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    Outgrowing God: A Beginner's Guide
    Outgrowing God: A Beginner's Guide
    Outgrowing God: A Beginner's Guide
    Audiobook6 hours

    Outgrowing God: A Beginner's Guide

    Written by Richard Dawkins

    Narrated by Richard Dawkins

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Should we believe in God? In this brisk introduction to modern atheism, one of the world’s greatest science writers tells us why we shouldn’t.

    Richard Dawkins was fifteen when he stopped believing in God. 

    Deeply impressed by the beauty and complexity of living things, he’d felt certain they must have had a designer. Learning about evolution changed his mind. Now one of the world’s best and bestselling science communicators, Dawkins has given readers, young and old, the same opportunity to rethink the big questions.

    In twelve fiercely funny, mind-expanding chapters, Dawkins explains how the natural world arose without a designer—the improbability and beauty of the “bottom-up programming” that engineers an embryo or a flock of starlings—and challenges head-on some of the most basic assumptions made by the world’s religions: Do you believe in God? Which one? Is the Bible a “Good Book”? Is adhering to a religion necessary, or even likely, to make people good to one another? Dissecting everything from Abraham’s abuse of Isaac to the construction of a snowflake, Outgrowing God is a concise, provocative guide to thinking for yourself.

    Includes a bonus PDF of photographs and charts


    Advance praise for Outgrowing God

    “My son came home from his first day in the sixth grade with arms outstretched plaintively demanding to know: ‘Have you ever heard of Jesus?’  We burst out laughing. Maybe not our finest parenting moment, given that he was genuinely distraught. He felt that he had woken up one day to a world in which his peers were expressing beliefs he found frighteningly unreasonable. He began devouring books like The God Delusion, books that helped him formulate his own arguments and helped him stand his ground. Dawkins’s new book is special in the terrain of atheists’ pleas for humanism and rationalism precisely since it speaks to those most vulnerable to the coercive tactics of religion. As Dawkins himself says in the dedication, this book is for ‘all young people when they’re old enough to decide for themselves.’ It is also, I must add, for their parents.”—Janna Levin, author of Black Hole Blues
     
    “When someone is considering atheism I tell them to read the Bible first and then Dawkins. Outgrowing God—second only to the Bible!”—Penn Jillette, author of God, No!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
    Release dateOct 8, 2019
    ISBN9780593147429
    Author

    Richard Dawkins

    RICHARD DAWKINS is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008. He is the author of 15 books includingUnweaving the Rainbow, A Devil’s Chaplain, and The God Delusion.Dawkins lives in Oxford.,

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    Reviews for Outgrowing God

    3.5/5

    56 ratings5 reviews

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    • 2/5
      If you want a flashback to naughts era internet atheism this book is for you. Dawkins dresses up an atheism that is really just a critique of Christianity. Islam is mentioned and judaism is implicated by default talking about the OT, but the arguments used all circle the Christian idea of God and especially those of US protestants. The same hill internet atheism died on after intelligent design-creationism was defeated, unable to move the criticism onto other religions or countries.
      Very tired old arguments are recycled, much of it amounting to "did you ever notice the Bible says some crazy stuff" or "these bronze age stories don't jive with science". A more general appeal to science & secularism is made, often cribbing or quoting from other luminaries like Dennett, Sagan or Pinker. A big section is devoted to his familiar stomping ground of evolution versus creationism.
      Is it too hard on this book to say it's all been covered better before? Even by Dawkins himself. Why read this when you could pick up his previous, better books?
    • 5/5
      5 stars
      If you want to decide for yourself if what you were taught about religion were true, I’d highly recommend this book along with Stephen Hawkings’ “Brief Answers to the Big Questions” Here Dawkins goes through the biology of evolution, Hawkins goes through the cosmology of why a god is unnecessary.
      Unfortunately I think it will be largely ignored, I think it’s very hard to persuade superstitious people to have the courage to give up their superstitions, especially today when so many unscientific theories abound both on the internet and in politics. My favorite chapters are the first part of the book where he takes on the bible, philosophy and how myths start.

      Eye-witnesses photographed what they thought was the face of Satan in the smoky dust clouds hanging over New York that day.

      We want to see patterns, it’s how we order the world, even when there really is no pattern to see.

      I love the Mark Twain quotes

      Mormonism is another relatively recent cult which, unlike the John Frum or cargo cults, or the ‘Elvis is Risen’ cult, has spread all over the world and become rich and powerful. The founder was a man from New York State called Joseph Smith. He claimed that in 1823 an angel called Moroni told him where to dig up some golden plates which had ancient writing on them. Smith said he did so, and translated the writing from an old Egyptian language into English. He did this with the aid of a magic stone in a magic hat. When he looked in the hat, the stone revealed to him the meaning of the words. He published his English ‘translation’ in 1830. Weirdly, the English was not the English of his own time but the English of more than two centuries earlier, the English of the King James Bible. Mark Twain joked that if you cut out every repetition of ‘It came to pass’, the Book of Mormon would shrink to a pamphlet.

      Mark Twain is supposed to have said: ‘A lie can spread half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.’ And not only malicious lies, but good stories that aren’t true but are amusing and fun to recount, especially if you were told them in good faith and don’t positively know they’re untrue. Or stories that, if not amusing, are spookily uncanny – another reason why so many are passed on.

      Like so many lies spread that through social media and news sources that offer no real facts only opinion.
    • 4/5
      A book written for children but also for the sort of people who read at the level of Christian self-help books. Because of this, it is a lot less erudite than "The Magic of Reality", also written for children, more conversational and simpler.

      It is in just two parts: the religion part and the evolution part. The religion part covers just what one would expect from Dawkins. "atheists" just go one step further than those who practice a religion: a religious believer rejects almost all the gods that have ever been invented, an atheist reject _all_. The origins of the New Testament, the many books that didn't make it, and the ahistorical nature, and contradictions among those that did are discussed. The "Old Testament", as a bunch of myths is discussed; the emergence of modern myths and religions, Mormonism, cargo cults, and so forth are shown as likely parallels. The behavior of the character of God and Jesus in the books in which they figure is discussed; God is shown to be really rather nasty. Dawkins actually pulls his punches here a bit; James Morrow's "Bible Stories for Adults" goes a lot further. The uses of religion as a guide to morality are dismissed. Finally, a sort of humanistic ethics is addressed, along with a discussion of the importance of prevailing opinion in infuencing the thoughts of even highly intelligent and generally forward thinking people.

      I would have given the book three stars; but Dawkins is doing a special service by trying to reach out to those people who read the Christian self help books, so I give it four.

      In tone this book is distinctly better than Neil de Grasse Tyson's "Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry", because, Dawkin's is so much less full of himself.
    • 4/5
      Dawkins` new book isn`t really new. At least there is nothing new in it. It`s basically a summary of his thoughts from his previous books in a simpler form for younger readers. It`s still of course a great and entertaining read, but the one who wants to find new things in it will be disappointed.
    • 4/5
      Fast-paced, well-written, eminently rational, reasonable, sensible guide to disbelief in god(s). Written in simple, clear prose with a touch of humor. Seems to be directed to a late elementary, early middle school reading level.