[Hac-announce] Book Group Announcements

[Dan Blinn]

We will be meeting this Saturday to discuss "Good Without God" by Greg
Epstein. Kevin Gough will moderate the discussion

Here's a short (11 mins) video talk by Greg Epstein that you can watch for
"extra credit": http://www.tedxcambridge.com/thrive/greg-m-epstein/

On May 25, we will be discussing "Deer Hunting With Jesus" by Joe Bageant.
 Still plenty of time to pick up a copy and read the book.

It is also time to pick our book for June.  Please go to our survey
<http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JY7736W>to rank the choices, which we will
discuss on Saturday.

The options are:


 "Age of Reason" by Thomas
Paine<http://www.amazon.com/Age-Reason-Thomas-Paine/dp/145656854X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353167203&sr=1-1&keywords=the+age+of+reason>

The Age of Reason challenges institutionalized religion and challenges the
legitimacy of the Bible, the central sacred text of Christianity. Published
in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807, it was a bestseller in the United
States, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. British audiences,
however, fearing increased political radicalism as a result of the French
Revolution, received it with more hostility. The Age of Reason presents
common deistic arguments; for example, it highlights what Paine saw as
corruption of the Christian Church and criticizes its efforts to acquire
political power. Paine advocates reason in the place of revelation, leading
him to reject miracles and to view the Bible as an ordinary piece of
literature rather than as a divinely inspired text. It promotes natural
religion and argues for the existence of a creator-God.  Most of Paine's
arguments had long been available to the educated elite, but by presenting
them in an engaging and irreverent style, he made deism appealing and
accessible to a mass audience. The book was also inexpensive, putting it
within the reach of a large number of buyers. Fearing the spread of what
they viewed as potentially revolutionary ideas, the British government
prosecuted printers and booksellers who tried to publish and distribute it.
Paine nevertheless inspired and guided many British freethinkers of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

"Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor
Frankl<http://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/0807014273/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1361801811&sr=1-1&keywords=man%27s+search+for+meaning>

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with
its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual
survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps,
including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife
perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of those he
treated in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but
we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward
with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory—known as logotherapy, from the Greek
word logos ("meaning")—holds that our primary drive in life is not
pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we
personally find meaningful.  At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's
Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four
languages. A 1991 reader survey by the Library of Congress and the
Book-of-the-Month Club that asked readers to name a "book that made a
difference in your life" found Man's Search for Meaning among the ten most
influential books in America.

"Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related
Subjects" by Bertrand
Russell<http://www.amazon.com/Christian-Essays-Religion-Related-Subjects/dp/0671203231/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366300558&sr=1-1&keywords=why+i+am+not+a+christian>

Dedicated as few men have been to the life of reason, Bertrand Russell has
always been concerned with the basic questions to which religion also
addresses itself -- questions about man's place in the universe and the
nature of the good life, questions that involve life after death, morality,
freedom, education, and sexual ethics. He brings to his treatment of these
questions the same courage, scrupulous logic, and lofty wisdom for which
his other work as philosopher, writer, and teacher has been famous. These
qualities make the essays included in this book perhaps the most graceful
and moving presentation of the freethinker's position since the days of
Hume and Voltaire.  "I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I
am that they are untrue," Russell declares in his Preface, and his reasoned
opposition to any system or dogma which he feels may shackle man's mind
runs through all the essays in this book, whether they were written as
early as 1899 or as late as 1954.

"The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and
Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths" by
Michael Shermer<http://www.amazon.com/Believing-Brain-Conspiracies---How-Construct-Reinforce/dp/1250008808/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366300723&sr=1-1&keywords=the+believing+brain>

Synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist and science historian
Michael Shermer upends the traditional thinking about how humans form
beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first and explanations
for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. Using
sensory data that flow in through the senses, the brain naturally begins to
look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning,
forming beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and
find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, accelerating the
process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a
positive-feedback loop.

In *The Believing Brain, *Shermer provides countless real-world examples of
how this process operates, from politics, economics, and religion to
conspiracy theories, the supernatural, and the paranormal. And ultimately,
he demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine
whether or not our beliefs match reality.

Please make your opinion count!  Go to the survey at
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JY7736W and rank these books in the order
that you would like to read and discuss them.  The survey will remain open
until Sunday afternoon.

Both the Paine and Frankl books have been presented as options several
times in prior surveys.  I will probably drop at least one of them from the
next roster of non-fiction  We will be selecting a novel to discuss in July.

Thanks -

Dan Blinn
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cthumanist.org/pipermail/hac-announce/attachments/20130418/f0bc9e82/attachment.html>