Going to get acess to Ibooks tomorrow:any recommendations?

"Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everyone thinks he understands it." --- Jaques Monod.

Well, it took me longer to get the apple ID stuff done then expected, but I finally have access to books.I am in the preface of The god delusion, I have yet form a opinion, but he has a certain dry sense of humor. Can't help imagining him speaking him every sentence in that typical manner of speaking he has either.Trying breaking the spell later, I bought some apps as well, and overall my budget isn't high. I also spend most of my reading time with A game of thrones, so that's why I'm still stuck in the preface of TGDAnother factor is that my mother expressed concern about me spending to much time reading science books and generally fretting to much it, so buying a large haul of books in one go, even when reading them slowly, is not really a option, at least if I wish to keep a low profile for the moment. I'm aware I'm in a earlier phase in life then most of the members here, I barely turned 20. This touches on a much deeper subject then merely picking books to read. It's more about moving away in your way of thinking from the parents that raised you. I shall be honest and say it has been bugging me a lot lately, and although I'd like to speak about it, should some of the members be interested, I also need to take the privacy of those around me into account.

The God delusion exceeds my expections a bit. Maybe it's because atheists don't refer to it often, while theists are quick to bash it. He is writing rather brief on complex matters, but overall it isn't as overly agressive as is often suggested, although I've yet to read the parts that may be more offensive to Christians. Is there anybody here who did read it?

You know what, that's a startlingly good point. I don't think I've ever seen a atheist quote from it. And yet I've often seen believers say it's our bible.(Atheists don't quote from it because there's absolutely nothing in it that most of them haven't heard before - it's just all in one place and in a readable form. Believers, I suspect, have never seen the other side, so find it all new and intimidating.)Edited by Tangle, : Grrr - bloody quote vs qs. Again

I suppose so. There's nothing that was totally new to me, but it stitches things together a bit. My E-book version has the paperback preface, in which Dawkins himself states it was written for a layman instead of it being scholary. Yet, some people, including mcgrath famously, and people generally interested in theism, like a Christian friend of mine, generally refer to it as it being poor theology.Although it seems safe to say it's indeed very poor Christian theology, in the sense Dawkins doesn't think much of theology and is quick to demolish it's logical framework.Prior to reading it, I already thought Chr. theology is structured to make a perfect God plausible, and much of the arguments were made in a time that there wasn't much evidence for of against at all. In this time of pressing evidence against in biology, physics, and secular biblical scholarship, holding the often very semantically based classic theological argument(backed by non-overlapping magistra), Mr. Dawkins wrecking ball-esque approach to it is somewhat refreshing to those who already have some doubts towards it, but to the staunch theist it will seem more like Dawkins is swinging a blunt axe around blindly raging at as many points as he can, without truly toppling any belief they may hold.For this reason, it's only the start of my intended reading. I'm interested in breaking the spell, which is, should Modulous be right, is more akin to strategically placed TNT packages. Once I've been through that, it's just a slow slog reading more specific good books and generally improving my science.I should note I'm already a bit versed into atheistic reasoning thanks to a high quality dutch that has a section briefly countering theistic arguments, explaining atheistic ones, and has a few more in depth essays, and also topical stuff from a skeptic view. Because the majority here is either from the US or the UK, I sadly cannot share it fully to you. Although I recently discovered he translated one of his essays into English(a critique of TE), so I'll link that for those interested in his style:
Bart Klink Evolution » Internet Infidels

I read through it slowly due to reading to many things at once,, I finally finished the god delusion.. only to conclude Dawkins isn't as offensive as he's always made out to be.When he's being what people call ''crude'' it's almost always concerning the old testament. Most of the time he settles for polite British sarcasm.But at other times, he just comes across very genuine and concerned.Especially in the last chapter he takes a reflective approach on things, which was very nice read.The book has some rough edges every now and then, but overall, Dawkins reputation seems majorly overblown. As he said himself, he's just being honest as people often are with other subjects, he just takes it to religion without softening his words up. He takes a very anti-theistic stance, yes, but he does explain why every time he makes such a statement.Feel kind of silly taking that to seriously, although my main reason to read it myself was to form my own opinion of him.The only gripe that remains, and which also is majorly picked apart by detractors is that he's a little overly brief and casual in attacking theology. He tried to keep it readable, but I would have wished a bit more. But then again, theology is internally set up to point to God existing, and it's often very difficult to entangle it playing by theology's rules, so that might be the reason why he rather informally dismissed most of them.

I read the God Delusion, and was very disappointed. It doesn't seem to say much of interest, and he does the most appalling job of dealing with 'proofs' for the existence of God. Were I a Christian, I would come away convinced that he was incapable of refuting the traditional Christian arguments, and so didn't really try.A lot of the rest of the book just seemed to be moaning and pointless anecdotes. He should have just taken the 'Why there is almost certainly no God' chapter and published it as an article about why he doesn't believe in God, and thrown the rest of the book away. I suppose it's probably made him more money than his more interesting books, though.

On the subject of recommendations by the way, I would highly recommend you to cast your eyes at the Internet Archive. Their Ebook collection gives you an easily searchable way of getting all of Project Gutenberg's books, plus all books put online for free by American and Canadian libraries, plus a huge collection of works from natural history museums, in addition to a further 300,000 or so public domain books from elsewhere. If a book is legally available for free you can probably find it there.

I'll check that out, thanks.On the subject of reading, I get distracted a lot by school which makes it harder to focus on my reading, but I still made some progress.I decided to check out Hitchens God is not great. I must say there a lot in that book about worldly mistakes of religious bodies. He also seemed far more aggressive then Dawkins. I have to reread a few parts of both to properly compare though.Also finished Randi's the faith healers, which is a subject that has been known to trouble me before. It did shock me a bit that he managed to cover most of my questions about a few specific types of claims, while it was written over 20 years ago. Fairly depressing they don't get busted, and the government usually does not bother to investigate them deeper, even so much time later in my own more secular country.Finally, I just started reading Dennet's ''Darwins dangerous idea''. Considered also buying unweaving the rainbow, but that would be my third global anti-religion book in 2 months, which seemed a bit to much. Although a bit older, this book looks promising to learn new information evolution's implications. I know enough to be a major skeptic about any attempts to make evolution seem like a creators tool, but I didn't read any literature about it up until now.

I haven't been able to find out how to get lists of books by genre. It's OK if you know the name of the book or the author, but what if you want to look at all the books falling under a certain Dewey number / Library of Congress number? Or (for example) all the detective fiction? Is there a way to do that?Thanks.

1. One of the greatest books ever written, Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. The rest of Sagan's work are also very rewarding.2. I will give a heavy second to the recommendation of Guns, Germs, and Steel. Absolutly fantastic book.3. A good book with an EvC bent is Noah's Flood by Ryan and Pittman.4. On atheism/secularism, Sam Harris is by far my favorite author.5. I don't like everything he writes and he is pretty pretentious, but God's Problem by Bart Eherman is a good book on religion and the problem of evil.

Sorry for the slow reply - I was away for the weekend. I don't there's any good way to search by topic, unfortunately. You can search by subject in the Advanced Search, but most entries don't have anything filled in the subject field, so that probably won't get you far. Other than that, just search all fields for the topic you're interested in and hope it's mentioned somewhere in the title or description.