Humanism: Readings

 

I have enjoyed and benefitted from reading three books by the fine writer, humanist, and scholar: Sarah Bakewell. 

How to Live, or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer.

At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails.

This week, I have enjoyed reading her newest book:

Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry and Hope. Penguin Press, 2023, 454 pages. VSCL.

I have a number of webpages with my notes on Humanist philosophy:

How to Live a Good Life: Advice From Wise Persons

Pragmatism

My Views on Religion

Free Thought

Freethinkers

 

The "Four Horsemen"

Of Contemporary Free Thought

 

Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris

The "Four Horsemen" of Free Thought in 2009

 

                

   

            

 

The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought. By Susan Jacoby. 2013.

The God Argument: The Case against Religion and for Humanism.  By A. C. Grayling.  2014

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason  By Sam Harris. 2005. 

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens.

The God Delusion. By Richard Dawkins. 2008. 

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. By Daniel Dennett. 2006.

Bertrand Russell on God and Religion. 1944.

I have enjoyed and benefitted from reading three books by the fine writer, humanist, and scholar: Sarah Bakewell. 

How to Live, or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer.

At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails.

This week, I have enjoyed reading her newest book:

Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry and Hope. Penguin Press, 2023, 454 pages. VSCL.

The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality

I highly recommend the fine book by the French philosopher, André Comte-Spoonville titled "The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality."
These engaging, wise, articulate, and diplomatic short essays were translated from the French by Nancy Huston (Penguin, 2007).  This 212 page gem consists of four chapters:  1. Can We Do Without Religion?; 2. Does God Exist?; 3. Can There Be an Atheist Spirituality; and 4.  Love and Truth. 

Professor Comte-Spoonville is a non-dogmatic atheist, respectful of the positive aspects of religions traditions (Western and Eastern), and tolerant of non-fanatic believers.  However, his carefully reasoned arguments for atheism are clear, strong, and convincing.  He tells us why he does not believe in God, an afterlife, divine intervention, creationism, or the heavenly triumph of good; but he does not take a more aggressive anti-religious tact like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennent, Sam Harris, or Ayn Rand.  

The "atheist spirituality" he advocates is an appreciation for the wonder and beauty of the natural world and human consciousness at its best; and the cultivated or spontaneous mystical experiences characterized by silence, mystery, plenitude, oceanic feeling, immanensity, simplicity, unity, timelessness, serenity, self-evident truth, acceptance, independence, and love.  He advocates a fidelity to the best philosophy and traditions of Western civilization, starting with the Greeks. 
 
He tackles and clearly shows the weaknesses of the traditional arguments for the existence of God/Allah/Shiva.  He provides a well reasoned explanation of why there is weak or non-existent evidence for believing in the existence of God when he discusses the hidden nature of God, incomprehensibility, the excess of evil, human mediocrity, and resisting the lure of illusion (i.e., strongly believing in something simply because you really desire or want to believe).  

He provides convincing reasons for why we can live productive, dignified, respectful, cheerful, virtuous, intelligent, and courageous lives without religion.  

He draws on wide range of Western and Eastern philosopher, theologians, social, and psychological thinkers to bolster his arguments.  

If your public library has a book by the Reverend Billy Graham then it should have a copy of this book by Professor Comte-Spoonville.  

The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality  

On Not Resisting Temptations

Test, try, experiment - within reason.
Manage your pleasures and desires.
Be open to thinking and feeling in new ways.
Sometimes ignore what other people tell you to do or not to do.
Old values are not necessarily better values.
What is "bad" in one generation may be "good" in later times.
Enjoy the pleasure of eating apples.
When someone tells you not to ask, sometimes ask and ask again.
With only one life to live - be bolder.
Don't resist the temptation to improve, to change, to grow.
Like water, enjoy going downhill in new directions.
Embrace intellectual pleasures.
Be suspicious of people who talk too much about guilt and punishment.
Some failures are inevitable, just get up and move on.
Thinking and doing are often more advantageous than believing.
Many people associate sexual pleasure with 'sinfulness': nonsense.
Succumb to temptations to laugh more often.
If you can't take advantage of temptations then you are not free.
Remember what works for you.
When your tempted to be compassionate, act on the impulse.
- Mike Garofalo, Pulling Onions


"Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to."
- Oscar Wilde

"The trouble with resisting temptation is it may never come your way again."
- Korman's Law

"For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

"If we resist our passions, it is more because of their weakness than because of our strength."
- François, duc de La Rochefoucauld

"Most people want to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch."
- Robert Orben

"What makes resisting temptation difficult for many people is they don't want to discourage it completely."
- Franklin P. Jones

"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones."
- John Maynard Keynes

"If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you. What we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down."
- Mary Pickford

"The most useless are those who never change through the years."
- James Barrie




Willpower, Resolve, Determination, Progress

Senses

Epicureans and Hedonists

One Old Philosopher's Notebooks

Pleasures

Hands Off

 "And now what is the result of all these considerations and quotations?  It is negative in one sense, but positive in another.  It absolutely forbids us to be forward in pronouncing on the meaninglessness of forms of existence other than our own; and it commands us to tolerate, respect and indulge those whom we see harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways, however unintelligible these may be to us.  Hands off: neither the whole of truth, nor the whole of good, is revealed to any single observer, although each observer gains a partial superior insight for the peculiar position in which he stands.  Even prisons and sick rooms have their special revelations.  It is enough to ask of each of us that he should be faithful to his own opportunities and make the most of his own blessings, without presuming to regulate the rest of the vast field."
-  William James, On a Certain Blindness, 1891

My Current Reading List

“Don’t just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.”
-  Epictetus, The Art of Living 

My current reading list includes the following:

Stoicism and the Art of Happiness.  By Donald Robertson.  New York, McGraw Hill, 2013, 2015.  Index, bibliography, notes, 245 pages.  Series: Teach Yourself: Philosophy and Religion.  ISBN: 139781444187106.  VSCL.  

Meditations.  By Marcus Aurelius.  Translated by Martin Hammond.  Illustrated by Coralie Bickford-Smith.  Introduction by Diskin Clay.  Hardcover Classics.  New York, Penguin Classics, Reissue Edition, 2015.  416 pages.  ISBN: 978-0141395869.  VSCL.

Stoicism Today: Selected Writings.  By Patrick Ussher.  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014.  202 pages.  Volume 1.  ISBN: 978-1502401922.  VSCL.  

From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present.  By Professor Jacques Barzun.  New York, Harper Perennial, 2001.  912 pages.  ISBN: 978-0060928834.  VSCL.   

Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault  By Pierre Hadot.  Edited with an introduction by Arnold Davidson.  Wiley-Blackwell, 1995.  320 pages.  ISBN: 978-0631180333.  VSCL.  

I am going to participate in the Stoic Week online workshop from November 2nd to November 8th, 2015.  You can sign up for the free workshop starting on October 26th.  The theme of the Stoic Week workshop for 2015 is: Modern-Day Meditations on Marcus Aurelius.  


How to Live a Good Life

Notebooks of an Old Philosopher 

Virtues 

  

The Buddha's Charter of Free Inquiry

I frequently study Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, Tibetan, and Hindu texts.  I have no interest in Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. 

“Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing;
nor upon tradition;
nor upon rumor;
nor upon what is in a scripture:
nor upon surmise;
nor upon an axiom;
nor upon specious reasoning;
nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over:
nor upon another’s seeming ability;
nor upon the consideration, “The monk is our teacher.”
When you yourselves know:
“These things are good; these things are not blamable;
these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed,
these things lead to benefit and happiness,” enter on and abide in them.”"
-   Gautama Buddha
     Kalama Sutta, The Buddha’s Charter of Free Inquiry
     Translated by Soma Thera (The Wheel Publication, No. 8),
     Buddhist Publication Society, 1987   

Buddhism