Assignment 2: Nathan Boshard

            There were only three books that captured my interest over the past year or so: The Moral Landscape (Sam Harris), Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis), and God is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens).

            The Moral Landscape is a book that I found interesting because the traditional atheist response to the moral argument is that no objective morals exist – this is also the position that I take. However, Sam Harris presents that there is a way to believe in an objective morality without god as your basis. This book, in my opinion, doesn’t make a very good case for this point and lost my interest rather quickly. I disagreed with most of his premises and decided that if I disagreed with the foundation of his argument, then I certainly wouldn’t agree with the rest of it.

            Mere Christianity is a book that tries to explain where some Christians are faulty, what Christianity is at its core, and why society needs Christianity. This was a book that I disagreed with, but never lost interest in, primarily due to the amount of thought it takes to genuinely read the book. It is certainly worth a read, seeing as it presents some of the more robust arguments for god.

            Last but certainly not least, is God is Not Great. This book is definitely worth a read. Hitchens presents his arguments in a very clear manner. If you disagree with him anywhere – which the majority of people doubtless will – you’ll know where you disagree with him. This is also a very well-supported work: he doesn’t talk about something he doesn’t know something about. I don’t think, however, that I need to explain what he hopes to achieve in this book. With that said, I would strongly recommend the last two books.