Before anyone comes for me, I grew up southern baptist – went to a private christian school & was homeschooled for a few years. The extent of my “science” education when it came to evolution & the origin of the universe was “if we came from monkeys why do monkeys still exist?” and “look at this galaxy that’s shaped like a cross, isn’t god amazing!!” I’m an atheist now and would like to have some sort of understanding of how our world came to be, but trying to figure it out as an adult with no real foundation has been incredibly difficult, and none of it’s making sense. I also know I’m asking a lot as all 3 of those subjects are pretty extensive, so if you know any good videos or books I’d love some recommendations!
In: Biology
Seek out popular science books written for the layperson by credible authors.
Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene really helped my understanding of evolution. It is not overtly atheistic, which is something that characterises his later work, it is just a book that trys to explain to the layperson how the study of evolution has progressed since Darwin. It was written in the 70s, so it is a little dated, but it really helps to introduce the reader to some important ways of thinking about the processes in play.
Stephen Hawkins’ A Brief History of Time is similarly a book to help the layperson understand modern physics. It won’t tell you why the big bang happened, but it will tell you why we can’t answer that question satisfactorily and, as a result, answers to that specific question seem less important.
Abiogenesis is a topic hinted at in both The Selfish Gene and A Brief History of Time, although neither try to tackle it head on. But reading those two books will help you to understand the big processes at play that have shaped life ever since it appeared. The opinion I was left with was that life is inevitable given enough time and the right conditions and I really hope that this will be demonstrated in my lifetime by a discovery of evidence of life elsewhere.
Above all, these books made me appreciate the scientific method. That has some interesting implications for a deterministic universe and free will. I spent some time reading about consciousness and the mind/body problem and Susan Blackmore has written a few books on this topic which I would recommend, such as The Meme Machine. (The Meme Machine interestingly takes up an idea postulated at the end of The Selfish Gene about cultural evolution. Interestingly the term “meme”, which describes a largely online phenomenon, has a much broader and more interesting context and can trace its roots to the conclusion in The Selfish Gene)
The Gaia Hypothesis by James Lovelock is another book I’d recommend which is of a similar vein. Again it is a bit dated now but has been of massive influence in our current way of looking at topics like climate change.
For something more recent I would recommend Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, which is a fascinating anthropological view of our species.
All these books I’m recommending are pretty well known and they may come with preconceptions that they are intimidating and only for smart people. They are very much for the layperson though and although some of them are dated now, they introduce topics which are still very resonant now.
I’m a bit envious of your journey of discovery OP. Choose your sources wisely and you will be fascinated by what you find out.
Latest Answers