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What are the worst books you've read?


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#101
KenKenpachi

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Ringo12 wrote...

KenKenpachi wrote...

yay this is now heading for lockdown. You know its kinda sad I think our Mods short of PMs have no clue whats going on here. I bet I could make a thread on eating babies and it would last 3 days if no one sent a PM.


Like this guy?



Pretty much yes. And apperantly I was correct in my earlier view that someone has killed the mods. Oh well.

#102
Swordfishtrombone

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I read a lot of non-fiction, and it's perhaps unsurpricing that that's where I've found the best and the worst books I've read. I tend to read rather widely - I'm an atheist myself, but by no means do I restrict my reading to atheist authors; I've even read books by theists defending theism, or criticizing atheism, though I've yet to come across one that was actually good in the latter camp.

The best defence of a theist worldview that I've read is perhaps Kenneth Miller's "Finding Darwin's God", and I also thought Paul Davis did a pretty good job at fairly presenting various cosmologies, theist and non-theist, in his "The Goldilocks Dillemma", though there was one glaring mistake in the book that I see as fatal to the position he himself holds; it's such an obvious mistake, I'm really surpriced he didn't see it.

But the very worst book I've read is "In God We Doubt" by John Humphrys. This book is baaaaaaaaaad. Humphys tries to argue for his agnostic position, and criticizes both theists and atheists in the process. There's nothing wrong with that, as such, but Humphrys clearly had not done his homework. His arguments were old and tired, and easy to show false or mistaken, and he delivered them with the air of "holier than thou" that comes along with being a certain brand of agnostic that insists on defining themselves as just "agnostic", rather than agnostic atheist or agnostic theist.

Humphrys treated atheism as being essentially all the most extreme brand of strong atheism, or gnostic atheism, while ignoring the fact (or more likely, blissfully unaware of the fact) that the vast majority of atheists are weak atheists, or agnostic atheists - including every atheist he criticized in the book.

Thus almost all his criticism missed the mark completely. To add insult to injury, and to demonstrate how haphazardly and carelessly Humpfrys must have written the book, when he criticizes Sam Harris' writings, he keeps referring to him as "Sam Smith". Repeatedly. :blink:

I've NEVER seen a mistake as glaring as that in any book. That leaves the informed reader feeling like they've just thrown their money away on a book that was nothing but a quick money-grab. That really is the final straw that puts this book below even some of the really attrocious ones I've had the missfortune to read.