Atheism: A Very Short Introduction by Julian Baggini

ISBN: 0192804243
136 pages
published in 1995.

There isn’t really much to say about this book. That shouldn’t be taken to mean it was a bad book, or anything like that — I can see it serving its purpose in an introductory function very well. I’ve been seeing these Oxford UP “Very Short Introduction” books lying around bookstores here and there, and so of course I decided to pick up the one on atheism. It was pretty good. It had all of the basic framework for books about atheism (the curt reminder that we’re not immoral Satan worshippers, etc.) The book’s only real downfall is the risk that any book about a widely held philosophy runs the risk of — and that’s overgeneralizing. Baggini does a pretty commendable job controlling that, but there are still many points in the book that I got a bit frustrated because he seemed pretty willing to specify on his own behalf for opinion’s sake but seemed to shrug off slightly more positive (that whole atheism with a capital A nonsense that you hear a lot) as fundamentalist and undesirable.

But his explanations and descriptions are spot on, and he is always very focused and organized in his approach. I can see myself recommending this book to someone who asked for a good introduction to the subject.

Leave a Reply