Mark Twain - God is not just

Christopher Hitchens introduces Mark Twain in the Portable Atheist by saying that he had trouble being taken seriously when talking about...

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Miracles are natural

Anatole France was a writer who got himself the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921. Walter Lionel George says it is wrong to conclude Anat...

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It's only true if everyone agrees

Continuing on in the Portable Atheist is an essay by Leslie Stephen . Hitchens notes that this is yet another person who strongly disagree...

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Evolution of Darwin's Belief

The next chapter in the Portable Atheist is an extract from Charles Darwin 's Autobiography. By sheer chance (or maybe Intelligent Prov...

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Elliots Teaching on Evangelicals

I thought I would pick up the Portable Atheist again. The next chapter that I am up to is by George Eliot (or Mary Anne Evans) and an essa...

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Critique of Marx's Rambles

Christopher Hitchens introduces this next chapter in the Portable Atheist by saying that Karl Marx perhaps has "the most widely quote...

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Mills is his fathers son

The Portable Atheist next has a chapter by John Stuart Mills . Hitchens comments on Mills' three essays on religion that got publishe...

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Is the Universed designed?

The next article in the Portable Atheist is by Percy Bysshe Shelly . Hitchens interestingly remarks on the marriage ties that Percy had wi...

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Hume's death bed confession

The Portable Atheist 's next chapter contains an interview between David Hume and James Boswell 49 days before Hume died. The account ...

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It's not likely miracles happen, so they don't - Part 2

David Hume continues his discussion about miracles in the Portable Atheist by saying: ...it is easy to show that we have been a great de...

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It's not likely miracles happen, so they don't - Part 1

The second article by David Hume that appears in the Portable Atheist is of miracles and is broken up into two parts. In this post I am j...

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Religion is Natural

Chapter 5 in the Portable Atheist has two articles by David Hume . The first article contains chapter 13 and 14 of The Natural History of R...

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Pantheists are Atheist?

The Portable Atheist now turns to a preface in a book by Benedict de Spinoza . I've already commented on this choice of author before,...

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Hobbes' Religion

I have already commented about Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) a little already. In this 3rd chapter of the Portable Atheist Christopher Hitche...

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Translated and Paraphrased Poems

The second chapter in The Portable Atheist is a section of verses or quatrains by a guy named Omar Khayyám . He lived about 1000 years aft...

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The Nature of Atoms

The first chapter of The Portable Atheist has some extracts from the epic poem On the Nature of Things by a guy named Lucretius who lived...

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Hitchens and Christianity

Christopher Hitchens introduction to The Portable Atheist gives an overview of the problem of proof for God and the problem of religion. I...

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The Portable Atheist

Just before Christmas I was in some big bookstore and next to the religious section I found The Portable Atheist . It's a collection of ...

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