I want to make a list. Two lists, actually.
I want to make a list of the men and women who have written books, essays, websites, and blogs that give religious apologetics a lot to worry about. I want to make one list a list of men from 40+ years ago who wrote against religion: people like Robert Ingersoll, Bertrand Russell, and Percy Shelley along with links to their finest works.
The second list would consist of people from within the last forty years along with links to their work, and would include people like John L. Mackie, Richard Carrier, and Daniel Dennett.
So please comment with the names of your candidates and (optionally) links or mentions of their finest works.
You have got to include Robert M. Price in your list of contemporary anti-apologists.
ReplyDeleteWhat about Hitchens and Dawkins?
ReplyDeleteAnd of course there is John Loftus!
ReplyDelete(different from the Anthony above...haha)
ReplyDeleteThomas Paine needs to head the first list. That man risked his life and livelihood so many times, always for the sole purpose of bringing the ideas of freedom and liberty to everyone he could. What an inspiration!
Others: Michael Shermer, Sam Harris, Bart Ehrman, Scott Bidstrup he has a very thorough presentation on the meme complex that is Christianity). There are many others.
I think you can do worse than those dedicated to truth whose youTube channels do such a great job of debunking creationism, and, by extension, religion's footing in the real world:
Thunderf00t, ARonRa, dprjones, supportextantdodo, donexodus2...there are many as I'm sure you know, and their contributions to the proclamation of reason and truth are very real.
Lastly, allow me to offer a rather different form of antiapologist. When I was struggling with the notions of Christianity that promote exclusivism, especially that of hell, it was actually Gary Amirault and Thomas Talbott, Christian Universalists, who were most instrumental in disabusing me of my belief in these doctrines. Eventually, of course, it was many other "antiapoligist" that led me completely away from my beliefs, but those Christian Universalists did as much as anyone else. I don't espouse their worldview, in the least, but their arguments against these terrible doctrines are very interesting and quite compelling.
Thomas Talbott had a great written debate with WLC about eternal damnation, and I'm quite certain that WLC got pretty much owned. It's a great debate.