Reddit reviews Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole

I recently read a book called Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Stuck in an Intellectual Black Hole, and I think Stephen Law's argument against the "evil is the absence of God" is quite irrefutable.

The theist may argue that the presence of evil is the absence of the good, loving God. Maybe the theist will even take it a step further and say that God deliberately allows evil because, without evil, how will we know what is good? The inhumanity surely must exist to provide contrast to the humanity that is God.

At first, these seems quite solid of an argument, but one can easily refute it by flipping it upside down and making the following claim: God is actually an evil God who seeks to destroy humanity. The presence of good is the absence of God. This claim has equal validity as the theist's claim, so the argument of the "absence of God" to explain evil's presence doesn't work.

And yeah, the whole thing about Einstein and the big bad atheist professor is total bullshit.

That sort of toxicity has permeated pretty much all discourse in the US. Everything about politics, race, sex, sexuality and equality. Much of it comes from alienation, much from lack of exposure to other viewpoints. The end result is that people tend to use inflammatory language to denigrate opponents. I could write a long essay about this sort of issue, and folks have written whole books on the subject.

A lot of the issue is lack of empathy for "the other side". If they aren't human, then it doesn't matter how they get treated/killed. This is one of the first things done in warfare - dehumanize the enemy. You can see it when the media has such intense coverage about beheadings in Syria or the riots in Ferguson - the intent of the media is to make the audience feel that those people are rabid animals who have to be put down. No coverage of how they got there, why the folks do what they do, nothing about their families - just horrible coverage to inflame the audience to support overwhelming and crushing violence against them.

> actually addressing the issues and engaging in good-faith discussions

To begin with, not everyone agrees that X is a problem, let alone that it should be "fixed". Or even that it is a bad thing. You can see that in the political debates over global warming.

Some books on having intelligent conversations (in no particular order) include:
Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole. Helps identify BS in conversation/debates.
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Explains how different people come to different political philosophies based on their values.
How to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable. The author has written a number of books with "gentle art of verbal self defense" in the title. Most are about how to identify verbal attacks and to side-step them.
Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language. Gives lots of examples of bad rhetoric.
Wie man mit Fundamentalisten diskutiert, ohne den Verstand zu verlieren. How to have a discussion with a fundamentalist without losing your mind. In German, I think I should do a translation of the book.

The formal subject of making arguments to convince others used to be called rhetoric. And it has been taught since the days of Plato and Aristotle.

So I googled: “how people get sucked into lame bullshit”

Results:

Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole

What happens if you get sucked into a black hole?

https://www.amazon.es/Believing-Bullshit-Sucked-Intellectual-Black/dp/1616144114

Believing Bullshit by Stephen Law

Trick or Treatment by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst

I've got insider information from a secret, deep undercover source that could be the deciding factor in winning this case. I can't tell you anything more at the moment, but money would really help me prepare this March Surprise. Trust me. Here's my paypal

Philosophy is the ultimate weapon against religion. If you're an atheist and you don't know philosophy then any jackass apologist can run you ragged with a little Descartes or Hume. He doesn't even have to have read them, or have gotten them right! All he needs is a brief summary he's read in a tract along the way, and he will sure as shit tie you up in knots.

There are too many naive atheists who think all they need is a cursory understanding of science. Don't be that idiot, don't be that cliche. Religion has spent thousands of years honing its philosophical defences - weak though they may be, they can still trip you up if you're not familiar with the territory.

If you want a couple of shortcuts, read Stephen Law's Believing Bullshit and AC Grayling's The God Argument.