Atheist Guide To Reality Pdf

By Alex Rosenberg W. Norton, 368 pages, $25.95 is refreshingly and ruthlessly consistent. It is also utterly incoherent—and precisely because it is so consistent. In drawing out its absurd consequences, Alex Rosenberg, an atheist professor of philosophy at Duke University, has written a compelling refutation of modern atheism. That is not what he planned to do. In fact, he didn’t plan to do anything, since there are in his view no plans, designs, or purposes of any sort at all.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, or I would be if there were “selves” to get ahead of—Rosenberg assures us that there are none of those either. Rosenberg doesn’t provide much in the way of argument for atheism, for he thinks the truth of atheism is obvious from modern science—or at least, that it is obvious to anyone who shares his commitment to scientism, the view that science alone gives us genuine knowledge of reality. His project is rather to show his fellow unbelievers that the conclusions following from the scientism that typically underlies their atheism are far more subversive of received opinion—and indeed far more bizarre—than even they realize. In arguing that these conclusions really follow from scientism, he is largely successful. What he fails to do is to provide any good reason to think either that his scientistic premises are true or that the preposterous conclusions he draws from them are anything other than the decisive reductio ad absurdum they appear to be.

Editorial Reviews. “The Atheist's Guide to Reality will, like the best scholarship and. Download The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions PDF Fully free eBook by Alex Rosenberg We can't avoid the persistent questions about the meaning of life-and the nature of real.

The fundamental principle of Rosenberg’s scientism, repeated like a mantra throughout the book, is that “the physical facts fix all the facts.” What ultimately exist are just fermions and bosons and the physical laws that describe the way these particles and that of the larger objects made up of them behave. These laws make no reference to purposes, designs, final causes, or teleology of any sort. Hence anything that is real is really just fermions and bosons behaving in the purposeless, meaningless ways described by physics. Chemistry, biology, and neuroscience tell us about reality because what they tell us is entirely reducible to physics. Anything not so reducible tells us nothing at all about reality. And that brings us to Rosenberg’s conclusions. Naturally, it follows from his scientism that there is no God and that neither the universe as a whole nor human life in particular has any meaning, point, or purpose.

Nor is there free will, life after death, or any objective difference between right and wrong. Secular humanist morality is no less illusory than any other kind, and the consistent atheist ought to be a nihilist, though a “nice” one. This much is familiar enough atheist boilerplate, even if there are atheists who resist some of it. Written by Dr. Edward Feser is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. He has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.

He holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of California at Santa Barbara, a master’s degree in religion from the Claremont Graduate School, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and religious studies from the California State University at Fullerton. He is author of numerous books including (St. Dual audio movies download 720p. Augustines Press, 2010); (Oneworld, 2009); and (Oneworld, 2007). Feser on and his website,.

A book for nonbelievers who embrace the reality-driven life. We can't avoid the persistent questions about the meaning of life-and the nature of reality. Philosopher Alex Rosenberg maintains that science is the only thing that can really answer them—all of them. His bracing and ultimately upbeat book takes physics seriously as the complete description of reality and accepts all its consequences.

He shows how physics makes Darwinian natural selection the only way life can emerge, and how that deprives nature of purpose, and human action of meaning, while it exposes conscious illusions such as free will and the self. The science that makes us nonbelievers provides the insight into the real difference between right and wrong, the nature of the mind, even the direction of human history. The Atheist's Guide to Reality draws powerful implications for the ethical and political issues that roil contemporary life. The result is nice nihilism, a surprisingly sanguine perspective atheists can happily embrace.