds of the book consists of the quotations. More detailed information about the lives and ideas of the philosophers would have been nice.
Among some of the quotations that I like:
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one. - Voltaire
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. - Thomas Jefferson
Gullibility and credulity are considered undesirable qualities in every department of human life, except religion. - Christopher Hitchens
If the philosophers were to form a government, the people, after 150 years, would forgo some new superstition, and would either pray to little idols, or to the graves in which the great men were buried, or invoke the sun, or commit some similar nonsense. Superstition is the weakness of the human mind, which is inseparably tied to it; it has always existed, and always will. - Frederich the Great
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy. Redemption: Deliverance of sinners from the penalty of their sin, through their murder of the deity against whom they sinned. The doctrine of Redemption is the fundamental mystery of our holy religion, and whose believeth in it shall not perish, but have everlasting life in which to try to understand it. - Ambrose Bierce | Great Ideas | Customer Rating: | | Informative, and to be truthful, a great deal of fun to read. This work reaffirms that to think "freely" is an old and honored tradition, practised by some of the creators of the "Greatest Ideas" in history. |
|