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When Facts Are Not Enough: Reading Atheist Fiction at Phillips Brooks House

December 8, 2019 | 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm

Free

At Phillips Brooks House in Harvard Yard, Rick Heller, author of the nonfiction book Secular Meditation, will lead a discussion of novels related to atheism and will read from his work-in-progress, a novel about a secular mindfulness teacher who is charged with murder.

Is there such a thing as an “atheist novel?” Are atheists less inclined to read novels because they prefer facts to fiction? Many or most novels ignore religion but that wouldn’t make them atheist fiction. Which novels address issues and themes of particular interest to atheists? Works by Albert Camus and Salman Rushdie surely qualify. What books would you nominate?

Join us for a discussion and sharing of the arts as part of the humanist life.

FREE Parking will be available in the nearby Littauer Center parking lot, as well as free meter parking in Cambridge on Sundays. For Littauer, enter the Maxwell Dworkin Science Quadrangle from Oxford St (opposite the Natural History Museum). Wind your way through to the Littauer Lot at the end of the road. This lies between the Law School Library and the Science Center. Phillips Brooks House is just across from the Science Center in Harvard Yard.

Harvard Square MBTA (train and bus) station is just steps away from Phillips Brooks House, which is in the corner of Harvard Yard just across from the Science Center. Parking is also available on the street (free in Cambridge on Sundays).

Did You Know?

Certain books were “banned in Boston” at least as far back as 1651, when one William Pynchon wrote a book criticizing Puritanism.