Product Description

Is there really a God? Or does God exist only in our heads? Is the Bible truly God's Word, or a jumble of fanciful myths? The world's best-selling book on atheism is showcased here in digital audio, read by the author, David Mills. An atheist for thirty years, Mills argues that God is unnecessary to explain the universe and life's diversity, organization and beauty. This acclaimed audio presentation is your front-row ticket to mankind's most enthralling debate. 'Atheist Universe' rebuts every argument ever offered to "prove" God's existence and the Bible's credibility — arguments from logic, common sense, Christian apologetics, philosophy, ethics, history, and up-to-the-minute science. This controversial CD highlights Chapter 2, "Interview with an Atheist," the book's most popular, comprehensive, entertaining and most-quoted evidence for atheism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1252950 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-15
• Released on: 2005-07-15
• Binding: Audio CD

Review
"David’s work will be very useful for anyone combating harmful religious beliefs. Honest, frank, and right to the point!" -- Albert Ellis, Ph.D., father of modern psychotherapy, author of 'A Guide to Rational Living' and 54 other books.

"David’s work will be very useful for anyone combating harmful religious beliefs. Honest, frank, and right to the point!" --Albert Ellis, Ph.D., father of modern psychotherapy, author of 'A Guide to Rational Living' and 54 other books.

From the Publisher
I’m pleased and excited that your search on Amazon.com has beamed you to this page, showcasing my new book, Atheist Universe. I want to thank you personally for your interest in this title. Many years of painstaking work, research, and thought were devoted to this project. I am delighted with the finished volume.

Compared to most authors, I write slowly. I could never crank out five or six books a year as Isaac Asimov did so brilliantly throughout his incredible life and career. I like to believe, however, that my unhurried pace permits fine attention to detail and to precise use of language. One of my favorite quotations is that of Thomas Jefferson, who, in a letter to John Adams, wrote "I apologize to you for the lengthiness of this letter; but I had no time for shortening it." Jefferson meant that a skillful writer uses as few words as possible to communicate his message. If I can successfully convey my thoughts to you using a 12-word sentence, then I am watering down my own message — and wasting your limited time — by stretching my sentence to 13 words or to 30. Concise writing saves time and effort for the reader, but demands more time and effort of the writer, as Jefferson pointed out. In writing this book, I did devote the time necessary to shorten each sentence to its minimum length.

Another priceless tip for good writing — a tip which I strive to follow — was articulated by the 20th-century philosopher, Mortimer Adler. Adler taught that "writing should be clear without being plain, and elevated without being obscure." By contrast, much writing in contemporary circles is plain without being clear, and obscure without being elevated. I will leave to your personal judgment whether I have successfully followed Adler’s prescription for good writing in Atheist Universe.

Since you have honored me by visiting this page, I will share a secret with you that is closely guarded by authors and publishers. Even Amazon.com keeps this privileged information tightly under wraps. Most books, you should know, contain a maximum of two or three meaningful ideas. Authors and publishers sell you mammoth volumes, however, by cleverly reiterating their two or three ideas throughout the entirety of the book. Authors sometimes write as if they are being paid a penny a word. Yet, substantively, they say little. After reading Atheist Universe, you may find yourself in complete disagreement with every word. You may be offended by some material. You may question my very sanity. But you will not believe that Atheist Universe had little to say.

At the end of the book, readers are given my private email address, available only to those who possess physical copies of the title. I carefully read each message sent to me, whether it’s laudatory or scornful. I hope that your purchase of Atheist Universe will open a fruitful and pleasurable dialog between us.

David Mills,
Atheist Universe
Publisher: Xlibris Books

From the Author
I’m pleased and excited that your search on Amazon.com has beamed you to this page, showcasing my new book, Atheist Universe. I want to thank you personally for your interest in this title. Many years of painstaking work, research, and thought were devoted to this project. I am delighted with the finished volume.

Compared to most authors, I write slowly. I could never crank out five or six books a year as Isaac Asimov did so brilliantly throughout his incredible life and career. I like to believe, however, that my unhurried pace permits fine attention to detail and to precise use of language. One of my favorite quotations is that of Thomas Jefferson, who, in a letter to John Adams, wrote "I apologize to you for the lengthiness of this letter; but I had no time for shortening it." Jefferson meant that a skillful writer uses as few words as possible to communicate his message. If I can successfully convey my thoughts to you using a 12-word sentence, then I am watering down my own message — and wasting your limited time — by stretching my sentence to 13 words or to 30. Concise writing saves time and effort for the reader, but demands more time and effort of the writer, as Jefferson pointed out. In writing this book, I did devote the time necessary to shorten each sentence to its minimum length.

Another priceless tip for good writing — a tip which I strive to follow — was articulated by the 20th-century philosopher, Mortimer Adler. Adler taught that "writing should be clear without being plain, and elevated without being obscure." By contrast, much writing in contemporary circles is plain without being clear, and obscure without being elevated. I will leave to your personal judgment whether I have successfully followed Adler’s prescription for good writing in Atheist Universe.

David Mills

Customer Reviews

Most convincing case for Atheism out there, a great read
I came across "The Atheist Universe" completely by accident and it turned out to be one of the best books on the subject of Atheism I've ever read. What sets it apart from the others is the accessibility of David Mills' writing style. While other books such as George Smith's "Atheism: The Case Against God" are informative and thought-provoking, they aren't exactly too much fun to read, the tone often being dry and sterile. They come across more as a lecture rather than a discussion. But "The Atheist Universe" is a refreshing change. This is a book you can enjoy reading.

In a nutshell, David Mills sets out to challenge all the common arguments for the existence of God using methods pertaining to Atheism such as reason and logic. This book is a perfect tool to gain some "ammo" for any Atheist in a discussion with a Theist. While I've always thought that it's pointless to argue over an issue so complex as to God's existence or non-existence, it never hurts to have some convincing arguments under one's belt if they don't believe that God exists.

I would strongly recommend this book to any Atheist, skeptic, Agnostic, or even Theist who's open-minded enough to welcome a challenge to their beliefs. While I doubt it will convert any Theists to Atheism, it will at least help to hopefully break down some of the misconceptions about Atheism.

Brain Candy for the Non-Believer
This is simply an excellent book for those who share its views; or for anyone who has doubts and wonders what the "infidels" are thinking. I don't think I noticed any negative reviews (I bought this book based on the reviews), but I really wouldn't expect any. Most people wouldn't be caught dead reading a book with the word "atheist" in the title. If any devout believer actually condescended to try it (like they were stranded on a desert island and there was nothing else to do), they would likely be quickly offended by the contents on any random page. I'll bet not 1 out of 100 devout believers would finish this book.

Among the author's offerings are: "Americans believe 58% to 40% that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. By contrast, only 13% of Europeans agree with the US view...I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose (from Clarence Darrow)...I've always considered atheism to be a very positive philosophy in that, by eliminating a very burdensome obligation to appease a non-existent God, an individual thereby gains maximum freedom to choose his own goals and ideals for a satisfying life...(about public prayer in school) Let's remember that Jesus warned the Pharisees NOT to pray publicly because such prayers were usually pretentious, insincere efforts to showboat...My own observation is that those most terrified of death are not atheists, but believers, uncertain whether they are going to Heaven or Hell...Historically, whenever primitive man lacked scientific understanding of an observed event, he created a 'God of the Gaps' to fill the intellectual vacuum...The wider the gaps in scientific understanding, the greater the historic need for a miracle working 'GOTG'...As a general historic observation, each step forward taken by science has further distanced the hand of God from perceived intervention into natural events. As humanity's gaps of knowledge were slowly replaced by scientific understanding, a GOTG found fewer and fewer caverns of intellectual darkness in which to live...Believers create the illusion of answered prayer by systematically employing the fallacy known as 'Selective Observation,' a perceptual error also referred to as 'Counting the hits and ignoring the misses.'...The more tragic the event - and the higher the body count - the more inclined are the media to feature 'Miracle Survivors' on the six o'clock news...When, however, everyone dies in a catastrophe, such as a Jumbo Jet crash, the newspaper headline never reads 'Jehovah Out To Lunch During Doomed Flight.'...In plain English, we don't know why specific individuals live or die in disasters. We know that Christians are no more likely to survive than non-Christians; and the virtuous are just as likely to perish as thy corrupt...The Christian Church wholeheartedly believes this 'Divine' biblical prophecy, which announces that the vast majority of humanity will follow the wrong road in life and will, as a result end up in Hell instead of Heaven. God - in his infinite wisdom - would have known in advance that most of humanity would have fallen victim to the gruesome torture chamber...a truely benevolent and omnipotent God would let bygones be bygones and forgive 'sinners' even though they adopted mistaken religious beliefs...But, Christians respond, 'without the shedding of blood, there can be no forgiveness of sin. And God only asks that we accept the blood sacrifice that Jesus offered for us on the cross.' And who, may I ask, established this rule that 'without the shedding of blood, there can be no forgiveness of sin'? The answer, again, is God....The fact that God supposedly demands blood before He offers forgiveness is indicative of the bestial mindset of the primitive cultures extant when the Bible was written...The myth of Hell represents all the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable...God was indeed created in man's own image...The two documents upon which our country was founded - ie, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States contain not a single word about Christianity, Christian principles, the Bible, or Jesus Christ...The Christian clergy of the Revolutionary period tried again and again to have references to Christianity inserted directly into the US Constitution, but they were refused every time by the Founders. Two 'Christian principles' may have indeed influenced the Founding Fathers. One was the Puritan practice of executing witches, the other was King George III's absolute mandate that his subjects worship in a manner approved by the Church of England...Witch burning and mandatory church affiliation are only 2 of many issues which led the Founding Fathers to establish a 'Wall of Separation between Church and State,' allowing, at each citizen's discretion, freedom of religion or freedom FROM religion...The National Motto was not changed to 'In God We Trust' until 1956. Likewise, the phrase 'under God' was not added to the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954."

Please forgive all the quotes making this a long review, but there is so much here to agree with, it's hard to stop. This book gives you a 50 yard line ticket to a comprehensive discussion of belief vs non-belief, yet is fun to read. The chapter on Hell is great; the chapter on the origin of the universe and solar systems is among the best explanations I've ever read; the "Interview With an Atheist" chapter should become a classic; the quotes by famous men who are atheists are priceless; I LOVED the short chapter about the Founding Fathers, etc.

A very well deserved 5 stars for this book.

Book Review by R. Leland Waldrip
The following review of Atheist Universe was written by R. Leland Waldrip and posted on the website of the Washington Area Secular Humanists:

The book lives up to Mills' promise in the introduction to challenge conventional wisdom and use extreme conciseness and clarity for his message. He describes his writing style as slow and deliberate, taking years to complete the book. He quotes Thomas Jefferson, who, in a letter to John Adams, wrote "I apologize to you for the lengthiness of this letter; but I had no time for shortening it."

With this book David Mills has delivered a coup d'etat to any thought of reconciling religion and science. Post-modernist apologies and attempts to bridge the gap between religion and science he gives no quarter. He very carefully and methodically attacks every religious argument outside the realm of human invention for the existence of a god. His favorite target is the irrationality of Christian belief and the Bible's contention of a young earth, Noah's flood, Genesis genealogies, etc. One rather interesting point he made in an almost casual manner was an observation that the genealogies in Matthew and Luke of the New Testament describe (contradictory) detailed male lineages of Jesus back to King David, and thereby create a trap for the writers of those books: the virgin birth would preclude any blood relationship through Joseph, so how could there be a lineage between Jesus and David? In debunking the prophesy of the Bible, Mills describes an absence of accuracy, noting that as far as accuracy is concerned, the Bible is a non-prophet organization.

He clarifies a number of scientific terms abused by religionists. For example, Physical Laws he defines as human descriptions of observed phenomena, rather than universal truths, and therefore subject to revision as new observations warrant. He tackles head-on the idea that the universe was created from nothing into something at the Big Bang. Rather, he offers proof through the Laws of Thermodynamics (conservation of mass/energy) that the universe was always here in one form or another. This argument had a particular resonance with me, as I have long had problems with the something from nothing idea of a single Big Bang jump-starting the universe.

Mills says he wrote this book for the forty percent of Americans "... open-minded readers who are not afraid to learn - in fact who are eager and fascinated to learn - about the many conflicts and controversies between science and the Christian Bible." My atheist and freethought friends will highly appreciate his hard-hitting candor and rock-solid enthusiasm for the scientific method, and will put this book at the very top of their arsenal of argument material for combat with religionists. Many of my theist friends who accidentally are exposed to it will probably have major heartburn and relegate it to the trash bin, if they dont outright burn it. But perhaps a few of them will be swayed by Mills flawless logic and lucidity of expression. I will cherish this book and keep it with my major reference works.