Fire and Knowledge

Part of The Reading Interviews series.

Could you tell us a little about yourself?

By day, I’m a high school math teacher completing my first full year on the job.

By night, I’m a blogger at Friendly Atheist, chair of the Board of Directors of the Secular Student Alliance, author of I Sold My Soul on eBay, soon-to-be calendar model (!), and someone who will crush you in Scrabble.

What are your favorite books? What do you like about them and how have they influenced you?

I don’t read many classics, but I love The Count of Monte Cristo. As for current books, I tend to read popular math and science books. I’m currently in the middle of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Death By Black Hole. There’s a stack of “atheist literature” I can’t wait to get to. My Amazon wishlist includes more of those kind of books (and some teaching supplies). :)

I love when the books teach me a little bit more about the subjects I am so passionate about. They make me want to work harder to educate people so they know about this material. Every now and then, a book will come along and completely revamp everything I knew about a topic. Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale did that in terms of evolution, and it got me reading his other books (The God Delusion is good, but it’s not at the top of my Dawkins list).

Who are your favorite writers?

A few need no explanation: J.K. Rowling, Richard Dawkins, Malcolm Gladwell.

I love any writer who can take a subject that’s both interesting and complicated (Astronomy, Biology, Number Theory, etc.) and write about it in a way that makes sense to me so that I get a rudimentary understanding of it. Brian Greene is one example. Jared Diamond, another. Carl Sagan was incredible.

What is the best non-fiction and fiction book you have read recently?

Non-fiction: The Big Bang by Simon Singh (loved it!)
Fiction: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Why do you think reading is important? What has led you to make it a priority in your life?

There’s no better way to get a thorough understanding of complicated subjects. With the right tone, helpful visuals, and a conversational explanation, I’m willing to sit through just about any subject.

Personally, I became an atheist on my own, but it was through reading essays and stories by other atheists online that my newfound beliefs were validated and strengthened. (If only the New Atheist books were out back then!)

I took several Biology classes in high school and college, but it was through reading Richard Dawkins’ books that I gained a fuller understanding of evolution.

And I have yet to form an interest in any girl who isn’t well read. :)

Are there any other books you would like to recommend?

Besides the ones I’ve already mentioned (all of which you should read), All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren is fantastic. So is Jon Stewart’s America (the Book). And (cough) I Sold My Soul on eBay.

How many books do you normally read at a time?

I’d like to say one… but if it doesn’t capture my interest completely, it’ll get to two. I can’t do more than that at once!

Do you mark and take notes while you read? If so, how?

Sometimes. I feel like I’m doing something wrong if I write in a book, but a friend of mine persuaded me to do it. My own notes just consist of underlines and bracketing (for passages I like) or smiley faces. :) If I’m reading a book by a Christian apologist, I tend to write little notes to myself as to why they’re wrong.

When you finish a book, how do you decide what to read next?

If it’s a writer I really like, I’ll pick up more books by the author. If that’s not an option, I try to switch it up completely. If I just read a fiction book, I need to follow it up with something math or science-y.

Do you have any advice about reading that others might find helpful?

Do it. A lot. Read everything. Blogs, magazines, cereal boxes, etc. Especially blogs; they’re much more current and relevant than many books and most allow for a dialogue to take place about the topic.

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, 188 pages.

The other night I started The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. I read for a few pages and struggled to pay attention. My thoughts wandered. There was nothing there to hook me. It was boring. I put it down.

The next day I started The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. I was hooked by the second page. I stayed up late to finish it.

The book is about Sam Spade, a detective agent in San Francisco. Spade is hired by multiple people to find a statue falcon and results in murder, double-crossing, and betrayal. You know, all that good stuff. It is said to be one of the best detective mysteries written, but I don’t read enough of them to know. I do know it was very good.

It’s not a profound book. It doesn’t deal with many “great ideas.” It’s not going to change your life, but it will be a great experience.

I am angry about policies that consistently favor the wealthy and powerful over average Americans, and insist that government has an important role in opening up opportunity to all. I believe in evolution, scientific inquiry, and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or not, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody’s religious beliefs—including my own—on nonbelievers.

Furthermore, I am a prisoner of my own biography: I can’t help but view the American experience through the lens of a black man of mixed heritage, forever mindful of how generations of people who looked like me were subjugated and stigmatized, and the subtle and not so subtle ways that race and class continue to shape our lives.

I also think that my party can be smug, detached, and dogmatic at times. I believe in free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don’t work as advertised. I wish the country had fewer lawyers and more engineers.

I think America has often been a force for good than for ill in the world. I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere the courage and competence of our military. I reject a politics that is based solely on racial identity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or victimhood generally. I think much of what ails the inner city involves a breakdown in culture that will not be cured by money alone, and that our values and spiritual life matter at least as much as our GDP.

—Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope (2006), p. 10-11

I’ve often thought the nightly news will die a slow death, so of course this caught my eye:

Network newscasts are a holding effort. They are a rearguard action. They are prisoners of demography and cultural shifts that are as irreversible as the physical laws of the universe. Namely: fewer Americans have the time or inclination to watch a half-hour TV newscast at 6:30 in the evening; those who do will ultimately die; those who do not presently are not—unlike the generations before them—developing the habit as they get older. (James Poniewozik, “Life After Katie“)

When you can get more information in 5 minutes scanning CNN.com, why sit in front of a TV for 30 minutes at a specific time? Why scan the channels for weather when you can have all the weather you want in 10 seconds on your cell phone or computer? It’s a dying model.

This is a great commercial:

A Mormon sect has been found with a compound of underage girls they were marrying off. Quite disgusting:

A raid was finally triggered April 3, after a family violence shelter received a hushed phone call from a terrified 16-year-old girl saying her 50-year-old husband had beaten and raped her.

State troopers put into action the plan they had on the shelf to enter the compound, and 416 children, most of them girls, were swept into state custody on suspicions that they were being sexually and physically abused.

Doran said it was not until after the raid began that he learned that the sect was, in fact, marrying off underage girls at the compound and had a bed in its soaring limestone temple where the girls were required to immediately consummate their marriages. Also, investigators said a number of teenage girls there are pregnant.

If a crime doesn’t hurt anyone, should it really be a crime?

It is time we realized crimes without victims are like debts without creditors.

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (W. W. Norton, 2004), p. 171.

When looking at my Wells Fargo bank account online, I noticed the link “Send Us Suspicious Email.” I thought that was an odd request, but I went ahead and did it since they asked.