This week’s TTMT is blogger-specific and will thus not be of much interest to most of my readers. Thus I will have to use another question. I had a good response with the music question, so I’ll ask another along the same lines.

What are your favorite song lyrics? Why are they your favorite? What song are they from? Who wrote them?

This is a very difficult one for me to answer as I am not as interested in lyrics as I am music, but I’m very interested in others’ responses. While I can’t pick a favorite, I can list some that I like. As will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, my first choice was written by Steve Kilbey of The Church. The song is Lustre off of Priest=Aura. The CD is full of good lyrics (in my, admittedly poor, judgment) Here is a sample of the lyrics:

If I never see you again
That will be way too soon
And if I ever get over this
I will be over the moon
I hope that something new comes along
Something more my style
I hope that someone else comes along
And makes it worth my while

Why do I like these lyrics? I’m not sure. I tend to like bitter lyrics, even though I am not a very bitter guy. They seem to capture my inner-teenager who needs his angst addressed. Bitterness seems to do this well.

I’ll let others talk about their favorites before I list any more.

Last night, I finished reading Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects by Bertrand Russel. Russel was one of those philosophers who I had often heard read about but never read his actual works. Indeed, I have read very little philosophy of that era.

I choose to read this book as part of a challenge. I had an ongoing debate on ReligiousFreaks with MAPK LOTGRE (MAPK L). Eventually, he challenged me to read a Christian apologetics book, Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton. I agreed, if he would reread it with me and we then read Why I Am Not a Christian.

Orthodoxy was a painful read and a very slow process for me. Chesterton’s style involved a lot of metaphor and symbolism that I had trouble fully grasping. Also, he seemed to revel in contradictions. Chapter titles like The Paradoxes of Christianity and statements like “The trouble with the candid friend is that he is not candid” set my teeth on edge. If I am anything, I am rational thus any defense of Christianity which relies on the denial of reason will fail with me, as Orthodoxy did. Ultimately, the book ended up being a long-winded version of the “Christianity feels right” argument, which holds no weight with me.

In contrast, Why I Am Not a Christian was written by a philosopher and mathematician. It’s arguments were well laid out, its terms were clearly defined, and its conclusions were rationally supported. This is much more inline with my style. But since this book is a collection of essays, it lacks the cohesiveness of Orthodoxy. Some essays were directly about religion, others related to the topic only tangentially.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the book is that the ‘New Atheism’ movement, championed my Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens is not all that new. The exact same criticisms of religion appears in Russel’s book and the New Atheists’ books. The only thing new in the recent books is the inclusion of Evolutionary Theory as an argument against the existence of God. Also, the New Atheism movement seems to be much larger and louder than any in the past.