Atheists Distribute Literature to Prisons

[rug]

January 30, 2014
12:54PM
Post by Alana Massey

This may come as a shock, but my book pitch for A Guide to “Meh”: The Case for Atheist Ambivalence hasn’t really gone anywhere since I sent out treatments last year. Sure, the book in its entirety just said, “Eh, do what you want within the confines of law and good manners. Don’t be terrible, if you can avoid it. No good reason for that, just don’t like the terrible. The End.” (Apologies for the lack of spoiler alerts in advance!)

Kidding aside, it’s no surprise that books on belief are often made popular by controversy and/or because they prescribe a compelling design for belief, living, ethics, and other areas in which humans crave direction. One can’t then blame the Freethought Books Project profiled in USA Today for sending out books like What Is Secular Humanism? and Faithiest (also a humanist text) to inmates seeking resources for either newfound or long unexplored unbelief in God in often stiflingly religious prison libraries.

What is clear, however, is that their reading list represents beliefs about the most proper kind of unbelief. Dare I use the damning term….agenda? I dare indeed. Non-believers try so hard to differentiate themselves with the evangelistic ethos of Christianity that they eschew all claims that they want people to (dis)believe in the same way that they do.

But if they truly had no skin in the game of what kind of disbelief prisoners engaged with, they’d mix up the inventory of atheist traditions and writers and offer up something written before the 21st century. From the can’t-we-all-just-get-along types to the unpalatably mean-spirited to the doom and gloomers, a proper introduction to the big players would be a more appropriate first encounter than just the PR-friendly secular humanists and their similarly reason-centric modern allies.

http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/alanamassey/7538/atheists_distribute_literature_to_prisons/

[SecularMotion]

1. Dupe

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1218108982

[rug]

2. This is a different take from a different source.

Religion Dispatches is more analysis than RNS.

It's a story worth following.

[cbayer]

3. While I generally support what they are doing, as the author points out,

they have an agenda and it's difficult to differentiate it from the agendas of the religious organizations that send books.

BTW, Sam Harris is about to release a new book entitled ""Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion,".

The title is pretty intriguing and he apparently makes the case that spiritual leaders, including the likes of Jesus, are significant characters worthy of attention.

Interesting.

[rug]

4. From the Amazon description it looks like he's suggesting meditation.

For the millions of Americans who want spirituality without religion, Sam Harris’s new book is a guide to meditation as a rational spiritual practice informed by neuroscience and psychology.

From multiple New York Times bestselling author, neuroscientist, and “new atheist” Sam Harris, Waking Up is for the 30 percent of Americans who follow no religion, but who suspect that Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, and the other saints and sages of history could not have all been epileptics, schizophrenics, or frauds. Throughout the book, Harris argues that there are important truths to be found in the experiences of such contemplatives—and, therefore, that there is more to understanding reality than science and secular culture generally allow.

Waking Up is part seeker’s memoir and part exploration of the scientific underpinnings of spirituality. No other book marries contemplative wisdom and modern science in this way, and no author other than Sam Harris—a scientist, philosopher, and famous skeptic—could write it.

http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religion-ebook/dp/B00GEEB9YC

[cbayer]

5. Well, that's certainly original.

I think he's following the money.