There is a bookshelf in my study that I have nicknamed “Amsterdam.”
On that shelf, you can find the following books: God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by the late Christopher Hitchens; The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins; Letter To a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris; and Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, by Daniel Dennett.
“Amsterdam” refers, of course, to the hometown of the quintessential Jewish freethinker, Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza. Those authors have earned a place on the “Amsterdam” shelf because they fall under the rubric of “popular atheism,” which was, for several years, a minor literary cottage industry.
I mention these authors because they provide some of the intellectual backdrop to “>http://www.religionnews.com
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