First reader reviews for 50 Great Myths About Atheism are in

Our book is finally out, virtually at least. Since mid August 50 Great Myths About Atheism is available on amazon as a Kindle edition. The print version should be rolling out in Europe in early September, North America in early October etc. We are on, so to speak. The first reviews of the Kindle version have already appeared on the amazon.com site. Here's a flavour:

4.0 out of 5 star Ambitious, and mostly very satisfying Aug 25 2013

By J.A. Rousseau - Published on Amazon.com

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I spent a little time mulling over whether this should be a four- or a five-star review. In truth, I'd have liked to award a 4.5 star rating, because the book is perhaps slightly too ambitious, with the authors setting a standard that was always going to be difficult to full satisfy. The main concern I have can perhaps be summarized in saying that it's sometimes unclear who the audience of the book is intended to be, and the tone and content of various chapters ends up seeming slightly inconsistent as a result. Sometimes one gets the impression that the book is "arming" atheists against the caricatures of theists, and at other times, that theists are being addressed in an attempt to dispel their confusions. This gives rise to an unevenness in the level of detail, and also the tone, of various chapters.

As for the reasons why I'd want to award at least 4, and ideally 4.5 stars, the book is enormously instructive. For the patient reader, the level of detail in many of the chapters is superb, and even for "myths" that you're already very familiar with, you'll often find a citation or example you didn't yet know about. The book begins by asking you to consider what are quite tricky questions, even before proceeding with discussing the myths - namely in discussions of who "counts" as an atheist, and what should count as myths. In my view, this could be described as one of the more challenging elements of the book to write, in that there are all sorts of opportunities for readers to take issue even at that early stage, rejecting the authors' definitions, and choosing to adopt an uncharitable attitude to the rest of the book as a result.

However, Blackford and Schüklenk set the tone for the rest of the book in those introductory sections, explaining with great clarity and to good persuasive effect that certain questions can be set aside, or at least resolved to a sufficient extent to make the myths that are dealt with worth focusing on. As I say, that rhetorical and argumentative skill is then carried throughout the book, leaving the reader feeling both enlightened and entertained in the reading of it.

I'd highly recommend this book for (at least) two sets of readers: first, the honestly curious theist, who is suspicious of the easy dismissals that some of his or her kind deploy against atheists. Second, the atheist who wants to develop a thoughtful, well-reasoned set of defenses against some of the stereotypes that are assigned to atheists - not only by theists, but also in popular culture.

(Disclosure: I am personally acquainted with both of the authors, and one is a colleague of mine. I do not however regard that as having influenced my comments unduly.)

5.0 out of 5 stars As good as the editorial reviews said Aug 24 2013

By peter veitch - Published on Amazon.com

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Excellent thinking about this important topic. Some good ideas that are new to me. I have changed some views after reading this.

Bioethics ranked top philosophy journal

Interesting, the European Science Foundation in the most recent incarnation of its European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH) has given Bioethics top billing in the Philosophy category. It is now INT1. INT1 stands for 'INT1 Sub-Category: international publications with high visibility and influence among researchers in the various research domains in different countries, regularly cited all over the world.'


Now we know. It's tempting to say that the hard work Ruth Chadwick and I have put into developing the journal over the last decade or so is paying off, but truth be told, these ranking remain pretty arbitrary at best. Either way, a great deal of thanks to our authors, Editorial Board members, peer reviewers and certainly our colleagues at Wiley-Blackwell are due!

Yay, our forthcoming book already on amazon

There you go, the official publication date of our up-coming anthology '50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists' is known, September 10, 2009. It's already on amazon. You can even register there to be notified when the book is out! Cool how quickly the Wiley-Blackwell folks have moved in terms of promoting the book. We even have our own facebook site with more than 500 members (and counting). Yay!

In case you want to know who the 50 (there's a few more actually) voices are, here's a list of contributors: Here's a complete list of contributors and essays:

Unbelievable! — Russell Blackford; My “Bye Bull” Story — Margaret Downey; How benevolent is God? – An argument from suffering to atheism — Nicholas Everitt; A Deal-breaker — Ophelia Benson; Why Am I a Nonbeliever? – I Wonder... — J. L. Schellenberg; Wicked or Dead? Reflections on the moral character and existential status of God — John Harris; Religious Belief and Self-Deception — Adèle Mercier; The Coming of Disbelief — J.J.C. Smart; What I Believe —Graham Oppy; Too Good to Be True, Too Obscure to Explain: The Cognitive Shortcomings of Belief in God — Thomas W. Clark; How to Think About God: Theism, Atheism, and Science — Michael Shermer; A Magician Looks at Religion — James Randi; Confessions of a Kindergarten Leper — Emma Tom; Beyond Disbelief — Philip Kitcher; An ambivalent nonbelief — Taner Edis; Why Not? — Sean M. Carroll; Godless Cosmology — Victor J. Stenger; Unanswered Prayers — Christine Overall; Beyond Faith and Opinion — Damien Broderick; Could it be pretty obvious there’s no God? — Stephen Law; Atheist, obviously — Julian Baggini; Why I am Not a Believer — A.C. Grayling; Evil and Me — Gregory Benford; Who’s Unhappy? — Lori Lipman Brown; Reasons to be Faithless — Sheila A.M. McLean; Three Stages of Disbelief — Julian Savulescu; Born Again, Briefly — Greg Egan; Cold Comfort — Ross Upshur; The Accidental Exorcist — Austin Dacey; Atheist Out of the Foxhole — Joe Haldeman; The Unconditional Love of Reality — Dale McGowan; Antinomies — Jack Dann; Giving up ghosts and gods — Susan Blackmore; Some thoughts on why I am an atheist — Tamas Pataki; No Gods, Please! — Laura Purdy; Welcome Me Back to the World of the Thinking — Kelly O'Connor; Kicking Religion Goodbye … — Peter Adegoke; On credenda — Miguel Kottow; “Not even start to ignore those questions!” A voice of disbelief in a different key — Frieder Otto Wolf; Imagine No Religion — Edgar Dahl; Humanism as Religion: An Indian Alternative — Sumitra Padmanabhan; Why I am NOT a theist — Prabir Ghosh; When the Hezbollah came to my school — Maryam Namazie; Evolutionary Noise, not Signal from Above — Athena Andreadis; Gods Inside — Michael R. Rose and John P. Phelan; Why Morality Doesn’t Need Religion — Peter Singer and Marc Hauser; Doctor Who and the Legacy of Rationalism — Sean Williams; My non-religious life: A journey from superstition to rationalism — Peter Tatchell; Helping People to Think Critically About Their Religious Beliefs — Michael Tooley; Human Self-Determination, Biomedical Progress, and God — Udo Schuklenk.

And that was the week...

Yay, a truly hectic working week is finally over. I spent all day today running around taking pix of the latest Singaporean skyscrapers. Even bumped into the world's largest cruise liner in the harbor.

I spent 5 out of 5 days regaling high school students with tales of cloning and animal experiments, A*STAR scientists with insights into academic publishing rules (and ethics), as well as staff at the Singapore General Hospital with a workshop on publishing ethics. Last but not least I gave a colloquium in the philosophy department at the National University of Singapore. The paper I presented was co-authored with Christopher Lowry. Chris is currently a doctoral student at Queen's and soon to be an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (yep, he is one of the few who managed to score jobs in the current climate). Probably didn't hurt that he published quite a bit of peer reviewed content during the last year and a half!

Anyhow, Russell Blackford with whom I currently edit a volume on atheist thought, and I managed to send the corrected manuscript back to the copy-editor, so it should soon enter the typesetting stage. Quite excited about this piece of work. Look out for the book, it's gonna be called '50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists'. It's coming with Wiley-Blackwell in a few months time.

Talking about Wiley-Blackwell, on Monday I will meet Cindy Chong, the Production Editor here in Singapore of two journals I co-edit for said company. It's funny how this stuff is being put together by diligent people literally all over the world. Our authors work in the most far flung corners of the world, and even us at the editorial side of things are in North America (yours truly, Ricardo Smalling), Europe (Ruth Chadwick, Clancy Pegg, Celia White and colleagues), Latin America (Debora Diniz) and Asia (Cindy Chong and colleagues). Without the advent of the internet that plain would not be possible. It's a remarkable thing really, when you think about it.

Talking about the net. I joined - ugh, terrible to admit, Facebook. Actually, it's an amazing site/ Within a week or two I gathered some 100+ 'friends', that's people making contact with you and ask that you kinda add them as 'friends'. Turns out to be an excellent tool to track 'lost ones'. I was found by folks who I haven't heard off for oodles of years. Bit of a waste of time otherwise. Would you believe that I posted a thing saying that I enjoyed Tim Tam's. I mean... please!

In case you're really bored, here's a link to images taken during my various 'performances' (there were stages on some occasions :).

Honor Roll: Voices of Disbelief

Russell Blackford and I have been working frantically during the last year or so to put together an anthology of Voices of Disbelief. We basically asked well-known to famous philosophers, public intellectuals, scientists, science fiction writers, even a magician to explain why they do not believe in God. In these times of ever increasing religiously motivated violence it seemed to us that publishing voices of reason could be a worthwhile exercise. Authors from all over the world readily agreed to contribute to what we think is a powerful statement of diverse humanist thought. The essays range from personal statements to philosophical argument - and in-between. It's going to be out some time in the second half of 2009 with Wiley-Blackwell, and it's going to be a great read! We are just about to pass a very important milestone in the production process of this volume. We will be sending it off to the publisher on Monday!

Here's the list of contributors:


1. Peter Adegoke
2. Athena Andreadis
3. Julian Baggini
4. Gregory Benford
5. Ophelia Benson
6. Russell Blackford
7. Susan Blackmore
8. Damien Broderick
9. Lori Lipman Brown
10. Sean M. Carroll
11. Thomas W. Clark
12. Austin Dacey
13. Edgar Dahl
14. Jack Dann
15. Margaret Downey
16. Taner Edis
17. Greg Egan
18. Nick Everitt
19. Prabir Ghosh
20. A.C. Grayling
21. Joe Haldeman
22. John Harris
23. Marc Hauser
24. Philip Kitcher
25. Miguel Kottow
26. Stephen Law
27. Dale McGowan
28. Sheila A.M. McLean
29. Adèle Mercier
30. Maryam Namazie
31. Kelly O’Connor
32. Graham Oppy
33. Christine Overall
34. Sumitra Padmanabhan
35. Tamas Pataki
36. John P. Phelan
37. Laura Purdy
38. James Randi
39. Michael R. Rose
40. Julian Savulescu
41. J.L. Schellenberg
42. Udo Schuklenk
43. Michael Shermer
44. Peter Singer
45. J.J.C. Smart
46. Victor J. Stenger
47. Peter Tatchell
48. Emma Tom
49. Michael Tooley
50. Ross Upshur
51. Sean Williams
52. Frieder Otto Wolf