Category: History

April 23, 2012. World Book and Copyright Day

Today I am joining the celebration of the World Book and Copyright Day (also known as International Day of the Book or World Book Days) a yearly event on 23 April, organized by UNESCO to promote reading, publishing and copyright. The Day was first celebrated in 1995 and in 2012 the UK World Book day was celebrated on March 1, 2012.[1]

As part of my celebration I am sharing with you some quotes from one of my favorite books.  This year I have chosen the book “The Law” written by Frederic Bastiat.  The book was first published as a pamphlet in June, 1850  and later became widely read in Europe and the world.

“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” ― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

In The Law, Bastiat states that “each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property”. The State is a “substitution of a common force for individual forces” to defend this right. The law becomes perverted when it punishes one’s right to self-defense in favor of another’s acquired right to plunder.

Bastiat defines two forms of plunder: “stupid greed and false philanthropy”. Stupid greed is “protective tariffs, subsidies, guaranteed profits” and false philanthropy is “guaranteed jobs, relief and welfare schemes, public education, progressive taxation, free credit, and public works”. Monopolies and Socialism are legalized plunder which Bastiat emphasizes is legal but not legitimate.

If you are interested in reading more about this ideas here are the links to the book,

The Law (English Edition) via Amazon.com

La Ley (Spanish Edition) via Amazon.com

La Loi (annoté) (French Edition) via Amazon

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Favorite Autobiographies for Free Download

Autobiography cover

Knight Of The Apocalypse No. 3

This is one new posts in celebration of the “A Week”,

“Where we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith; where we have no reasons, we have lost both our connection to the world and to one another.” Sam Harris

Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris andChristopher Hitchens have been referred to as The Four Knights Of The  Apocalypse by mystics who believe in the coming of the last revelation given by the Christian god in the last book of the New Testament written by the prophet John.  In the book, these Four Knights were sent by god to bring plagues upon the world.  The previous authors, all active atheists opposing mysticism have written dozens of books that have enlightened and educated millions of men who previously believed in these and more irrational and mystic stories.

  • The Red Horse, represented the plague of war.
  • The Black Horse, representing famine and poverty.
  • The Green or Yellow Horse, representing death and illness.
  • The White Horse, representing the final moment of life in which the Death reappears once again to redeem humanity.

To parody this Apocalyptic stories and to celebrate the Week of Atheism, I choose to celebrate the elocuent Sam Harris as Knight No. 3

Sam Harris is mostly know for his works criticizing the  dogma and the irrationality and immorality of  religious practices of Islam and Christianity.  He is a very young, smart and handsome philosopher and neuroscientist whom I first read in a flight from Guatemala to Vatican City for holidays with my family in 2006. How ironic isn’t it?  His book is titled The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (2004) and tells in a straight forward and educated analysis how faith and reason have always clashed in our history.  As a reviewer says in Amazon, “Harris offers a vivid historical tour of mankind’s willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs, even when those beliefs are used to justify harmful behavior and sometimes-heinous crimes.” and I completely agree with this statement.  Indeed, this is a book to enjoy.

I also bought but haven’t read his book titled: The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values‘ and it is in my waiting list.

Now, check this video with a great debate titled “The God Debate II” with Sam Harris vs William Lane Craig,

VIDEO: The second annual God Debate features atheist neuroscientist Sam Harris and Evangelical Christian apologist William Lane Craig as they debate the topic: “Is Good From God?” The debate was sponsored in large part by the Notre Dame College of Arts and Letters: The Henkels Lecturer Series, The Center for Philosophy of Religion and the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts.

Sam Harris begins talking at 27:27

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Knight Of The Apocalypse No. 2

This is one new posts in celebration of the “A Week”,

“I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all the species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections. Is there a conflict between science and religion here? There most certainly is.” Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea

Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris andChristopher Hitchens have been referred to as The Four Knights Of The  Apocalypse by mystics who believe in the coming of the last revelation given by the Christian god in the last book of the New Testament written by the prophet John.  In the book, these Four Knights were sent by god to bring plagues upon the world.  The previous authors, all active atheists opposing mysticism have written dozens of books that have enlightened and educated millions of men who previously believed in these and more irrational and mystic stories.

  • The Red Horse, represented the plague of war.
  • The Black Horse, representing famine and poverty.
  • The Green or Yellow Horse, representing death and illness.
  • The White Horse, representing the final moment of life in which the Death reappears once again to redeem humanity.

To parody this Apocalyptic stories and to celebrate the Week of Atheism, I choose to remember Daniel C. Dennett as Knight No. 2.

The books written by Dennett are among the easiest and more interesting to read in the topics of  philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology.  His are also some of the books with more notes, marks and corrections I have in my personal library.  Dennett has a very clever and consistent stands specifically in regard to the field of philosophy of biology of which I have enjoyed reading a lot in his books.  I strongly disagree with many of his arguments that depart from a objective and rational stand in regard to man’s epistemology, added to his incorrect relation of morality and organized religion as reciprocally necessary.  Nonetheless he’s a great writer.  Among his works are:

If you are new to his name, I recommend you to check the wonderful lecture by Mr. Dennett titled “What Should Replace Religions?”

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Knights Of The Apocalypse No. 1

A Devil's Chaplain
Image via Wikipedia

“My approach to attacking creationism is to attack religion as a whole (…)  religion is corrosive to science. It teaches people to be satisfied with trivial, supernatural non-explanations and blinds them to the wonderful real explanations that we have within our grasp. It teaches them to accept authority, revelation and faith instead of always insisting on evidence.” Richard Dawkins in his lecture at TED.com

Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens have been referred to as The Four Knights Of The  Apocalypse by mystics who believe in the coming of the last revelation given by the Christian god in the last book of the New Testament written by the prophet John.  In the book, these Four Knights were sent by god to bring plagues upon the world.  The previous authors, all active atheists opposing mysticism have written dozens of books that have enlightened and educated millions of men who previously believed in these and more irrational and mystic stories.

  • The Red Horse, represented the plague of war.
  • The Black Horse, representing famine and poverty.
  • The Green or Yellow Horse, representing death and illness.
  • The White Horse, representing the final moment of life in which the Death reappears once again to redeem humanity.

To parody this Apocalyptic stories and to celebrate the Week of Atheism, I choose to remember Richard Dawkins as Knight No. 1.

Mr. Dawkins is the author of the famous book “The Selfish Gene” (1976), The Extended Phenotype (1982), A Devil’s Chaplain (2003), The God Delusion (2008) Unweaving the Rainbow (1998), among many other works. His topics of interest have commonly been related to his advocacy on evolutionary biology, memethics, and a rejection of mysticism, irrationality and relativism.  He’s maybe the most known atheist in today’s mass media and his ideas have fought a strong war against hundreds of theists and deists for half a century.  His book The Selfish Gene was also the first book I read in a topic that continued to interest me until now.

Now, I leave you with one of the lectures by him that I have enjoyed the most.  It was titled “An atheist’s call to arms” and presented at a TED talk in 2002.  The topic of this discussion is a “full-on appeal for atheists to make public their beliefs and to aggressively fight the incursion of religion into politics and education” by a lobby group supported by Creationists.