Customer Reviews

At Least in Hell the Christians Won't Harass Me

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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!

"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.

The writing, witty and fun, carries the reader through a variety of different arguments and proofs. Though the style is a bit sarcastic, I get a sense that Mr. Knight wants us to enjoy the read and think of life in a new way. Despite the entertaining qualities and well discussed thoughts, some aspects were perhaps just out-of-place rants against Christianity. The book would do well to maybe drop these attacks and approach religion/philosophy in a more mature, more intellectual view. I enjoyed Mr. Knight's reasoning and his fun examples. Drawing on knowledge of physics and philsophy, he presents some very significant new arguments concerning the physical as well as spiritual world. I'd like to see more from this author.

Reading this book is like riding a roller coaster: you may like the ride, you may not like the ride, but you'll get off a different person, and you won't forget the experience! As I read the reviews here, they sounded like critiques of different books, but this work IS several things wrapped into one package... I haven't taken the time to pull apart the formal logic piece by piece (a line by line analysis would be fascintating!). Sadly, I don't have the calculus background to follow the mathematics. But like a good statistics textbook, this volume leaves me with a palpable desire to get the skills needed to absorb (or rationally reject) Knight's arguments in this fascinating and frustrating book... A note about the writing style jarring sometimes, a bit amusing always, but above all it shows a fresh and lively mind overactively at work. The task he has tackled is one which an academic approach would have turned into deadening drudgery. In short, it's fun to read! Several friends (mostly engineers and computer geeks!) are in line to read my copy! If they weren't so cheap, they would buy copies of their own from amazon.com! (P.S. Christians and other theists will not enjoy this volume and should probably read Leviticus instead).

Andrew Knight packs a wallop, even by the mere title of his book, 'At Leat in Hell the Christians Won't Harass Me.'

Ironically, atheists do not believe in Hell anymore than Heaven, although I strongly believe this book was not written for atheists, but for theists who want to replace their religion with something.

In any case, Andrew nails Christianity in a humourous and unflinching manner to my extreme delight. His assault on the Draconian Christian 'code' is brilliant, modern day, and to the point.

He also paints a grim picture of the nature of mindless proselytizers for Jesus. This is a great section of the book, and shows how the dogmatic can turn ugly when faced with mind numbing contradiction (The Bible vs. Logic). I would liked to have read more of this type of experience from various people.

Also, the chapter on 'The Benefits of Christianity' is excellent! A quick read too. ;)

From there the book takes a left hand turn into what appears to existentialism, though Knight makes a good case for Time Travel...making one think differently about the concept of travelling forward in time.

However, I can't abide with the assertion of an afterlife, for there is nothing logical to convince me of this, and I found it unnecessary to analyze Heaven and Hell with any mathematics, as that seems a bit frivolous, like analyzing whether the Easter Bunny is true based on extensive math calculations that Joe Reader wouldn't understand anyway.

So the title is good, but it seems to only apply to about 1\4 of the entire book. I certainly don't believe an afterlife is possible, and wouldn't want to read a book slamming Christianity only to find math problems associated with Time Travel or the existence of Heaven and Hell.

Still, despite the existential arguments for an afterlife, it could be a good segway between absolute credulous Christianity\theism and atheism\science\rationality.

Dan The Burke

Let me just say first of all, I'm an atheist. I wasn't offended by the views of the author or anything. But some of his statements just don't hold water.

For example, he claims that the belief in Hell is necessary to Christianity. That's not true. It's possible to not believe in Hell and still be a Christian. Also, I couldn't go any farther after reading his argument for the existence of an afterlife. It was terrible -- it might convince a three year old. He also manages to muddle up the difference between knowing that something happened, and whether it actually happened or not.

If you want to read some poorly structured, informally written, and terribly argued material, this book is for you. If you want to read arguments that you can believe, go elsewhere.

On the plus side, I will say that his impassioned comdemnation of campus preachers was somewhat moving.

I'm as anti-Christian as the next agnostic, but I have to express my disappointment with this book. The author's attitude is so snotty and sarcastic that no one who holds a differing view will be persuaded by his arguments. For a more enjoyable read by an author who's not afraid to present views from both sides, try THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIANITY.

Mr. Knight's book is an extremly well written one. It's a very difficult topic to write seriously about while keeping the reader interested. He presents a fresh perspective on religion and the afterlife. I've read dozens of books concerning these topics through my studies and this is the best one by far. I look forward to future works from Mr. Knight. - Chris M. Ledoux, G.C.T.

First off, I despise Christianity and rather enjoyed the ranting first chapter even though it doesn't present any arguments I didn't think of before puberty. After that it goes downhill fast. The author's arrogance is amusing here but quickly grows annoying. He tries to appear intelligent and well-educated but is betrayed by his repeated use of the word "irregardless". The so-called proof of the existence of an afterlife in the second chapter is laughable. Maybe one could make a game of spotting flaws in the arguments throughout the rest of the book.

Faulty reasoning aside, the exposition is mediocre and the ideas presented are nothing new. Surely there are better books on this topic.