In the past we've had some rather extensive discussion about what freethought is or should be, but when it comes right down to it, freethought is going to be whatever we actually make of it. For example, our choice of books for the Quarterly Freethought Discussion is a four times annual assertion of what it is that we, as a group, mean when we say Freethought.That concerns me for two reasons. One is that I routinely contribute to this forum, I often invest some significant portion of my daily reading time to the Quarterly discussions, and so what actually engages me as material for Freethought is at least partly bound up in the voting process that goes towards determining what the Quarterly reads will be.The other reason is that this community makes up some small contribution to the public perception of Freethought. Even if it's a very small contribution (and it's my feeling that Chris would like for it to be increasingly less small), that means how we handle the Quarterly Freethought Discussion goes some way towards determining the public perception of what is and is not Freethought. The simplest illustration of that is to imagine some highschool kid in Nowheresville, Kansas, who has only recently heard the term Freethought, Googles it to find out more, and turns up a link to BookTalk. We might very well serve as that kids first real introduction to the notion of BookTalk, so what he comes away with on his visit to BookTalk will go a long way towards determining how he conceives of Freethinking.What I mean when I say that Freethought will ultimately be whatever we make of it is, that our practical decisions not only send a message, they set the terms of how we, as a discussion community, engage Freethought as an activity and as a topic for discussion. So if choose books about religion month after month, then the larger part of our Freethought discussion will probably deal with religion. Not only that, but we're implicitly signalling to other people that, so far as we're concerned, religion (and its impact on society) is the subject matter of Freethought.I imagine that what I'm writing here will probably stir up a little debate. But I'm also hoping that it will draw some responses that consider other possible subjects that could fall under the heading of Freethought, and that ultimately, we'll take those subjects to heart when we vote on Freethought books in the future. Freethought can be about little more than religion if we make it thus, but it can also be about questioning, exploring and examining all sorts of subjects that we take for granted. If we choose to read books that challenge our accepted notions of, say, morality, the role of science and technology in society, politics, or cultural norms, then Freethought will also be about those things. If we don't engage those topics, then to say that Freethought is about those things as well is just so much talk and zero substance.I want to see us pushing at the edges of what BookTalk has traditionally considered fair game for Freethought. That doesn't mean not talking and reading about religion, and religion will always be an important and noteworthy subject of Freethought discussion. But I think we've put so much emphasis on religious discussion that we've let other areas atrophy. If Freethought is, as I've suggested, whatever we make of it in practice, then BookTalk is in danger of making Freethought a very limited thing. That's something we can change if want to.

Good points Mad, especially in terms of currently trends dictating the definition of a word. Heck, BookTalk is listed as a link on the Wikipedia page for Freethought. However, anyone that acquires a definition of freethought based on a single web page has certainly missed the point of the subject I think we have a good mix of titles. However, I think a problem has been a lack of having the best titles in each category. Having a popular best seller on a key segment of freethought seems appropriate to me. Selecting books that appeal to a broad range of people dealing with "freethought topics" is difficult as we have seen from participation rates. A tough line to walk but I say we make the consideration not based on what someone reading about freethought for the first time might think, but rather to be true to the definition of freethought which has substantial basis in religious skepticism but also has substantial roots in being skeptical of all frivolous claims that like rigorous proof.We really need to strive for relevancy in looking at future readings. I think the most participation historically seems to come from either books that are books all members are really interested in or books that are highly relevent to all people on the forum.

Mad, I think you may be missing the point of the Free Thought selection.This community is - at least at present - not about Free Thought in itself, but as a synonym for atheism. That's why there are two selections. One is supposed to be about religion and how downright silly it is, the other is supposed to be about non-religious matters. Chris wants the site to be a place for atheists. He wants to attract atheist members, and while he certainly tolerates and indeed welcomes new members who are theists, he doesn't wants them to be in a minority here. Otherwise, the site wouldn't really be an atheist site, so much as a site owned by an atheist.To be honest, though I might find the use of the term Free Thought mildly annoying, I'm ok with the current set up. Currently, I'm going through a period of finding the work of these supposed New Atheists really interesting, in the same way that I found the work of True Crime faction writers interesting in the past, before I got sick of them. No doubt, I will get sick of these New Atheist works soon, as the big sellers just seem to get sloppier and sillier.If you've no real interest in the Atheist reading for the quarter, then I'd say you should just stick to the other selected reading. Now I know you'd also like it if more academic works were selected, and ideally so would I, but one of the problems we have is that if we want participation to go up, we need to select books that people can access easily. I think the problem is that booktalk could be what you want it to be, but only if it had more members, and it can't attract those members without dumbing it down a little. Hopefully, when the move off ezboard happens, a few more members will join. Full of Porn*http://plainofpillars.blogspot.com

Booktalk sees Freethought as a rebellion against cultural and intellectual oppressiveness: a rejection of intolerable beliefs and repulsive attitudes. Freethinking books at Booktalk are liberatory missives sent to encourage the troops and embolden the ranks of those unwilling to submit to...well, submit to what? Submission to religious dogma, tradition, beliefs and practices: freethinking books, at Booktalk, provide fuel for the struggle against such submission.Thus, it has largely been a matter of defining freedom from something, without much emphasis on freedom for ...well, freedom for what? Edited by: Dissident Heart at: 8/11/07 6:04 pm

riverc0il: However, anyone that acquires a definition of freethought based on a single web page has certainly missed the point of the subject.True enough; that's a point that's been particularly relevant to my experience of late. But that we might accidentally bias a person's understanding of freethought is only part of my concern. The more significant part is that we are, in effect, defining what freethought means for each of us by our choices. That's something I'd like to address when it comes time to pick next quarter's books.However, I think a problem has been a lack of having the best titles in each category.I think there's a pretty simple solution to that, but I don't know how willing BookTalk contributers will be to adopt it. If we want better titles, the answer is just to put a little more effort into digging up selections, as well as into the process of considering the available nominations. I've developed a lot of habits contributing to my book filter -- given how much time I devote to reading, it's important to me that I'm not wasting my time by reading subpar books -- and we can talk about how to make the book selection process more effective. But I don't really want to launch on a big discussion about how to come up with better selections and weed out the merely average one if BookTalk itself isn't likely to act on the ideas we come up with.Having a popular best seller on a key segment of freethought seems appropriate to me.Best sellers are more valuable by the ways they draw attention to BookTalk. People run the titles of current best sellers as search engine queries, which stands BookTalk a good chance of getting more search engine hits, and people who happen upon the site may be more likely to stick around if we're discussing a book they're already reading. Let me stress may -- we haven't really had all that much success with getting people to stick lately, so I'm not at all sure that said rationale is really all that compelling.But the more you know about best sellers lists, the more skeptical you ought to be of them as a guide to what's worth reading. Books routinely enter those lists in expectation of sales, and a highly anticipated book may hit the top of the list before it even hits the shelves. The sales actually implied by the name "best sellers" are the sale of copies of a book to book retailers -- not to readers.The thing that strikes me is that we seem to have been willing to give consideration to freethought (read: anti-religious) best sellers when we probably would not have given the same consideration to best sellers in other categories. Do many of us here think that a fiction best seller is really likely to be among the best novels released that month? Do we think that a historical best seller is likely to be the best researched or most revealing? Sometimes really great books happen onto best sellers lists, but that's usually be accident, and future editions of the list will almost certainly correct the mistake.So why do we assume that freethought best sellers are likely to be better than other books? And if selecting those books aren't really drawing in new potential contributers, what's the benefit?... but rather to be true to the definition of freethought which has substantial basis in religious skepticism but also has substantial roots in being skeptical of all frivolous claims that like rigorous proof.Here's another point of departure for us. I tend to think of books of skepticism, like those routinely written by Michael Shermer or James Randi, as marginal forms of freethought, at best. They aren't really striving to break down institutional modes of thought, but are trying to bring erroneous modes of thought in line with a very institutional view of the world. The whole genre has been made possible by the freethought exercises of the 17th and 18th century, but it's really just a way of re-organizing thought along predictable lines.Whereas, to me, it seems like the real promise of freethought lies along avenues that we can't predict. There are writers who are tracing out novel ideas, or putting forth radical claims that may, in the end, prove well-justified. And we could be using our quarterly freethought selection to put those ideas to the test. Instead, it looks to me that we're opting for rote. How many significant differences are there between the freethought selections we've made for the last year and a half? It looks to me as though a substantial number of those books have covered essentially the same territory, and have even made essentially the same arguments. That just doesn't seem like freethought to me.Niall001: This community is - at least at present - not about Free Thought in itself, but as a synonym for atheism. That's why there are two selections. One is supposed to be about religion and how downright silly it is, the other is supposed to be about non-religious matters.That may be how it's panned out, but so long as the suggestions are made by members, and the selections are chosen by election, I don't see why that should be the bottom-line. Of course, the suggestions all pass through the bottleneck of a non-democratic narrowing down, but so long as Chris and crew are at least marginally willing to consider books that aren't explicitly or primarily anti-religious screeds, I don't see why it shouldn't be possible to get a book on another freethought topic selected as our next quarterly read.Chris wants the site to be a place for atheists.Sometimes he's pretty explicit about that. At other times, his position seems a good deal softer. I think it very likely that Chris would champion as less polemical view of freethought if he could be persuaded that it would reward the site with a bigger, more active membership. That doesn't mean he would tolerate a heavily watered down version of his vision for BookTalk, but I do think there's a certain amount of flexibility in that vision.If you've no real interest in the Atheist reading for the quarter, then I'd say you should just stick to the other selected reading.I'm not terribly interested in most of the books that have been selected here of late, freethought or otherwise, and I've been mostly content to stick to my own personal reading. But I'd probably find BookTalk a more rewarding involvement, on the whole, if it wasn't picking eight books a year for me to be ambivalent about.Now I know you'd also like it if more academic works were selected...It's odd, the perceptions that build up around a person. Why does everyone here think that I want to read nothing but academic books? I've suggested a very non-academic book for next quarter's non-fiction selection. And when I was a mod, most of what I handled was popular A-list fiction. I'm not suggesting here that we ransack college bookstores for our book selections. In fact, Rivercoil is the one who brought up the relative quality of our suggestions; I'm just interested in broadening the number of topics that we're willing to discuss.DH: Booktalk sees Freethought as a rebellion against cultural and intellectual oppressiveness: a rejection of intolerable beliefs and repulsive attitudes.Part of my point is that BookTalk doesn't consistently see Freethought as anything in particular. We define BookTalk's view of Freethought every time we make a decision about what to read or discuss. I'm not saying we should inscribe a particular view of Freethought in stone. I'm just saying that we should strive, every time the opportunity arises, to make Freethought into something interesting, compelling, and above all, variable. And a good start to that is discussing what other topics could be considered fair game for a freethought discussion.

In the interest of actually considering some alternative topics that could qualify as freethought material, here are a few suggestions. My assumption here is that any book which presents a credible challenge to ideas that we take for granted ultimately furthers freethought.To that end, it's worth noting that most of the people on BookTalk subscribe to either a fairly straightforward view of republican democratic ideals, or to some left leaning version, the strongest expression of which is probably DH's tendency towards anarchism. So one category of topics we could look at are those that challenge our received wisdom about what makes for a just society. On the whole I've been suspicious of DH's suggestions because they seem to me part of his personal challenge to us -- that is, books which champion ideals he already espouses to some extent -- and I think that sort of partisanism is contrary to the idea of freethought. But that isn't to say that there aren't books out there that could present credible challenges to our political and social assumptions.For example, in looking at the description, I'm unsure as to whether the content of Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty are likely to agree or disagree with what I believe about the proper role of government and economics. That kind of ambiguity of response is probably as good an indication of a worthwhile freethought book as you're likely to find, short of reading the book before you suggest it. If I can't tell from a basic scan of the book whether or not I'm likely to agree with it, there's a fair chance that it will challenge my assumptions in some way or another. And that's what makes freethought worthwhile.On the other hand, I'm not sure a book like Ronald Dworkin's Is Democracy Possible Here? would really serve the purpose of a freethought discussion. Dworkin's book may have a great deal of merit, but based on the description, it doesn't look as though it would do much to challenge the assumption of most BookTalk contributers. Rather, based on the description, it seems to take a premise that most of us would accept prima facie, and elaborate therefrom to conclusions that most (if not all) of us would see as acceptable. A book like that may serve an important purpose in our society, but that doesn't, by itself, mean that it promotes freethought.A third, and better possibility, may be Sanford Levinson's Our Undemocratic Constitution, which certainly seems from the title to be more controversial than either of the previous two possibilities. It seems entirely unlikely to me that very many of the people on this board would immediately warm to the idea that the American Constitution should be replaced, but that's precisely why this book makes for a compelling freethought suggestion. If it didn't challenge our inherited assumptions, how would it promote freethought?We might also consider books that lend support to the battery of critical faculties that are traditionally associated with freethought. A book on logic, for example, doesn't sound terribly exciting, but it could help the level of discussion on BookTalk, and there are books on logic that present logical thought such as to promote discussion. In particular, I have Quine in mind, and a book like Philosophy of Logic may seem dry and pedantic, but from a quick scan of the first chapter made in a bookstore yesterday, I can say with some confidence that it raises enough issues to support a healthy discussion. And if, in the process of discussing the book, we hone our critical thinking skills to a finer point, so much the better.I'm hoping some of you will see fit to elaborate on the possibilities, both in terms of books that challenge our presuppositions about the world and in terms of topics that would fit into the rubric of freethought.

MA: So one category of topics we could look at are those that challenge our received wisdom about what makes for a just society.An excellent suggestion. Freethought selections as disruptive narratives: interrupting tradition and convention, they provoke a response that received wisdom may or may not be able to contain or constrain...but in any case will be exposed of its limitations, biases, and outright superstitions...pushing, prodding, instigating its readers towards a more wise understanding of justice. Freethinkers seek justice and freethought books describe that process.Still, how do we know that freethinkers aren't free to pursue unjust social structures? If we are to embrace the virtue of ambiguity, and avoid the vice of partisanship: why not simply engage Mein Kampf or the ramblings of Theodore Kaczynski...narratives that certainly offer a perspective none of us probably support or are willing to champion? Edited by: Dissident Heart at: 8/15/07 5:13 pm

Bear in mind, DH, that I'm looking for suggestion that challenge even the suggestors point of view. I mean that particularly in your case, because it seems to me that you suggest a lot of titles that you want to discuss because your point of view already leans to that end. To wit, our current non-fiction selection for this quarter. To that end, if we were going to follow the avenue of political challenges, I think it's more in the spirit of freethought for you to incline your vote towards a writer like Hayek than it would be for you to champion another Perenti or Chomsky book. Freethought is not just about issuing challenges to other people; it ought primarily to be about issuing challenges to yourself.How can we be sure, for instance, that "Freethinkers seek justice". Maybe they seek injustice. Maybe they're only out to serve their own good. Or maybe they've learned to see "justice" as just another way of determining what's best for someone else by reference to your own desires. It's probably anti-thetical to take an interest in justice as an inalieable characteristic of freethought. From my perspective, at least, the assertion that "Freethinkers seek justice" looks like another way of circumscribing conversation to fit your goals.Which brings me to another point. If this discussion turns into nothing more than a way to force my agenda on the freethought discussion, than it's served a purpose diametrically opposed to its intention. Part of mixing up the subject matter of the freethought discussion is turning it down avenues I never would have thought to take it. That's why I'm really pushing for some more input on the matter. DH's input is as welcome as everyone's, but I do hope that he'll try to push against the edges of what we've learned to expect from him.

MA: particularly in your case, because it seems to me that you suggest a lot of titles that you want to discuss because your point of view already leans to that end.I don't think I'm unique in suggesting books that interest me, or that reflect thinking similar to my own. I suggest them because I am interested in how others see them: I want to see how they survive the Booktalk crucible...of which your particular chemical compund is part of that equation. I suggested the last two non-fiction selections: Bill McKibben's "Deep Economy" and Noam Chomsky's "Interventions"; both of which I found much to agree with. And, both cover a wide array of issues that I thought would interest most informed and intelligent audiences. MCkibben's was the first Booktalk selection that I think specifically addressed the world of economics and challenged its readers to imagine an economic system that was sustainable ecologically, industrially and democratically. I think it was terribly pertinent and open to rich debate: it didn't fly too well, but was worth the effort. Chomsky's book covers the entire gambit of geopolitical issues and current events hotspots...you certainly don't need to agree to find a wealth of information and challenging ideas. And it panned out into an author-Chat that probably wont be taking place because the discussion turn-out has been so slim.Both books certainly take a point of view, one I shared on many levels: but this is no reason to think this would curtail discussion or hamper critical thinking or minimize the educational experience had by reading them. My two current Freethought selections, EO Wilson's "The Creation" and Graeber's "Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire" take Booktalk in directions it rarely, if ever goes. Wilson's book works to build bridges with religious folk in hopes of finding mutual solutions to a shared ecological crisis. No atheist vs theist debate there: even if he is clear that he is not a believer and firmly part of the enlightenment humanist tradition of the natural sciences. It takes the discussion to a different level altogether, a level that Bootkalk rarely, if ever, is willing to travel. Graeber's text (which will be published in September) is written by an anarchist anthropologist who blends political theory and revolutionary practice from around the world. Yes, I am interested in anarchism and social revolution: but I am far more fascinated with how an anthropologist utilizes that particular discipline to make his radical case for social resistance. I am interested in exploring his struggles within academia as well as his solidarity with movements in the Americas, Europe, South Asia and Africa. Edited by: Dissident Heart at: 8/15/07 6:09 pm

To revise my notation on the Best Sellers being solid candidates for quarterly readings, I want to clarify that I was referring to top selling books in general and not any specific list. For example, Amazon.com has a top hundred selling titles in each sub-catagory. I look at titles on Amazon's top 100 lists as good candidates, not strictly the Amazon.com or New York Times Best Sellers lists. Being a Manager for a College Bookstore, I can knowledgeably say that "Top 10 Lists" are generally a great way to drive sales "self fulfilling prophecy style." The books that get put on that list naturally sell more copies than non-bestsellers and they stay on the list for a long time due to the list itself and "industry buzz" rather than quality of the book itself.Actually, it is probably best to stay away from the top ten bestsellers in general. Very rarely does a book of significant quality hit the top ten lists, IMO. Sometimes in the case of Jared Diamond or David McCollough it does happen but for the most part, the best non-fiction reads are often over looked from my experiences.