What Book Changed Your Mind?

[Skip]

My mind was changed after reading Chicken Soup for the Soul

I've looked (okay, glanced) into some chicken soup books (there have been -what? - a hundred of the things) and admit they're aptly named. I have wondered why there are so many copies at so many thrift shops. I speculate that readers either use them up fast and toss them, or pass them on to, or buy extra copies as gifts for, people they think should benefit, but who don't actually want them.

How did it change your mind?
And did you then go on to read the chicken soups for ... whatever your occupation, sex, age and family status are?

[Dalek Prime]

Almost evey programming text I've read. I'm very choosy, and hate wasting my time on bad information. And don't try to put computer humour into it. I'm not reading it because I want a giggle. I want to learn something.

[Ansiktsburk]

Almost evey programming text I've read. I'm very choosy, and hate wasting my time on bad information. And don't try to put computer humour into it. I'm not reading it because I want a giggle. I want to learn something.

What's a "programming text"?

[Immanuel Can]

The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy.

[Dalek Prime]

The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy.

That is not a programming text, IC!

Dickens' Bleak House almost made me become a contract lawyer, though.

[Dalek Prime]

Almost evey programming text I've read. I'm very choosy, and hate wasting my time on bad information. And don't try to put computer humour into it. I'm not reading it because I want a giggle. I want to learn something.

What's a "programming text"?

Eg. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs; Common Lisp: The Language. Even the Church-Turing thesis (lambda calculus, which is the universal Turing-complete programming language, and the smallest, consisting of λ and a dot, with parentheses). Looks like Lisp, which is based on it, and hence the perfect programming language, IMO.

[Immanuel Can]

The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy.

That is not a programming text, IC!

Dickens' Bleak House almost made me become a contract lawyer, though.

Sorry. To be clear, I was responding to the main topic, not to the question about programming immediately above.

[Hobbes' Choice]

The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy.

What was it? THe idea that you could sell your wife? Or was it that your rose tinted view of the Ole Englande was shattered by some harsh truths?

[Immanuel Can]

The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy.

What was it? THe idea that you could sell your wife? Or was it that your rose tinted view of the Ole Englande was shattered by some harsh truths?

Hardy's agnosticism, actually.

[Hobbes' Choice]

The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy.

What was it? THe idea that you could sell your wife? Or was it that your rose tinted view of the Ole Englande was shattered by some harsh truths?

Hardy's agnosticism, actually.

Most Victorican intellectuals were privately agnostic/atheistic. I don't see why you should be surprised.

[Immanuel Can]

Most Victorican intellectuals were privately agnostic/atheistic. I don't see why you should be surprised.

Not so, actually. A good many weren't, and plenty of them were intellectuals. Indeed, the politesse of the day almost demanded that a person call himself a "Christian," just to avoid being regarded as pagan or uncivilized.

However, let all that be. It's not of the moment.

I wasn't surprised by Hardy's agnosticism. I was refreshed by his candour and existential frankness (not to mention much taken with his extraordinary linguistic legerdemain).

[Dalek Prime]

The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy.

That is not a programming text, IC!

Dickens' Bleak House almost made me become a contract lawyer, though.

Sorry. To be clear, I was responding to the main topic, not to the question about programming immediately above.

I know.

[Dalek Prime]

Most Victorican intellectuals were privately agnostic/atheistic. I don't see why you should be surprised.

Not so, actually. A good many weren't, and plenty of them were intellectuals. Indeed, the politesse of the day almost demanded that a person call himself a "Christian," just to avoid being regarded as pagan or uncivilized. In many places and ways, it still is, which is both unfair and scary to freethinkers.

However, let all that be. It's not of the moment.

I wasn't surprised by Hardy's agnosticism. I was refreshed by his candour and existential frankness (not to mention much taken with his extraordinary linguistic legerdemain).

[Obvious Leo]

Indeed, the politesse of the day almost demanded that a person call himself a "Christian," just to avoid being regarded as pagan or uncivilized.

This is less true than it once was but it is still very much the case in much of European culture. A great many people who would superficially call themselves Christians have never taken the trouble to subject this label to any serious scrutiny and are in fact agnostic. They honestly couldn't give a shit one way or the other because the notion of a god is simply irrelevant to them. This is a direct consequence of the information age we live in and represents a significant advance in the level of education amongst the broader population in progressive societies. Religion is for the oppressed and down-trodden, not for the emancipated mind.

[Immanuel Can]

In many places and ways, it still is, which is both unfair and scary to freethinkers.

It is unfair and scary to Christians too, but for a different reason. It's not fair when people who have only a nominal commitment to something to which you are deeply and profoundly committed are regarded as one with you. It means that whatever irrelevant, hypocritical or just plain bad things they do get associated with you in the general imagination. Thus, even for Christians, nominalism has been a very bad thing.

I'm not sure, however, how much Freethinkers really have to fear from the nominalists. It's true they're unlikely to become Freethinkers, but I've also found that their commitment to *anything* is likely to be purely instrumental, for social approval and convenience, and not more than skin deep. (And real Christians are supposed to "love your enemies," as Christ said: so from them, the Freethinker can hardly find any cause for fear.)

However, we seem to have found something upon which we entirely agree when we say the socially-approved practice of labelling just anyone "respectable" as a "Christian" is a bad thing.

But back to books...