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merilyn_ohtla's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
"The Four Horsemen: The Conversation That Sparked an Atheist Revolution" brings together four influential voices in the atheist movement: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel C. Dennett, and Sam Harris. It is a transcript of a conversation where these prominent thinkers challenge the foundations of religious belief and advocate for reason, science, and secularism. Through engaging discussions and provocative arguments, they dismantle the notion of faith as a virtue and assert the importance of critical thinking and scepticism in shaping a more rational world.
language_loving_amateur's review against another edition
challenging
funny
informative
fast-paced
4.0
jasperburns's review against another edition
3.0
This conversation happened over a decade ago just before the tide was turning on social media. Since then those identifying as non-religious on surveys seems to have increased markedly. Dennett makes the prophetic point in his prologue that "the rise of the New Atheism was enabled in large measure by this expansion of mutual knowledge. Some of your best friends may be atheists, and you may know that, but now almost everybody knows that almost everybody knows that some of almost everybody’s best friends are atheists – which makes it much less daunting and dangerous to ‘come out’ as an atheist. There is strength in numbers, but much more strength when the numbers know roughly how numerous they are. It permits a measure of coordination, which doesn’t even have to be carefully reasoned out." This is probably true. Partly why it is increasingly okay to be an atheist publically is because of the momentum created by these four men. This is something to be thankful for.
Throughout the book, Harris stood out to me as the most precise speaker. It surprised me that many of his current day talking points are the same as they were a decade ago. Hitchens, of course, is a force of wit to be reckoned with, and all four really inspired me with their depth of intellectual and cultural knowledge. Thank goodness for the footnotes, because they would reference dozens of different speakers, events, pieces of music, architecture, art, etc. that everyone seemed to track and understand, but for those less knowledgable readers like myself.
I was sort of torn rating this book at three stars because, on the one hand, all four of these men are highly articulate and influential for me. On the other hand, atheism is a mostly uninteresting discussion, not focused on creating new ideas but just on dismantling bad ones. It doesn't profess anything inherently profound or posit anything more absolute than skepticism.
While countering bad ideas is uninteresting, it is important, and the interlocutors make numerous good points throughout the book. As someone familiar with the territory I just found myself nodding my head in agreement without many new insights, and so I don't feel like I learned much from reading this famous conversation. If you are new to the "Atheist Revolution" this is a good primer outlining the scientific, skeptical mindset an some of the major problems and cognitive dissonance associated with taking things on faith.
View my best reviews and a collection of mental models at jasperburns.blog.
Throughout the book, Harris stood out to me as the most precise speaker. It surprised me that many of his current day talking points are the same as they were a decade ago. Hitchens, of course, is a force of wit to be reckoned with, and all four really inspired me with their depth of intellectual and cultural knowledge. Thank goodness for the footnotes, because they would reference dozens of different speakers, events, pieces of music, architecture, art, etc. that everyone seemed to track and understand, but for those less knowledgable readers like myself.
I was sort of torn rating this book at three stars because, on the one hand, all four of these men are highly articulate and influential for me. On the other hand, atheism is a mostly uninteresting discussion, not focused on creating new ideas but just on dismantling bad ones. It doesn't profess anything inherently profound or posit anything more absolute than skepticism.
While countering bad ideas is uninteresting, it is important, and the interlocutors make numerous good points throughout the book. As someone familiar with the territory I just found myself nodding my head in agreement without many new insights, and so I don't feel like I learned much from reading this famous conversation. If you are new to the "Atheist Revolution" this is a good primer outlining the scientific, skeptical mindset an some of the major problems and cognitive dissonance associated with taking things on faith.
View my best reviews and a collection of mental models at jasperburns.blog.
alyshadeshae's review against another edition
5.0
It's often nice to just listen to people discuss some topics. This wasn't much of a book, but a recording of a conversation that took place a while back.
tobynicks's review against another edition
5.0
It's a transcript of a conversation which had no contrived direction so anything less than 5 stars would suggest missing the point of the book!
kevin_shepherd's review against another edition
5.0
"You don't have to boast a PhD or have read Thomas à Kempis, the Qur'an, the Book of Mormon and the teachings of Siddhartha (or indeed On the Origin of Species and Principia Mathematica) to be able to take part in such wrangling and disputation. But boy, isn't it wonderful when you can eavesdrop on four who have." ~Stephen Fry
Oh, to have the sagacious chops to merit a seat at that table! A secular Mt Rushmore. An evolutionary biologist, a neuroscientist, a philosopher, and Hitch (sorry, I couldn't describe Christopher Hitchens with just one word. Historian? Journalist? Contrarian? Sage? Even collectively they fall far short.)
One of my utopian fantasies would be to live in a world where all of us could practice and embrace rational discourse at this level. It's a pipe dream that has absolutely no chance, but I like to ponder the implausible. (I have a lesser utopian fantasy where I'm spooning with Uma Thurman, but I digress...)
Oh, to have the sagacious chops to merit a seat at that table! A secular Mt Rushmore. An evolutionary biologist, a neuroscientist, a philosopher, and Hitch (sorry, I couldn't describe Christopher Hitchens with just one word. Historian? Journalist? Contrarian? Sage? Even collectively they fall far short.)
One of my utopian fantasies would be to live in a world where all of us could practice and embrace rational discourse at this level. It's a pipe dream that has absolutely no chance, but I like to ponder the implausible. (I have a lesser utopian fantasy where I'm spooning with Uma Thurman, but I digress...)
itys's review
5.0
I appreciate New Atheism for the simple reason, as with the late Christopher Hitchens and his desire not to eliminate religion but to keep it as a dialectical partner (what's Socrates without an interlocutor), that its members are challenging. This book is a modified version of a conversation that happened between these four prominent intellectuals and atheists nearly 12 years ago. Detractions aside (the absence of women or people of colour in the discussion, the use of magisterial or ex cathedra sources as caricatures of "theology" and what "theologians do") there is much to learn within these pages, especially for the religious.
There were two points that stuck out to me. The first in a comment by Dennett: "I share your impatience with officials of the churches - the people who have this as their professional life. It seems to me that they know better. The congregation's don't know better, because it's maintained that they should not know better. I do get very anxious about ridiculing the belief of the flock, because of the way in which they have ceded to their leaders, they've delegated authority to their leaders, and they presume their leaders are going to do it right. Who stands up and says, 'the buck stops here'? Well, it seems to me it's the preachers themselves, it's the priests, it's the bishops. And we really should hold their feet to the fire. For instance, just take the issue of creationism. If somebody in a fundamentalist church thinks that creationism makes sense because their pastor told them so, well, I can understand that and excuse that. We all get a lot of what we take to be true from people whom we respect and whom we view as authorities. We don't check everything out. But where did the pastor get this idea? And I don't care where he got it. He or she is responsible because their job is to know what they're talking about, in a way that the congregation is not."
Creationism aside, Dennett's final point is haunting to me. In my field, experts often bemoan the ignorance of regular everyday believers. I think on the one hand it is the responsibility of experts to help every day people understand and connect with the best information, the best truth that they can. On the other hand, Dennett's point is also relevant because it is the responsibility that leaders and public spokespeople who decide to speak on issues outside of their necessary expertise (science, economics, politics, and often ironically the Bible and theology) must be careful because congregants rely on them to filter expertise down.
The second point that leap out at me was the following comment by Hitchens: "...as I realized when I thought one evening, they never come up with anything new. Well, why would they? Their arguments are very old by definition. And they were all evolved when we knew very, very little about the natural order." This is something that a lot of religious people take for granted, that our understanding of nature has changed. Even though our understanding of the natural and what is natural has changed, many still seem to be stuck asking questions attached to a former understanding of nature. So do we grasp our current understanding of nature and ask new questions, new formidable ways of expressing the infinite and the Incarnate? Or do we superimpose an archaic understanding of nature, useful in its own time, but empirically untenable for our own, in order to preserve some semblance of what we think or conceive "religious authority" to be?
There were two points that stuck out to me. The first in a comment by Dennett: "I share your impatience with officials of the churches - the people who have this as their professional life. It seems to me that they know better. The congregation's don't know better, because it's maintained that they should not know better. I do get very anxious about ridiculing the belief of the flock, because of the way in which they have ceded to their leaders, they've delegated authority to their leaders, and they presume their leaders are going to do it right. Who stands up and says, 'the buck stops here'? Well, it seems to me it's the preachers themselves, it's the priests, it's the bishops. And we really should hold their feet to the fire. For instance, just take the issue of creationism. If somebody in a fundamentalist church thinks that creationism makes sense because their pastor told them so, well, I can understand that and excuse that. We all get a lot of what we take to be true from people whom we respect and whom we view as authorities. We don't check everything out. But where did the pastor get this idea? And I don't care where he got it. He or she is responsible because their job is to know what they're talking about, in a way that the congregation is not."
Creationism aside, Dennett's final point is haunting to me. In my field, experts often bemoan the ignorance of regular everyday believers. I think on the one hand it is the responsibility of experts to help every day people understand and connect with the best information, the best truth that they can. On the other hand, Dennett's point is also relevant because it is the responsibility that leaders and public spokespeople who decide to speak on issues outside of their necessary expertise (science, economics, politics, and often ironically the Bible and theology) must be careful because congregants rely on them to filter expertise down.
The second point that leap out at me was the following comment by Hitchens: "...as I realized when I thought one evening, they never come up with anything new. Well, why would they? Their arguments are very old by definition. And they were all evolved when we knew very, very little about the natural order." This is something that a lot of religious people take for granted, that our understanding of nature has changed. Even though our understanding of the natural and what is natural has changed, many still seem to be stuck asking questions attached to a former understanding of nature. So do we grasp our current understanding of nature and ask new questions, new formidable ways of expressing the infinite and the Incarnate? Or do we superimpose an archaic understanding of nature, useful in its own time, but empirically untenable for our own, in order to preserve some semblance of what we think or conceive "religious authority" to be?
alanrussellfuller's review against another edition
2.0
"On the other hand, my concern is actually not so much with the evils of religion as with whether it’s true. And I really do care passionately about the fact of the matter: is there, as a matter of fact, a supernatural creator of this universe? And I really care about that bogus belief." - Dawkins, p.121
People are not perfect, and neither is religion because it is composed of people. Four leaders of the New Atheists discuss the shortcomings of religion more than whether there is a God or not, despite the assertion of Richard Dawkins.
aydanroger's review against another edition
challenging
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
5.0