Intellectual Masturbation

Ken Bronstein said it. Not me.

Bronstein and the New York City Atheists were featured in Gillian Reagan‘s article on the “new breed of book clubs” in The New York Observer.

The New York City Atheists book club can take six months to get through an assigned reading.

“There is an intellectual masturbation going on here,” said Ken Bronstein, the garrulous leader of the NYC Atheists, who hosts the group’s book club at his Upper East Side home at 79th Street. On the second Sunday of every month, after the regular brunch meeting of 50 or 60 atheists (mostly retirees and a few politically minded young ’uns), about a dozen or so break off and take the M31 bus to Mr. Bronstein’s home and dissect a chosen book, chapter by chapter. Recent pick: Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, which has a pretty self-explanatory title. So far, the group has held passionate discussions about evolution, creationism and four-eyed fish. “Now, maybe that doesn’t turn you on,” Mr. Bronstein said. “But, to me, I love this stuff, okay? Forget about being an atheist or something, it’s just so interesting I don’t want to sleep.”

…

Members of the New York City Atheists’ Book Club often stay at Mr. Bronstein’s home until the dinner hours discussing ideas brought forth by their books. They’ll cross the street for some Chinese food to continue their conversations. “It’s more than a book club thing, it’s a social thing,” Mr. Bronstein said. “It’s very special, getting to know these people with these books.”

I would think they’d get more of a discussion going if they read C. S. Lewis or the Left Behind books or the Koran…

Very cool that they have that community, though.

I’ve heard of a few atheist blogosphere books clubs… but is anyone else part of an actual one? An atheist one? What are you reading?


[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]