The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution - Stuart A. Kauffman

"Biology is the science of the organizational principles that make living things living. Kauffman's book is a massive attempt to provide the foundations for a theory of such organization."Science

Stuart Kauffman here presents a brilliant new paradigm for evolutionary biology, one that extends the basic concepts of Darwinian evolution to accommodate recent findings and perspectives from the fields of biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics. The book drives to the heart of the exciting debate on the origins of life and maintenance of order in complex biological systems. It focuses on the concept of self-organization: the spontaneous emergence of order that is widely observed throughout nature Kauffman argues that self-organization plays an important role in the Darwinian process of natural selection. Yet until now no systematic effort has been made to incorporate the concept of self-organization into evolutionary theory. The construction requirements which permit complex systems to adapt are poorly understood, as is the extent to which selection itself can yield systems able to adapt more successfully. This book explores these themes. It shows how complex systems, contrary to expectations, can spontaneously exhibit stunning degrees of order, and how this order, in turn, is essential for understanding the emergence and development of life on Earth. Topics include the new biotechnology of applied molecular evolution, with its important implications for developing new drugs and vaccines; the balance between order and chaos observed in many naturally occurring systems; new insights concerning the predictive power of statistical mechanics in biology; and other major issues. Indeed, the approaches investigated here may prove to be the new center around which biological science itself will evolve. The work is written for all those interested in the cutting edge of research in the life sciences. Amazon


File Size: 84.5 MB

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http://rapidshare.com/files/321281609/The.Origins.Of.Order-Kauffman.pdf

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Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution - Randal Keynes

In this intimate portrait of the great naturalist as devoted family man, Keynes describes how Charles Darwin's "life and his science were all of a piece." The great-great-grandson of the scientist, Keynes uses published documents as well as family papers and artifacts to show how Darwin's thinking on evolution was influenced by his deep attachment to his wife and children. In particular, his anguish over his 10-year-old daughter Annie's death sharpened his conviction that the operation of natural laws had nothing to do with divine intervention or morality. Keynes, also a descendant of economist John Maynard Keynes, shows that much of Darwin's intellectual struggle in writing On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man arose from his efforts to understand the role of suffering and death in the natural order of the world. Early in his career, Darwin saw the indifference of natural law as an answer to the era's religious doubts about how a benevolent god could permit human misery; cruelty and pain, he argued, should not be seen as moral issues, but as inevitable outcomes of nature. After Annie's death, however, Darwin's views darkened, and in a private letter he railed against the "clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horridly cruel works of nature!" Though Keynes doesn't break new ground about Darwin's life and work, he produces a moving tribute to a thinker who, despite intimate acquaintance with the pain inflicted by the "war of nature," could still marvel that, from this ruthless struggle, "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." Photos not seen by PW. (Jan.)Forecast: General readers attracted by the book's warm, sentimental cover won't be disappointed by Keynes's equally accessible prose. Publishers Weekly


File Size: 8 MB

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The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - Bobby Henderson

CAN I GET A “RAMEN” FROM THE CONGREGATION?!

Behold the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), today’s fastest growing carbohydrate-based religion. According to church founder Bobby Henderson, the universe and all life within it were created by a mystical and divine being: the Flying Spaghetti Monster. What drives the FSM’s devout followers, a.k.a. Pastafarians? Some say it’s the assuring touch from the FSM’s “noodly appendage.” Then there are those who love the worship service, which is conducted in pirate talk and attended by congregants in dashing buccaneer garb. Still others are drawn to the Church’s flimsy moral standards, religious holidays every Friday, or the fact that Pastafarian heaven is way cooler: Does your heaven have a Stripper Factory and a Beer Volcano? Intelligent Design has finally met its match–and it has nothing to do with apes or the Olive Garden of Eden.

Within these pages, Bobby Henderson outlines the true facts– dispelling such malicious myths as evolution (“only a theory”), science (“only a lot of theories”), and whether we’re really descended from apes (fact: Humans share 95 percent of their DNA with chimpanzees, but they share 99.9 percent with pirates!)Amazon


File Size: 10 MB

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Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion (Audiobook with Text) UPDATED!

New York Times Best Seller

The antireligion wars started by Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris will heat up even more with this salvo from celebrated Oxford biologist Dawkins. For a scientist who criticizes religion for its intolerance, Dawkins has written a surprisingly intolerant book, full of scorn for religion and those who believe. But Dawkins, who gave us the selfish gene, anticipates this criticism. He says it's the scientist and humanist in him that makes him hostile to religions—fundamentalist Christianity and Islam come in for the most opprobrium—that close people's minds to scientific truth, oppress women and abuse children psychologically with the notion of eternal damnation. While Dawkins can be witty, even confirmed atheists who agree with his advocacy of science and vigorous rationalism may have trouble stomaching some of the rhetoric: the biblical Yahweh is "psychotic," Aquinas's proofs of God's existence are "fatuous" and religion generally is "nonsense." The most effective chapters are those in which Dawkins calms down, for instance, drawing on evolution to disprove the ideas behind intelligent design. In other chapters, he attempts to construct a scientific scaffolding for atheism, such as using evolution again to rebut the notion that without God there can be no morality. He insists that religion is a divisive and oppressive force, but he is less convincing in arguing that the world would be better and more peaceful without it.

Info: http://www.richarddawkins.net/


The God Delusion - Audio Book (100 MB) :
http://rapidshare.com/files/25260477/Audio_Book_-_Richard_Dawkins_-_The_God_Delusion__32K_.rar

The God Delusion - Text (1.8 MB) :
http://rapidshare.com/files/53646870/Richard_Dawkins_-_The_God_Delusion.pdf


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God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything - Christopher Hitchens

New York Times Best Seller

Hitchens, one of our great political pugilists, delivers the best of the recent rash of atheist manifestos. The same contrarian spirit that makes him delightful reading as a political commentator, even (or especially) when he's completely wrong, makes him an entertaining huckster prosecutor once he has God placed in the dock. And can he turn a phrase!: "monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents." Hitchens's one-liners bear the marks of considerable sparring practice with believers. Yet few believers will recognize themselves as Hitchens associates all of them for all time with the worst of history's theocratic and inquisitional moments. All the same, this is salutary reading as a means of culling believers' weaker arguments: that faith offers comfort (false comfort is none at all), or has provided a historical hedge against fascism (it mostly hasn't), or that "Eastern" religions are better (nope). The book's real strength is Hitchens's on-the-ground glimpses of religion's worst face in various war zones and isolated despotic regimes. But its weakness is its almost fanatical insistence that religion poisons "everything," which tips over into barely disguised misanthropy.

Audiobook version: God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything - Christopher Hitchens (Audiobook)


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Letter to a Christian Nation - Sam Harris

New York Times Best Seller

In response to The End of Faith, Sam Harris received thousands of letters from Christians excoriating him for not believing in God. Letter to A Christian Nation is his reply. Using rational argument, Harris offers a measured refutation of the beliefs that form the core of fundamentalist Christianity. In the course of his argument, he addresses current topics ranging from intelligent design and stem-cell research to the connections between religion and violence. In Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris boldly challenges the influence that faith has on public life in the United States.

“I dare you to read this book…it will not leave you unchanged. Read it if it is the last thing you do.”
— Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion, from his Foreward to the UK Edition.

Audiobook version: Letter to a Christian Nation


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http://rapidshare.com/files/44780208/Sam_Harris_-_Letter_to_a_christian_nation.pdf

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Carl Sagan - The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Eminent Cornell astronomer and bestselling author Sagan debunks the paranormal and the unexplained in a study that will reassure hardcore skeptics but may leave others unsatisfied. To him, purported UFO encounters and alien abductions are products of gullibility, hallucination, misidentification, hoax and therapists' pressure; some alleged encounters, he suggests, may screen memories of sexual abuse. He labels as hoaxes the crop circles, complex pictograms that appear in southern England's wheat and barley fields, and he dismisses as a natural formation the Sphinx-like humanoid face incised on a mesa on Mars, first photographed by a Viking orbiter spacecraft in 1976 and considered by some scientists to be the engineered artifact of an alien civilization. In a passionate plea for scientific literacy, Sagan deftly debunks the myth of Atlantis, Filipino psychic surgeons and mediums such as J.Z. Knight, who claims to be in touch with a 35,000-year-old entity called Ramtha. He also brands as superstition ghosts, angels, fairies, demons, astrology, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster and religious apparitions. Amazon

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http://rapidshare.com/files/49959244/Carl.Sagan.-.The.Demon.Haunted.World.-.science.as.a.candle.in.the.dark.pdf

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Richard Dawkins' Books and the Improbability of God (UPDATED!)

6 of Richard Dawkins' books and one article about the Improbability of God.


A Devil's Chaplain - Richard Dawkins has an opinion on everything biological, it seems, and in A Devil's Chaplain, everything is biological. Dawkins weighs in on topics as diverse as ape rights, jury trials, religion, and education, all examined through the lens of natural selection and evolution. Although many of these essays have been published elsewhere, this book is something of a greatest-hits compilation, reprinting many of Dawkins' most famous recent compositions.

The Ancestor's Tale - Just as we trace our personal family trees from parents to grandparents and so on back in time, so in The Ancestor's Tale Richard Dawkins traces the ancestry of life. As he is at pains to point out, this is very much our human tale, our ancestry. Surprisingly, it is one that many otherwise literate people are largely unaware of. Hopefully Dawkins's name and well deserved reputation as a best selling writer will introduce them to this wonderful saga.

The Blind Watchmaker - The title of this 1986 work, Dawkins's second book, refers to the Rev. William Paley's 1802 work, Natural Theology, which argued that just as finding a watch would lead you to conclude that a watchmaker must exist, the complexity of living organisms proves that a Creator exists. Not so, says Dawkins: "All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way... it is the blind watchmaker."

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, tells of his exasperation with colleagues who try to play both sides of the street: looking to science for justification of their religious convictions while evading the most difficult implications—the existence of a prime mover sophisticated enough to create and run the universe, "to say nothing of mind reading millions of humans simultaneously."

The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition - Inheriting the mantle of revolutionary biologist from Darwin, Watson, and Crick, Richard Dawkins forced an enormous change in the way we see ourselves and the world with the publication of The Selfish Gene. Suppose, instead of thinking about organisms using genes to reproduce themselves, as we had since Mendel's work was rediscovered, we turn it around and imagine that "our" genes build and maintain us in order to make more genes. That simple reversal seems to answer many puzzlers which had stumped scientists for years, and we haven't thought of evolution in the same way since.

Unweaving the Rainbow - Why do poets and artists so often disparage science in their work? For that matter, why does so much scientific literature compare poorly with, say, the phone book? After struggling with questions like these for years, biologist Richard Dawkins has taken a wide-ranging view of the subjects of meaning and beauty in Unweaving the Rainbow, a deeply humanistic examination of science, mysticism, and human nature.

File Size: 44 MB

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Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time - Michael Shermer (Audiobook and E-book)

Few can talk with more personal authority about the range of human beliefs than Michael Shermer. At various times in the past, Shermer has believed in fundamentalist Christianity, alien abductions, Ayn Rand, megavitamin therapy, and deep-tissue massage. Now he believes in skepticism, and his motto is "Cognite tute--think for yourself." This updated edition of Why People Believe Weird Things covers Holocaust denial and creationism in considerable detail, and has chapters on abductions, Satanism, Afrocentrism, near-death experiences, Randian positivism, and psychics. Shermer has five basic answers to the implied question in his title: for consolation, for immediate gratification, for simplicity, for moral meaning, and because hope springs eternal. He shows the kinds of errors in thinking that lead people to believe weird (that is, unsubstantiated) things, especially the built-in human need to see patterns, even where there is no pattern to be seen. Throughout, Shermer emphasizes that skepticism (in his sense) does not need to be cynicism: "Rationality tied to moral decency is the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known."

Also read: Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction - Charles M. Wynn


Audiobook [65 MB]:
http://rapidshare.com/files/66375397/Michael.Shermer.-.Why.People.Believe.Weird.Things.zip

E-book:
http://rapidshare.com/files/140012117/Michael_Shermer_-_Why_people_believe_weird_things.pdf


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The Cambridge Companion to Atheism - Michael Martin

If you are looking for a fine introduction to atheism, this is a good starter for everyone. (Also supported with a small glossary.)

In this book, eighteen of the worlds leading scholars present original essays on various aspects of atheism: its history, both ancient and modern, defense and implications. The topic is examined in terms of its implications for a wide range of disciplines including philosophy, religion, feminism, postmodernism, sociology and psychology. In its defense, both classical and contemporary theistic arguments are criticized, and, the argument from evil, and impossibility arguments, along with a non religious basis for morality are defended. These essays give a broad understanding of atheism and a lucid introduction to this controversial topic.

File Size: 6 MB

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http://rapidshare.com/files/74694562/The.Cambridge.Companion.to.Atheism.-.Michael.Martin.pdf


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Sam Harris - The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

"The End of Faith is a genuinely frightening book... Read Sam Harris and wake up." - Richard Dawkins

Sam Harris cranks out blunt, hard-hitting chapters to make his case for why faith itself is the most dangerous element of modern life. And if the devil's in the details, then you'll find Satan waiting at the back of the book in the very substantial notes section where Harris saves his more esoteric discussions to avoid sidetracking the urgency of his message.

Interestingly, Harris is not just focused on debunking religious faith, though he makes his compelling arguments with verve and intellectual clarity. The End of Faith is also a bit of a philosophical Swiss Army knife. Once he has presented his arguments on why, in an age of Weapons of Mass Destruction, belief is now a hazard of great proportions, he focuses on proposing alternate approaches to the mysteries of life. Harris recognizes the truth of the human condition, that we fear death, and we often crave "something more" we cannot easily define, and which is not met by accumulating more material possessions. But by attempting to provide the cure for the ills it defines, the book bites off a bit more than it can comfortably chew in its modest page count (however the rich Bibliography provides more than enough background for an intrigued reader to follow up for months on any particular strand of the author' musings.)

Harris' heart is not as much in the latter chapters, though, but in presenting his main premise. Simply stated, any belief system that speaks with assurance about the hereafter has the potential to place far less value on the here and now. And thus the corollary -- when death is simply a door translating us from one existence to another, it loses its sting and finality. Harris pointedly asks us to consider that those who do not fear death for themselves, and who also revere ancient scriptures instructing them to mete it out generously to others, may soon have these weapons in their own hands. If thoughts along the same line haunt you, this is your book.

Related to: Sam Harris - The View from the End of the World

Audibook Version: Sam Harris - The End of Faith


File Size: 1.69 MB

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http://rapidshare.com/files/74699023/Sam.Harris.-.The.End.of.Faith.pdf


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Daniel C. Dennett - Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life

"A surpassingly brilliant book" - Richard Dawkins

One of the best descriptions of the nature and implications of Darwinian evolution ever written, it is firmly based in biological information and appropriately extrapolated to possible applications to engineering and cultural evolution. Dennett's analyses of the objections to evolutionary theory are unsurpassed. Extremely lucid, wonderfully written, and scientifically and philosophically impeccable. Highest Recommendation!

File Size: 3 MB

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Daniel C. Dennett - Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

In his characteristically provocative fashion, Dennett, author ofDarwin's Dangerous Idea and director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, calls for a scientific, rational examination of religion that will lead us to understand what purpose religion serves in our culture. Much like E.O. Wilson (In Search of Nature), Robert Wright (The Moral Animal), and Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene), Dennett explores religion as a cultural phenomenon governed by the processes of evolution and natural selection. Religion survives because it has some kind of beneficial role in human life, yet Dennett argues that it has also played a maleficent role. He elegantly pleads for religions to engage in empirical self-examination to protect future generations from the ignorance so often fostered by religion hiding behind doctrinal smoke screens. Because Dennett offers a tentative proposal for exploring religion as a natural phenomenon, his book is sometimes plagued by generalizations that leave us wanting more ("Only when we can frame a comprehensive view of the many aspects of religion can we formulate defensible policies for how to respond to religions in the future"). Although much of the ground he covers has already been well trod, he clearly throws down a gauntlet to religion. Publishers Weekly

File Size: 2.18 MB

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Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism - David Mills

Is there really a God? Or does God exist only in our heads?

Is the Bible truly God's word? Or is it a jumble of fanciful myths?

Atheist Universe details why God is unnecessary to explain the universe's diversity, organization and beauty. Using simple, straightforward logic, this book rebuts ever argument that claims to "prove" God's existence.

A comprehensive primer for contering today's religious dogma, Atheist Universe addresses all the historical and scientific questions, including:

- What is atheism, and why is it so misunderstood?
- If God is a myth, then how did the universe appear?
- Without God, is there an objective "right" or "wrong"?
- What is the meaning of life without God?
- Is there evidence of Jesus' miracles and resurrection?
- Can atheists explain "near death" experiences and medical miracles?
- Can science and the Bible realistically be reconciled?
- What is the behind-the-scenes relationship between politics and religion?

File Size: 1.7 MB

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http://rapidshare.com/files/79710226/David_Mills_-_Atheist_Universe.pdf


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The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions

"Use this book as protection against attacks by New Agers, alternative therapists and others who have chosen to abandon reason..." The Times

A collection of short articles explaining strange phenomenons under the light of the critical thinking. It can be described as a comprehensive and entertaining encylopedia with thousand pages rather than a book.

Here is the list of the some topics in the book: acupuncture, alchemy, alien abductions, angels, Area 51, aromatherapy, astrology, atheism, Atlantis, Bigfoot, Cabala, chakras, creationism, crystal skulls, déjà vu, Erich von Däniken, hypnosis, incantation, The Indigo Children, karma, mind-control, Nazca lines, Nostradamus, numerology, occult & occultism, ouija board, out-of-body experience, parapsychology, pentagram, reiki, reincarnation, Roswell, Santa Claus, Satan, Scientology, sixth sense, telekinesis, telepathy, UFOs, vampires and so on...

Official Site:
http://www.skepdic.com/


File Size: 14.5 MB

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http://rapidshare.com/files/87864428/The.Skeptics.Dictionary.pdf


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The Atheist's Bible: An Illustrious Collection of Irreverent Thoughts

"This slim, attractive volume will amuse nonbelievers -- and, ironically, cause them to spend hours reading about God and religion." Boston Globe


The Atheist Bible is a handy little book that consists of quotes from mostly atheist or agnostics and some other popular people such as Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway, Ian McKellen, Albert Einstein etc.

Some memorable quotes from the book:

"Perhaps our role on this planet is not to worship God-
but to create Him." ARTHUR C. CLARKE

"As for me, I've long resolved not to think whether man
created God or God man." FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

"Do you think I am superstitious? I am a super-atheist."MOHANDAS K. GANDHI

"We shall tell ourselves that it would be very nice if there
were a God who created the world and was a benevolent
Providence, and if there were a moral order in the uni-
verse and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that
all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be." SIGMUND FREUD

"All thinking men are atheists." ERNEST HEMINGWAY

"Martyrdom ... is the only way in which a man can
become famous without ability." GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their be-
lief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep-seated
need to believe." CARL SAGAN

"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the
need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in
spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence."RICHARD DAWKINS

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the
rich." NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

"Well, I've often thought that the Bible should have a dis-
claimer at the front saying, "This is fiction." I mean,
walking on water? I mean, it takes an act of faith." IAN MCKELLEN

"[Religious thought is] an attempt to find an out where
there is no door." ALBERT EINSTEIN

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for
atheism ever conceived." ISAAC ASIMOV

"I'm not a bad guy! I work hard, and I love my kids. So
why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how
I'm going to Hell?" HOMER SIMPSON :)

For the others, just search the book.


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15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense - Scientific American

In this 2002 issue, Scientific American denies the popular claims of the Creationists and reveals the errors in the 15 entries. (Pages 78-85.)

File Size: 5.08 MB

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Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism - Robert T. Pennock

The creationism has been through some major plastic surgery in the past decade or so. The leading proponents of "intelligent design theory" have left the ranting flat-earth types behind and found respected positions in the academic world from which to launch attacks on mainstream science.

Philosopher of science Robert T. Pennock has explored all sides of the ongoing debate, which remains (despite the protestations of many creationists) more about biblical inerrancy than scientific evidence.

Tower of Babel examines the new directions antievolutionists have taken lately, but goes beyond a mere recounting of recent history by proposing a new avenue of counterattack: linguistics. The parallels are striking once we look closely: Genesis proclaims that God created all human languages at one stroke, while modern scientific thought proposes linguistic evolution similar in form to genetics. Best of all for scientists, though, linguistic change is much more rapid than biological change, and we have actually observed what might be called "speciation events" to have occurred historically in languages. While not meant to supplant traditional arguments against creationism, Pennock's ideas certainly supplement them and will be useful to educators and researchers alike.

His sense of urgency is compelling; he sees the future of scientific education and freedom at stake and argues strongly for a separation between private beliefs and public knowledge.Amazon


File Size: 2.41 MB

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(Get a djvu reader to open the file:)
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-tools/Other-Office-Tools/WinDjView.shtml


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Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies - Jared Diamond

Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. InGuns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he has done field work for more than 30 years.Amazon

File Size: 3.47 MB

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Superstition In All Ages: Common Sense - Jean Meslier

THE HOLY BOOK OF ATHEISM

"Meslier also has the wisdom of the serpent. He sets an example for you; the good grain was hidden in the chaff of his book. A good Swiss has made a faithful abstract and this abstract can do a great deal of good. What an answer to the insolent fanatics who treat philosophers like libertines." Voltaire

"I know nothing but powder, which with so little apparent force, could produce such great results." D'alembert

In this masterpiece a Catholic Priest Jean Meslier confesses his real thoughts before his death and reveals the dogma's absurdities. He also demonstrates how harmful religion has been to individuals and to societies. And he creates one of the best atheist books ever written.

Religion has in every age kept the human mind in darkness and held it in ignorance of its true relations, of its real duties and its true interests. It is but in removing its clouds and phantoms that we may find the sources of truth, reason, morality, and the actual motives which inspire virtue. This religion puts us on the wrong track for the causes of our evils, and the natural remedies which we can apply. Far from curing them, it can but multiply them and render them more durable.

Let us, then, say, with the celebrated Lord Bolingbroke, in his posthumous works: "Theology is the Box of Pandora; and if it is impossible to close it, it is at least useful to give warning that this fatal box is open." From the book


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