Customer Reviews

Life Without God: A Guide to Fulfillment Without Religion

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Malarkey.

The first half of this book contains slightly-amusing arguments against the paradoxical dogma of many Christian churches. However, anybody can make a religious zealot look crazy. He fails to soundly criticize against any of the more convincing arguments for a creator. I did enjoy the author's attacks on organized religion (see social memes) despite him hand picking easy targets.

The second half of the book he introduces his own framework for living, morality and happiness called neo-humanism. While he does have interesting points, it ultimately fails to stand on its own. For example, his third edict is to produce as many offspring as you can while another axiom is to protect the environment. I find these two to be mutually exclusive, personally. He also denoted you will only find lasting happiness if you have children. It seems that the author feels that his happiness stems from his children so therefore only reproducing can cause happiness. Many of his other preexistent personal feelings of morality are shoehorned to fit his framework (his stance on fornication comes to mind).

While I have no doubt Dr. Tzannes is intelligent, please note that he is a professor of electrical engineering and this topic is seemingly outside of his expertise. This book is akin to receiving a philosophy lecture from your high-school shop teacher who is smug from winning pseudo-intellectual debates against his poor wife (most of the criticisms of his arguments comes from his wife).

Find another book on Atheism.

This book exposes all religions for what they really are-scams-and also explains why most people fall prey to them. It took some genuine courage to write.
The author's "neo-humanism" theory is quite intriguing!

Are you mission happy? In the theism versus atheism debate, morality is a gigantic subject. The religious "moral high horse" is easily knocked down, and Dr. Tzannes knocks it down with professional ease. What is harder to do is explain non-religious morality (especially to someone that needs a god to tell them how to behave). Morality based on happiness and fulfillment has been proposed before, but it has proven difficult to define "happiness" and even more difficult to setup a standard of "happiness" that can apply to all cultures and all communities. Dr. Tzannes has accomplished that task with his Neo-Humanism Theory. Dr. Tzannes puts into theory (using the scientific presentation) what many have tried to articulate before. The Neo-Humanism Theory holds great merit and ties together the thinking of almost all non-theists. Dr. Tzannes keeps the book in lay terms, allowing for a greater audience (although he admits he didn't write the book to de-convert anyone). The use of personal dialogues to elaborate on his ideas is extremely useful for expressing those very ideas; the dialogues give the reader the ability to see the ideas mold themselves and become concrete. You may not agree with some of the details of Dr. Tzannes' book, but the Neo-Humanism Theory is unarguably one of the best propositions for answering the question about non-religious morality and tackling the definition of happiness and setting up a standard that can be used worldwide. Are you mission happy? To find out if you are mission happy... read the book.

Blair Scott
President, The Mobile Atheists
Director, Atheism Awareness
Columnist, Secular South
Board Member, Atheist Law Center
Director, Alabama Freethinkers' Letter-Writing Cooperative

The first portion of the book presents the 'case against the divine'. Dr. Tzannes offers a series of 'straw man' dialogues, in which common theistic arguments are dispatched with logic and wit. These arguments don't take the form or tone of those found in more 'serious' works, such as by George Smith (Atheism: The Case Against God) or Michael Martin (Atheism: A Philosophical Justification). But that is not meant as a criticism. Dr. Tzannes presents debates of the type that one might encounter at the water cooler or at the local pub. As such, his simpler retorts may prove to be more helpful to the reader than the philosophical justifications found in more scholarly texts. Oh, if only real world theist's would behave with as much logic and politeness as those taken on by Dr. Tzannes.

In the second part of the book, Dr. Tzannes explains his philosophy of neo-humanism. The mission of the neo-humanist is straightforward: procreate, responsibly. The logic of this mission seems obvious, since procreation is the key human activity necessary to assure the survival of the species. Because of this logical imperative it seems obvious to Dr. Tzannes that true lasting happiness can only be attained through activities relating to procreation and child rearing (he has not met my children). And, once the mission is so defined, all sticky ethical questions can be resolved by relating their consequences to that mission. If an activity promotes procreation, it's good; if it doesn't, it's bad (if it neither helps nor hinders procreation it?s ethically neutral).

Twist the arm of your average humanist and she will probably broadly define life's proper mission as anything that, on balance, benefits humanity. Since Dr. Tzannes' neo-humanism does this, its mission seems to fall within the definition of traditional humanism. Since "neo-humanism" only distills "humanism", perhaps it would be better labeled as "humanism lite". Further, one does wonder why Dr. Tzannes excludes from a proper life's mission all those activities that benefit humanity but do not relate to procreation (I'm sure there must be some such activities). Unfortunately, it is not explained in the text exactly why Dr. Tzannes feels at odds with traditional humanistic values.

I only graduated from high school, and even though I am an atheist, I usually avoid reading books on atheism, because they are heavy with philosophical terms, comparisons with other unpronounceable philosophies and the like. A friend told me about this one. It is easy to understand and enjoy the humor. I like it that the author does not take himself too serious, and even laughs at himself. Also, he explains what we are doing here, what we should be doing, and why. All the other guys (my friend says) just write why we should not believe.

There are some 400 books out there whose main theme is that God's existence is doubtful and religion's effects dangerous. But this one: a) is funny (I mean really funny, even if you read it twice) and b) It offers an alternative, what the author calls neo-humanism.

This book reminded me of Plato's "Two Comic Dialogues: Ion and Hippias Major." Dr. Tzannes challenged and is often counter-challenged by his wife and muse, Estelle who is a devout Christian, as he gathered his thoughts in writing this book.

His no-apologies approach to atheism is based on many occasions that I had similarly encountered in life. However, using logical argument to search for the ultimate truth can be tricky especially when we deal with the majority who believe in a god that may or may not exist.

It is not popular to go against the majority who believes in a supreme being but it really boils down to the human construction of a "god." We're not really talking about god here. We're dealing with the power struggle of human beings who used religion to get what they want. It is still an interesting book to deal with dogmatic proselytizers.

I enjoyed this book so much that I had my two teenagers also read it. They loved it. We are all going to adopt the author's philosophy of life and practice it daily.

This book is a real find. The author has analyzed his beliefs throroughly - and there are no flaws evident. It is a completely logical, credible thesis. His attempts to "shock and awe" are sometimes distracting, but the overall message is clear, crisp and clever. It is really hard to disagree with this book, I actually found myself anticipating the next argument before it was made - maybe I'm brainwashed! All in all a thought-provoking, very funny, enjoyable read (and a great source of cocktail conversation topics...)

As an avid reader, I found it a struggle to complete this book. It was not informative nor was it witty. I learned more about the author's background and his relationship with his wife that I did about the title of this book. Seems that the author's fulfillment without religion was little more than the money that he made in selling this book. He posed the same arguments that I learned in Philosophy 101. His book succeeded in one thing....taking money from my pocket.