I Can’t Wait to Read This Book June 10, 2012

I Can’t Wait to Read This Book

By Hemant Mehta
June 10, 2012

Dale McGowan just announced that he will be writing a book that (to my surprise) doesn’t exist yet: Atheism for Dummies.

There were already Dummies books for each of the major and several minor religions, as well as some weirdly specific titles like Lost Books of the Bible for Dummies. Now publisher Wiley & Sons has decided it’s time to get a playful-but-instructive popular intro to atheism on the market. I’m grateful to Hemant Mehta for pointing them my way and to Wiley for agreeing with him.

Glad I could point them in the right direction 🙂

Even if it’s not going to come out for a while, this could be a wonderful primer on atheism for people who, like me, don’t care much for philosophy or 2304032132-page books.

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  • newavocation

    Hope he starts with you can’t hate a God that you don’t have any evidence for it’s existence!

  • TheAnalogKid

    Yes, but we’ll have to put up with morons attempting to be funny. Just like with Evolution for Dummies.

    “Yeah, evolution/atheism is for dummies”.

  • Lindatseed

    It should be a very short book.

  • I’m waiting for Christians to photoshop the picture to be “Atheism is for dummies”

  • Another entry in the Low Self-Esteem Series.
    (As a friend of mine refers to the “for Dummies”, “for Morons”, “for Complete Idiots”, etc. series. The day that “The Internet for Dummies” came out, her comment was “No, let’s keep the dummies off the Internet.”)

  • Baby_Raptor

    That is a lot of pages. Wonder how huge a book that size would be. 

  • Marco Conti

    That didn’t work out very well, did it?

  • Marco Conti

    I think the English language needs a term for “Smart but busy people intent on learning  new things” and then name a book series after it.

  • Robster

    Isn’t the fact that there seems to be fewer atheist dummies than religuiously afflicted dummies leading lesser potential sales for this worthy tome? The losers would then claim that their fairy “roon’d the atheist book sales”

  •  thinking the same myself.

    Chapter 1: What is atheism?

    Atheism is the lack of belief in a god

    Chapter 2: What are the moral consequences of atheism?

    None

    Chapter 3: err, there isn’t anything more to say

  • hoverFrog

    Atheism is a lack of belief in gods.  That’s it.  Of course one could write a lot about why we lack belief in gods and what the social movement is.  I look forward to it.

  • Sindigo

    For those who can’t wait:

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Atheism-Very-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0192804243/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339408141&sr=8-1 

    I bought this for my wife (GF at the time) who asked to know more about the subject. It’s a great little primer and we both really enjoyed it.  

    Edit: But we should all know about this:
    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2007/08/09/atheism-a-very-short-introduction/

  • What’s Latin or Greek for skill-snackers?

  • At least they are not going to call it “Atheism for fools” in reference to Psalm 14:1. Seriously, though, intelligence or even knowledge about things is not a pre-requisite for being an atheist. Someone can be blissfully ignorant or perhaps even have an IQ under 100 and easily be an atheist since atheism is merely not having a believing in God. I’m all for books written for those who have not yet devoted a lot of energy thinking about such things because these people vote and I would rather as many people be knowledgeable about the issues related to atheism like he following:1. the definition of atheism2. why we need the separation of church and state3. the dangers of the tyranny of the majority
    4. the effectiveness (or lack there-of) of prayer
    5. that you only need one example of a moral atheist to disprove the notion that you can’t be good without believing in God.

  • SJH

     Of the list you provided it seems that the only distinctly atheist topic is the first. The second and third are political discussions that our forefathers had. The fourth is regarding religion and the value of prayer. The fifth, as you have simplified it, is common sense.

    I agree with the comments earlier that the book would be very short. It would have to start discussing opposing views in order to fill its pages. In contrast a book about most major religions would be very informative regarding what the religion actually teaches and would never even have to mention opposing views.

  • Tom_Nightingale

    But atheists are already geniuses by default, right?  So we should expect low sales volume then.  Actually, this will be awesome, and I bet you some hard-core nonbelievers could be humbled by what they don’t yet know.

  • Tom_Nightingale

    Whatever… Why so cynical?  There are so many new nonbelievers that could use more than a dictionary definition with it’s own cover!

  • Tom_Nightingale

    Like you’ve never been a “dummie” in respect to anything before?

  • Tom_Nightingale

    Oh FSM so many snobs talking about the semantics of the title… THIS WILL BE A GREAT BOOK!  There is so much more to atheism than “lack of a belief in a god,” evident in that we are presently gathered under the banner of “Friendly Atheist” writing these posts.

  • HughInAz

    My favorite used bookstore has a section devoted to “X for dummies” and “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Y” books. The section is labeled “Idiots and Dummies.”

    And I once saw a book called “The Bible for Blockheads.” I always suspected that was the target demographic.

  • Revyloution

    8,755,322 inches, or 729,610 feet thick, based on a standard .0038 page thickness.

    222,385 meters if you’re more of a metric type person.