26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Bogus logic, bogus math. Don't bother., June 30, 2000
This review is from: At Least in Hell the Christians Won't Harass Me (Paperback)
Chapter one was fun. In Chapter one, the author has some nasty things to say about street witnessers, but from there it's all downhill.
Turns out the guy is a dualist. He belives that life is eternal because anything we don't remember effectively didn't happen. Since our lives right now definitely are happening, they must be remembered (therwise they couldn't be real now) and so "remembering", conciousness, must continue forever, or at least without temporal boundary.
There are a couple of obvious problems with this: I know that I forget things that did happen; and just because *I* don't remember the content of *your* experence, it doesn't mean your experience is not real. Likewise, that the content of my current experience will not be remembered by me in 100 years does not mean that this experience (typing) is not real now.
Anyway, after this gem I just flicked through the rest of the book. He tackles time travel, epistemology, ontology, ethics and eschatology with the same kind of bogus logic, and thows in a good dash of bogus math. From "What is Deja Vu?":
"A sensation can be modeled mathematically as a vector, where the absolute value of the sensation is the absolute value (length) of the vecter, and the feeling of the sensation the direction of the vector"
Yawn. I wonder how he calibrates his axes, or even chooses them. And this from "Orgasms and Differential equations":
"A positive stimulus increases a person's position while a negative stimulus decreases a person's position. The greater the distance, the harder the pull." ... "We leaned earlier that absoljute sensation is proportional to the distance of the stimulus, which is proportional to the rate of change of one's position."
His point - that eternal torment makes no sense because you'd get used to it - would come across better without the bad math.
Having abandoned christianity year and a bit ago, I don't need something sillier to replace it with. This person's views merit a bad web page, maybe, but not a book.
Snappy title, but don't bother.
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Logic falls apart at p. 70 (out of 301), June 1, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: At Least in Hell the Christians Won't Harass Me (Paperback)
As a "card-carrying" agnostic, I was drawn in by the title...unfortunately, this is the best part of this book.
I found the first chapter (an hysterical diatribe against Christianity) very entertaining, and was intrigued by the author's promises of formal, logical arguments to support his proofs r.e. afterlife, time travel, etc.. In lieu of this logic, Mr. Knight's proofs rely on nonsensical statements and circular logic. In an apparent effort to hide his flawed reasoning, he fills the book with obviously logical statements and belabors the logic behind them.
The math is clearly intended to intimidate readers into accepting his points. Its misuse is analogous to the Christian misuse of the threat of hell to intimidate prospective Christians into accepting the Bible.
I'm not saying that you should not buy this book. If you are looking for a well-reasoned treatise against Christianity, THIS IS NOT IT!
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Does top of your head philosophy interest you?, August 16, 1999
This review is from: At Least in Hell the Christians Won't Harass Me (Paperback)
"Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man. One man can dig a post hole in 60 seconds. Therefore, sixty men can dig a post hole in one second. this may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed." -Ambrose Bierce
While At Least in Hell the Christians Won't Harass Me does not contain the statement above, that is the type of logic used in the book. The philosophy developed during Andrew Knight's treatase is undeniably illogical, with many contradictory or just plain false statements. However, that doesn't make it uninteresting. The conclusions reached are extreme and dramatic, and deconstructing the logic can be fun. Essentially, this is a late-night college BS session put to paper. If that is your cup of tea, you will enjoy this book. If you are looking for answers, however, this is not the place to visit. After all, very little of this book has to do with Christians.
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