Cards to make a big impression
There’s still time to order your seasonal cards and gifts from the NSS. Our selection — which can be viewed at our on-line shop — is particularly fine this year. We have gorgeous and classy cards at prices lower than you can buy them in the museums from which they originate.
Our Natural History Museum cards — with their arresting images of the natural world — are beautiful to look at and a pleasure to handle. They are printed to a very high standard on art card, and the images are so intense that they will stand out in any Christmas card display. Everyone who loves animals and birds, fruit and flowers will enjoy these cards and be delighted to receive them.
The Kew Gardens selection is equally delicious. The images come from the world’s leading scientific centre for the preservation of the botanical diversity of planet earth. Kew has a huge seed bank aimed at preserving threatened plant species. The Victoria and Albert Collection is a treat, too, for fans of art and design.
So there’s plenty to choose from. Please make your selection at www.secularism.org.uk and we’ll have them in the post to you by return. (You can also purchase cards by post. All packs of six exquisite cards cost £9.95 plus 80p p&p. You can choose from the Animal Collection; Kew Gardens Collection; Fruits and Flowers Collection; Birds Collection; Victoria & Albert Collection. Send your cheque to NSS, 25 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL.)
While you’re browsing in the shop take a look at our other gifts – you’re bound to find that special something for the hard-to-please secularist in your life (and you might just want to treat yourself). We’re constantly adding to our book titles, so keep coming back to check out what’s new. (Don’t forget to get your copy of Robert Stovold’s excellent new booklet Did Christians Steal Christmas? for £2.99 plus 50p p&p). There is also The Atheist Bible – a fabulous collection of quotes from non-believers ancient and modern. It would make the perfect stocking filler. (£8.99 plus £1.50 p&p)
Another popular title is our book for parents who want to raise their children as open-minded individuals who welcome change and original thinking. Parenting Without Belief has been a best-seller from our shop, obviously a title that is long overdue. £10.99 plus £2 p&p.
Two new titles this week: From NSS Honorary Associate and best-selling author of God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens, a provocative and entertaining guided tour of atheist and agnostic thought through the ages – with never-before-published pieces by Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
In The Portable Atheist Christopher Hitchens continues to make the case for a splendidly godless universe in this first-ever gathering of the influential voices — past and present — that have shaped his side of the current (and raging) God/no-god debate. With Hitchens as your erudite and witty guide, you’ll be led through a wealth of philosophy, literature, and scientific inquiry, including generous portions of the words of Lucretius, Benedict de Spinoza, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Mark Twain, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, H. L. Mencken, Albert Einstein, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and many others well-known and lesser known. And they're all set in context and commented upon as only Christopher Hitchens — “political and literary journalist extraordinaire” — can. £10.99 plus £2 p&p.
How to be a Good Atheist by Nick Harding. Fed up of religion telling you it has all the answers when it doesn't? Tired of hearing about divine mysteries when there aren't any? Irritated by the pious evangelists telling you you're going to hell when you think the idea laughable? Exhausted by creationists...for simply being creationists? Want to know more about the so-called atheist conspiracy? Then this book is for you. For millennia priests and holy men have told countless conflicting tales about humanity's genesis and fate. Is it all nonsense? You bet it is. For round about the same amount of time they have also been saying that anyone devoid of faith is evil, immoral and responsible for all of society's ills. How wrong they are.
This book contains all you need to know about what to pack for your journey on the enlightening road to atheism including a brief history of free thought — it goes back further than you think — all the way to an introductory who's who in purgatory for knowing there isn't a god. The book sets out five types of atheism. It really teases out the difference between an atheist and an agnostic – a term invented by T.H.Huxley, famous for his defence of Darwin and how a deist differs from a theist. Discover the oxymoronic fact that Christians were originally called atheists. Read who Lucretius was and what his fellow materialists were about. And revel in the fact that atheists have nothing to defend and are happy that way. £10 plus £1.50 p&p.
7 December 2007