Superstition in All Ages

SUPERSTITION IN ALL AGES: A DYING CONFESSION

BY JEAN MESLIER

A Roman Catholic Priest, who at his death left as his “Last Will and Testament” this now famous manuscript as contained herein, entitled COMMON SENSE

This atheistic book was a work of by Baron d'Holbach's as but it was written under the name of Jean Meslier. It was originally published in French in 1772. Due to the severe restrictions on the press in the 18th century, d'Holbach published most of his work under the names of famous dead people. This book also includes a thirty-nine page abstract of the testament of John Meslier written by Voltaire. 

WHEN we wish to examine in a cool, calm way the opinions of men, we are very much surprised to find that in those which we consider the most essential, nothing is more rare than to find them using common sense; that is to say, the portion of judgment sufficient to know the most simple truths, to reject the most striking absurdities, and to be shocked by palpable contradictions. We have an example of this in Theology, a science revered in all times, in all countries, by the greatest number of mortals; an object considered the most

The Cambridge Companion to Atheism

In The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, eighteen of the world’s
leading scholars present original essays on various aspects of
atheism: its history, both ancient and modern, defense, and implications.
The topic is examined in terms of its implications for a wide range
of disciplines, including philosophy, religion, feminism, postmodernism,
sociology, and psychology. In its defense, both classical
and contemporary theistic arguments are criticized, and the
argument from evil and impossibility arguments, along with a nonreligious
basis for morality, are defended. These essays give a broad
understanding of atheism and a lucid introduction to this controversial
topic.

Why I am Not a Muslim

Few books about religion deserve the attribution "courageous." This book, I am
pleased to report, does. It is courageous because it is (as the term originally denoted)
full of heart (coeur) and courageous because it is an act of intellectual honesty
and bravery, an act of faith rather than of faithlessness. It will undoubtedly be
a controversial book because it deals personally and forthrightly with a subject
widely misunderstood by fheists and nontheists of various stripes. That subject is
the Islamic faith.
New religions depend for their sustenance on the energy of converts. Thus
Christianity in the first century of the common era and Islam in the sixth depended
on the enthusiasm of the newly persuaded. Each had its prophet, each its network
of zealous missionary-evangelists and later organization-minded hierarchs and
caliphs to drive and sustain the structures that faith invented. Christianity and

Why I am Not a Christian

Why I Am Not a Christian is an essay by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell hailed by The Independent as "devastating in its use of cold logic",^[1] and listed in the New York Public Library's list of the most influential books of the 20th century

Russell begins by defining what he means by the term Christian and sets out to explain why he does not "believe in God and in immortality" and why he does not "think that Christ was the best and wisest of men", the two things he identifies as "essential to anybody calling himself a Christian". He considers a number of logical arguments for the existence of God, including the cosmological argument, the natural-law argument, the teleological argument and moral arguments following what he describes as "the intellectual descent that the Theists have made in their argumentations". He also goes into specifics about Christian theology, alleging defects in Jesus's teaching and his moralcharacter, in particular because Jesus believed in hell and everlasting punishment. He argues ad absurdum against the "argument from design", and favors Darwin's theories:

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion

The philosophy of religion as a distinct discipline is an innovation of the last two hundred years, but its central topics--the existence and nature of the divine, humankind's relation to it, the nature of religion and its place in human life--have been with us since the inception of philosophy. Philosophers have long critically examined the truth of (and rational justification for) religious claims, and have explored such philosophically interesting phenomena as faith, religious experience and the distinctive features of religious discourse. The second half of the twentieth-century has been an especially fruitful period, with philosophers using new developments in logic and epistemology to mount both sophisticated defenses of, and attacks on, religious claims. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion contains newly commissioned chapters by 21 prominent experts who cover the field in a comprehensive but accessible manner. Each chapter is expository, critical, and representative of a distinctive viewpoint. The Handbook is divided into two sections.