Sometimes charged with being an "atheist's Bible". Įrnesto Sabato, in his On Heroes and Tombs (1961), tells a story of passion, philosophy, and paranoia, wherein one of the characters uses Wilhelm Ostwald’s Energetics as a “sort of thermodynamic bible in which god is replaced by a lay entity called energy.” viii) Ī legendary book, originally said to have been penned by Friedrich II, among others to follow, which argued that Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad were impostors dubbed the atheist's bible (Minois, 2010). “This ‘Bible of Nature’, by Stewart, a ‘modern Pythagoras’, exhibits a stupendous scheme of pantheism not a contradiction, but a confirmation, of all that is good in existing morals, on every branch of which it abounds with original and lucid views.” - Anon (1937), “Advertisement” (pg. His Moral State of Nations, wherein he introduces a new "religion of nature" based on increasing the utility of the well-being and happiness of "animated matter", has been called a "Bible of Nature": He, basically, did what Goethe did, specifically by building on Holbach and Spinoza, as Goethe did, albeit at an accelerated rate, as knowledge had grown by 1810s, but, lacking a solid financial structure, having been expelled from Oxford for refusal to recant his atheism, committed suicide at age 30. Shelley, moreover, married Mary Shelley in the atheistic "Church of Elective Affinities".
Samuel Putman (1858), reflection on matriculation to Dartmouth College Paine's collected works, including his Necessity of Atheism seem to have been a "bible" to some: Quora-recommended atheist Bible like book (2007). Voltaire suggested as an atheist's bible like book.
System of Nature: Laws of Moral and Physical Worldīuilt on Goethe, and his discovery of the human intermaxillary bone (1784) is now a semi-frequently mentioned "atheism bible" suggestion category it replaces Genesis model of god single day creation human origins with an evolution model of human origins, originating from a heated electrified chemical pond (1871).įorce and Matter: Principles of the Natural Order of the Universe, with a System of Morality Based Thereonīasically, a 19th century reformulation of what Holbach had done, albeit with focus on the new "conservation of force" model the result, while admirable and influential in its era, was but less a powerful version of the former.īuilding on Lucretius, in which he marked passages in the poem that seemed to him ‘against religion’, he produced a three-volume Essays, which influenced a number of budding atheists, e.g. Those toward the bottom, mostly being post 9/11 publications, wherein watered down "new atheism" awoke, tend to be comical and or Bible deconstruction like books. Jefferson taking the time to hand cut all the supernatural parts out of the Bible, to make a "natural" Bible. Those in the middle range rankings, tend to have a certain seriousness of effort to them, e.g. Those with the "system of morality", based in the natural sciences, tending to stronger. In sum, those toward the top are what might be called the leading serious contenders for Bible replacements. Holbach's System of Nature and Paine's The Age of Reason have been the most widely-cited, according to Google Books, publications with that epitaph in the last two-centuries, and or books suggested as atheist-like bibles, and others in between, all ranked by a combination of influence and powerfulness. The following is a ranking of books referred to either explicitly and infamously or famously, depending on one's point of view, as "atheist’s Bibles", e.g.