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Julian Baggini's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Julian Baggini recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Julian Baggini's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1
The clash between atheism and religion has become the defining battle of the 21st century. Books on and about atheism retain high profile and popularity, and atheist movements on both sides of the Atlantic capture headlines with high-profile campaigns and adverts. However, very little has been written on the history of atheism, and this book fills that conspicuous gap.

Instead of treating atheism just as a philosophical or scientific idea about the non-existence of God, Atheists: The Origin of the Species places the movement in its proper social and political context....
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Recommended by Julian Baggini, and 1 others.

Julian BagginiThis is an anti-atheist book. (Source)

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2

Western Atheism

A Short History

Much has been written on religions of all types, the history of religious belief, and on the supernatural interpretation of the world, but where can we turn for an account of unbelief-the naturalistic alternative?


James Thrower's concise and direct approach examines the thinkers and schools which defined atheism, beginning with Greece, Rome, and Israel. He notes that the intellectual status of unbelief rose significantly in Western Europe as a result of the clash in the Middle Ages between the powerful force of faith and the emerging but still limited influence of reason....
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Recommended by Julian Baggini, and 1 others.

Julian BagginiThrower’s book changed my view of the history of atheism. (Source)

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3
David Hume is the greatest and also one of the most provocative philosophers to have written in the English language. No philosopher is more important for his careful, critical, and deeply perceptive examination of the grounds for belief in divine powers and for his sceptical accounts of the causes and consequences of religious belief, expressed most powerfully in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and The Natural History of Religion. The Dialogues ask if belief in God can be inferred from the nature of the universe or whether it is even consistent with what we know about the universe.... more

Anthony GottliebHis friends urged him not only to give up the idea of having it published in his lifetime, but even of having it published after his death, because they thought that it would condemn all this other works to the dustbin of history. (Source)

Julian BagginiHume is the main man. (Source)

Mary WarnockHume thought it didn’t actually make much difference whether you believed that God did design the universe or whether you didn’t, because if you could say nothing about this God then it wasn’t a very interesting belief to hold. (Source)

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4
An innovative thinker tackles the controversial question of why we believe in God and how religion shapes our lives and our future.

For a growing number of people, there is nothing more important than religion. It is an integral part of their marriage, child rearing, and community. In this daring new book, distinguished philosopher Daniel C. Dennett takes a hard look at this phenomenon and asks why. Where does our devotion to God come from and what purpose does it serve? Is religion a blind evolutionary compulsion or a rational choice? In "Breaking the Spell," Dennett argues that...
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Recommended by Julian Baggini, Jerry Coyne, and 2 others.

Julian BagginiIf people want to read a New Atheist book, they should read this one. (Source)

Jerry CoyneHe calls it Breaking the Spell for a reason. He thinks there is this sanctity about religion which prevents people from asking, “Where did it come from in the first place?” It’s a human construct, after all, it wasn’t given to humanity by God. It couldn’t have been, because we have thousands of different religions. So even religious people recognize the human contribution to religion. At the... (Source)

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5

Existentialism is a Humanism

It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Jean-Paul Sartre, the most dominent European intellectual of the post-World War II decades, accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture (“Existentialism Is a Humanism”) was to expound his philosophy as a form of “existentialism,” a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, he was about to make it accessible to a general audience. The published text of his... more

David Heinemeier HanssonAs a newcomer to existentialism, it can be hard to wrap your brain around the core concepts when reading novels like The Stranger or Nausea, or writers like Kierkegaard. You get a great feel for the existentialist ambience, but what are the core tenets? This (short) book delivers it about as directly as you can get it, as it’s basically just two parts: 1) An account of a lecture/defense that... (Source)

Julian BagginiSerious Sartreans get quite annoyed with this book because it’s a very accessible, easy-to-read, non-technical, public lecture. (Source)

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