Hi all. I've searched the forums but can't seem to find anything about Vox Day's The Irrational Atheist. After the author of Unscrewing the Inscrutable, Brent Rasmussen, wrote the following on his blog a few years ago I'm surprised the book hasn't been discussed more often:

Suffice it to say that by the end of the chapters dealing with the individual authors, I was happy that it was over. It was a thorough, detailed, dispassionate (with a little snarky levity thrown into the footnotes for flavor), and completely disheartening take-down of some of the best arguments that the godless have put into print - on their own terms, without using the Bible (in the first part of the book, that is), or any other sacred text to do it with. Amazing. And depressing. It is not my place to defend their books. I truly hope that they do find time to defend and clarify their books, specifically to the counter-arguments and claims made by Vox day in TIA, though, because they really need to. Trust me, it wasn't pretty.

I would think that with all the boasting by Vox and his supporters and positive reviews even by a few atheists, more people would want to read and discuss the book, but I've found very few opinions of the book past the first few chapters.

What’s everyone’s opinion of the book? Is there anything you agree with? How much do you disagree with?

I recently finished reading the book myself (and writing an in depth review that’s nearly finished) and I am shocked that the above atheist fell for Vox’s dishonest use of statistics and whatnot, and I also didn't care of Vox's unnecessary insults throughout the book.

I'm curious about other peoples' views of the book...so how many people here have read it and would like to discuss it?

I only read the first chapter until now, found I would have to read the whole damn thing to be justified in despising it. Did find it manipulative in figures as well as sometimes somewhat making a point about said authors. Mind you, I very rarely had some second-thoughts at reading Dawkings myself, but not ennough to be so condecending as Day, nore did Day provide much other legitimate stuff(in reading the praising reviews I mean, I only started the book). I expected more from a programmer then the views I found so far. In fact it puzzles me that mathematical fractals could be used against atheism. If anything demonstrates impersonal 'design-like' properties through repetition its fractals. If anything demonstrates how 'principles' can interact to make a complex universe its them. It puzzles me to have a programmer and not find him materialistic in his world view. I mean: our computers still use electronics (not light-quanta) and already we can simulate entire physics registers (flight simulators), produce knowledge otherwise impossible to reach (genetic algorithms demonstrating evolution theory). If God had not gotten serious help, (like 100% of help) Day would not do anything close to the job he has today. I mean in the Middle-Ages being a game-programmer resembles what? Play-wright? Court-Fool of Jester? Up until the 20 the century people were to busy starving to death to play computer-games. How can you be a programmer and believe the bug in your program is perhaps not your own fault? Perhaps you should stop looking for it and start praying for it to be fixed. If I believed in God I could never debug my own shit. If I was not completely convinced there was a rational explanation I'd just claim it 'mysterious' and give up. Well in regard to Day I guess the saying holds: God never thought he was a programmer.

I can only look at the Amazon preview. While there are the usual caveats about judging books by their cover, the backcover tells us that the author shows that:
- more than 93% of all wars human history weren´t religion related.
Using Wikis list of wars I get 41-48%. The span mainly stems from another point on the cover:
- In the 20th century atheist regimes killed 3 times more people in peacetime then those killed in all wars and crimes.
If one considers communist and fascist regimes as atheist, which judging from this and the available references he lists Day does, then of course conflicts involving such regimes to spread their ideology are religious conflicts. Of course holding fascist regimes to be atheist is bollocks, Franco made Catholicism a state religion, the Nazi party consisted mainly of Christians and while there was a subsect that opposed christianity they were neo-pagans. And Mussolini wasn´t just catholic, he was positively chummy with the pope.

We also learn that
- Sexually abused girls are 55 times more likely to commit suicide than those raised catholic.
That´s a figure that would only make sense if those were mutually exclusive...

- "Red" state crime is mostly committed in "blue" counties.
Correlation doesn´t imply causation. The argument in there seems to go
the more religious somebody is the more likely they are to vote republican
the ares with more crime in red states are predominantly democratic
-> less religious people commit more crimes.
That of course is simply bad reasoning...

We also learn that Atheists are almost 4 times as likely to be imprisoned than Christians.
Funny that, from the most current statistics I could find Christians are 72 times as likely to be imprisoned in the US than atheists and agnostics. Even if I assume that every prisoner who did not disclose their religious affiliation or wasn´t polled for whatever reason was an atheist I don´t get this value (just 2.1).

While there are good reasons to criticise the 4 horsemen, this book doesn´t seem to contain them...