Publisher's Synopsis
This is a narrative about what is often referred to as, the natural evolution of atheism. This is not a mere shadow of doubt in God's existence or "walking with atheists" in order to convince the reader about the legitimacy of atheism. This would inappropriate and vulgar. My own life's experience is dotted with penalties, dangers and risks of exposing me as an atheist in primitive indigenous communities in the Andean Sierras of South America, when visiting the Shamans in the Amazon Rain Forest, and when I was living incognito within a fundamentalist Christian community in Peru. Those events are briefly described in my book, Prisoners of our Ideals. In a historical context, it is important to articulate the natural and historical evolution of atheism because, in current times, the intense commitments to different forms of monotheist religions have acquired such a strong and dangerous political connotation, especially between the fundamentalist Christianity and orthodox Islam. The widespread suspicion cast on atheists or disbelievers is becoming a real thread to free thought. For the politically motivated religious propagators, atheism is not a small and irrelevant group of free thinkers, but a growing social, intellectual and scientific force. They believe that atheism, science and free-thought would be corrosive to their religious dogma and they are worrying about it. I must admit that they are correct! Atheism is corrosive to religious dogma, whose God states that, "If you do not believe inme, you'll burn in Hell forever." Contemporary atheists have preserved the long tradition of scepticism, for men and women have been sceptical in God's existence. For instance, Epicurus (341-270 BCE) said "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent...Is he neither able nor willing, then why call him God?" You see, books on the historical evolution of atheism are regarded as "subversive disbelieve" and such arguments paradoxically could only be found among believers. This is because Christianity; since the time of the Emperor Flavius Titus (39-81 AD), has continuously been redesigning itself and theologians often formulated the most dangerous sceptical arguments in an effort to test the strength of their faith....All of this dramatises the believers' attitude towards this life and the delusional hope in the existence of life-after-death. Their fear of death is but illusionary and meaningless. In the words of the atheist who influenced Thomas Jefferson, the Greek philosopher Epicurus: " Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist...Why should I fear death, if I am [existing], then death is not, if death is, I am not. Why should I fear that [which] does not exist, when I do [exist]." He clearly did not believe in life-after death....The irony is that people in the US have forgotten, or are no longer taught, that their country was founded by secularists and atheists who were escaping from political oppression and religious persecution. Leaders of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, were both secularist (deist) but not religious. In fact, the second President of the US, John Adams was an atheist; so were Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Buchanan and James Madison, among others. US President John Adams (1797-1801), stated that, "God is in essence nothing that we know off, and until this offal blasphemy is got rid off there never will be any liberal science in the world." ....This book is a scientific and historical narrative from the Big Bang formation of our universe, the Laws of Nature, Prehistoric societies, the Imperial Roman invention of Christianity, Islam's questionable beginning and origins to problems with religious morality. Enjoy the book, family recommended.
