Can someone list all the books they thought have helped the advancement of our society one way or the other… like the bible, quran, origin of species, etc

basically one that have impacted our society… not twilight, harry potter or some bull**** like that

AIDS woman's genitals Posted:

Has the Bible or the Koran or any other religious book really helped mankind in any way?

Taught mankind modern morals, represents the begininngs of the common era, but like i said one way or the other. (you have heard of them, as so it has impacted you)

/intellectual checkmate

AIDS woman's genitals Posted:

Taught mankind the first morals. We would have worked them out anyway.(for all the good it’s done society)

Represents the begininngs of the common era.And again,we would have conceived a way to measure time.

You have heard of them, as so it has impacted you.I may have heard of them,but I certainly have not read them so the impact of there existence on me is much lesser than someone who has read them.

we can argue this all night, but im deist and dont give a ****, but i do acknowledge their impact on society and have read them to not be ignorant of the other persons point of view

sorry i forgot i made a commitment to deism a while ago

A Critique Of Pure Reason

Here are some of my favorites

1. Facebook

2. Splatterpunks 2

3. The Hollow Earth

4. Babbit

5. Silas Marner

6. Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul

7. Kon Tiki

man-man Posted:

You’ve heard of Twilight and Harry Potter, therefore they’ve “impacted” on you, but they don’t fall under the clbum of book you’re looking for.

As for actual important books…

As scientific works go, The Origin of Species, Newton’s Principia Mathematica, anything written by Einstein. The problem with trying to list them being that a lot of important science was published in some variety of journal rather than a book that would still be around…

I’ll add support to The Republic, although you appear to have crossed it out. Also Descartes’ Meditations. Aristotle’s ideas were taken as read for thousands of years, not sure if there’s a specific book you can read there though.

look man i read scientific books, political books, religious books, herioc books, myths and such… im NOT saying that the bible invented morals, NO that does predates the bible, im saying that the bible has instilled some sort of ethics on us. pick a book that many people read, some seriously take it word for word, that was around a long time, and yet people continue to read it, its not harry potter. harry potter did not make people go to war, make organizations dedicated to it, nor influenced millions of people one way or the other

KingKloskowski Posted:

look man i read scientific books, political books, religious books, herioc books, myths and such… im NOT saying that the bible invented morals, NO that does predates the bible, im saying that the bible has instilled some sort of ethics on us. pick a book that many people read, some seriously take it word for word, that was around a long time, and yet people continue to read it, its not harry potter. harry potter did not make people go to war, make organizations dedicated to it, nor influenced millions of people one way or the other

Sorry, I’m derailing your book thread, but it’s kind of my subject… and you did say “Taught mankind the first morals”. Sounds a lot like a claim that the Bible invented morality.

For books starting wars… I would keep half an eye on Twilight in that respect – the fanbase for it seems to have a touch of the crazy about them. Who knows how long we have before they declare holy war on the rest of us in the name of their perfect (and sparkly) vampire hero.

hey guys, let’s turn a discussion about books into another religious bashing thread, we never have enough of those.

ChilePepino Posted:

hey guys, let’s turn a discussion about books into another religious bashing thread, we never have enough of those.

This. The religion bashing gets tiring after a bit because everyone’s heard it all before.

It seems to me like the objections to religion are when religion is turned into a tool of governance. I would argue that the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, The Upanishads and basically every other “official” holy book of a major religion did influence the world and mostly for the better. No, they certainly weren’t the first written codes of morality, but they are some of the earliest that are still in use today. Granted, people do some terrible things in the name of God or religion, but not any worse than the things people do in the name of other abstract concepts like the state, freedom, or other ideologies. At the same time many wholly secular books have caused just as much suffering and death over the past 100 years as any religious tome.

For example, we could go back and forth and argue about Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) all day. Some people say it was one of the most important environmental books ever because it lead to the banning of DDT, which weakens or thins the shells of birds. At the same time, other argue that the banning of DDT has lead to hundreds of thousands of malaria deaths in the third world because DDT is the cheapest, most effective mosquito killer ever made.

Another book that I didn’t notice on either list was Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History and the Last Man” (1992) which was essentially the beginning of the modern neoconservative movement and one of the biggest intellectual influences on America’s recent military adventurism. His thesis, summed up in a sentence, was “liberal parliamentary democracies are the best form of government and they will become more prevalent over time.” Some people misinterpreted this as “we need to do everything we can to increase the rate at which democracy spreads.” Again, there can be plenty of criticism of this book, but I don’t think it can be argued that it wasn’t influential and had a major affect upon the world.

Sorry if I was a little Log in to see images!

Wilson, Robert Anton & Shea, Robert. Illuminatus!. 1975

I like all of Wilson’s books, but that was the first one I read. Mindblowing and with a certain influence on (pop) culture.