{"id":839,"date":"2009-07-12T14:07:54","date_gmt":"2009-07-12T19:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/12\/a-visit-to-borders-books\/"},"modified":"2009-07-12T14:07:54","modified_gmt":"2009-07-12T19:07:54","slug":"a-visit-to-borders-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/12\/a-visit-to-borders-books\/","title":{"rendered":"A Visit to Borders Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Borders I had a 25% off coupon for Borders that expired today, so I headed there to pick up a couple books. I ended up getting (among other things) Losing My Religion<\/a> by William Lobdell and 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God<\/a> by Guy P. Harrison. I also picked up The Real Face of Atheism<\/a> by Ravi Zacharias to see what kind of straw men he was going to set up for his attack.<\/p>\n

When I got to the checkout counter, the woman ringing me up paused briefly to look at 50 Reasons<\/em> and then paused longer to look at the cover when she was bagging my items. I smiled and said, "That one seems to fascinate you, huh?"<\/p>\n

She looked up and smiled and said (a bit tentatively), "Yeah. I’m kind of an agnostic. You know, I could go either way. The books in the religion section can be pretty interesting."<\/p>\n

I nodded in agreement and simply said, "I’m an atheist."<\/p>\n

The reaction was priceless. Her whole face lit up and she said, "Oh, our atheist section has some really great books! The God Delusion<\/em> and The Portable Atheist<\/em>… I haven’t read those yet, but I’ve read some of the others."<\/p>\n

I told her that The God Delusion<\/em> was, indeed, very good and that The Portable Atheist<\/em> was a huge collection of essays, also very good. I think she mentioned one other book in the atheist section, but I don’t recall which one. It was as if she’d found a kindred spirit. Her statement about agnosticism was very tentative and casual, something a disinterested person would have just said "Oh" to, but after I said I was an atheist, she very nearly gushed with enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

It was refreshing… and heartening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a 25% off coupon for Borders that expired today, so I headed there to pick up a couple books. I ended up getting (among other things) Losing My Religion by William Lobdell and 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God by Guy P. Harrison. I also picked up The Real Face … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “A Visit to Borders Books”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[46,84,130,131],"class_list":["post-839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-agnostic","tag-atheist","tag-books","tag-borders","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}