by new hope and happiness 59 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
http://infed.org/mobi/samuel-smiles-and-self-help/
I read this book at 16 and it has propelled and motivated me every single day of my life and is still doing so.
And..
Ray Franz: Crisis of Conscience
Don Cameron - Captives of a concept
The Bible.
Radically.
But only when I stopped letting Watchtower propaganda and lies dictate what its central message was.
Maybe 3 books influenced me:
Living In Sin? by John Shelby Spong
The Big Book (A.A.)
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
The Misery of Christianity by Joachim Kahl
LOL, a strange mix, but it marks my path to atheism, I guess.
Newyork, interestingly my Dad was a TEA party fan.
Excellent question, new hope and happiness !
Here are some:
- The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
- The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins
- a history of Marxism, in my native tongue (lots of books on this, in many languages)
- Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond
- The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
- some books by Fernando Pessoa (you'll know why when you read him)
I strongly recommend all of them; if anything, they enable you to see how nature and the world truly operate. They are awakening experiences, in other words.
"Slave Species of God" by Michael Tillinger.
Of All the 100's of books on my shelf that is the second most precious.
It has been about 6 years since I read it.
I will have to go back and re read it and see if it still has it.
Oh yeah, For better or for worse I will have to say the Bible is number 1.
It is a mixed bag but it has some gems. It got me this far for better or for worse.
The books of Proverbs, Ecclesiasses and Psalm are full of gems and wisdom.
Some that were already posted on only one to add is "the god dilusion"
CoC - Raymond Franz - No need to explain why.
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins - I at least began to understand atheism from reading this back in 2006.
God and the Folly of Faith - Victor J. Stenger - Put any question of belief in the unprovable behind me.
Fabric of the Cosmos - Brian Greene - Best overall description of relativity and quantum mechanics I have read. (The string theory parts can be safely ignored since the discovery of the Higgs boson).
Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kaheman - Still reading this, but the overall best insights into human psychology I have read.
Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Helped me to understand how counterintuitive probability plays a significant role in outcomes in the universe and our lives.
Einstien, (Bio) - Walter Issacson - Lost my balance, (literally), when I understood general relativity for the first time while reading.
d4g
done4good: Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
Great recommendation!
This is an awesome book, but not an easy read by any means. Definitely not for the faint of heart. The guy did win the Nobel prize in Economics for his research!
It requires a lot of work to really get what he is saying. Nevertheless, the lessons learned are well worth the effort. He reveals just how easily we can be fooled by our own perceptions and how easily we can be manipulated by those that know how.
Well worth it.
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Man, I could go on and on.
Certainly, COMBATTING CULT MIND CONTROL was a huge influence.
Ray Franz' CRISIS OF CONSCIENCE.
Since there were so many, I will just say that Kyria Abrahams' I'M PERFECT, YOU'RE DOOMED caused me to write my own autobiography for self therapy.
It's even listed on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1/178-1636758-6654839?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=fade+from+the+truth
