The combination of clearly-argued reason and passion against what the author sees as at best the folly and at worst the wickedness of the principal monotheistic systems makes this a compelling read. It didn't "convert" me from agnosticism to atheism, but I cannot fault the justice and severity of Onfray's arguments. I only wish that my French were good enough for me not to have to rely on a translation. ( )

The book explores atheism and the "big three" religions from a philosophical perspective. The case for atheism is mostly built up by examining the negative aspects of religion. The author makes a compelling case against the irrationality of religion, and harm that has been caused in the name of God. I enjoyed the writing style, especially Onfray's ability to distill complexities into clear and succinct points. However some of the vocabulary and concepts referenced would not make it the most accessible book to a reader generally unfamiliar with philosophy. I also think that Onfray could have provided more detail on post-christian secularism and atheism itself, and not just focus on how undesirable religion is. ( )

This is a good medium-depth overview for the intelligent person whose philosophical background is spotty (for example, me). It doesn't go into great detail but does go beyond the historical.
As an unbeliever myself, I find much of his argument easy to grasp, though on several occasions I disagreed completely; mostly, however, they weren't points that were crucial to his thesis. For example, he where he states "The existence of hell, paradise, and purgatory, with their associated geography and their own logic? The existence of a limbo in which the souls of infants dead before baptism stagnate?No one still subscribes to such twaddle, even (and especially) those many Catholics who fervently attend Sunday Mass."
I can't speak for Catholics, but I certainly know some Christians who very much believe in such things. But, again, the point isn't crucial.
There are a few places where my disagreement is more pertinent. Onfray writes "...by decreeing the equality of all religions and of those who reject them, as today's regnant brand of secularism recommends, we condone relativism: equality of magical thinking and rational thought, of fable, myth and reasoned argument... we declare Moses the equal of Descartes, Jesus of Kant, and Muhammad of Nietzsche." This is not my experience or my understanding of secularism, but perhaps I'm out of touch with the regnant brand of secularism. ("regnant" = currently having the greatest influence; dominant. I had to look it up.) I would say that a secularist wouldn't argue for the equality of these forms of belief - ie, irrational religion and rational thought are the same - but would instead argue for the equality of the persons who believe or do not believe. Therefore I could argue for the superiority of using logical thought processes, but not for the superiority of the persons who use them.
I think the translation may be slightly less exact than in could be, or perhaps it's exact to the point of losing the spirit of the words. A few times I felt that the sense of a phrase got lost in the grammar.
Even if the book weren't itself worth reading (which it is) it is certainly worth it for the citations and descriptive bibliography. My copy is full of notes for books to look up and/or add to my Powell's wishlist. He doesn't come close to covering most aspects in depth, but he does point you in the right direction. ( )

This is maybe the first time I really loathe the translated title of a book but have to admit it better fits its content. The original title Traité d'athéologie : Physique de la métaphysique promises too much. While the book’s 220 pages plus 25 pages bibliography do fit the description of a “manifest” rather well, a «physique de la métaphysique» suggests more breadth and depth than the text actually offers. Don’t get me wrong: I’d warmly recommend reading this book; it has a particular perspective that adds to those found in texts by the “Four Horsemen” Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens, and its rhetoric is abrasive in interesting ways, some “style over substance” sections notwithstanding. (The English translation, though, seems to be less elegant at times than the French original, at least according to some samples I checked.)

Onfray's perspective differs mainly on three connected points: (1) he is much more aggressive against the respective cultures engendered by religions (compare this against, e. g., Dawkins’s insistent self-description as a “cultural Christian”); (2) he severely criticizes that those thinkers from the Enlightenment and from later periods our culture cherishes the most are exactly those who have at least espoused deism and still were, on the whole, deeply religious—while we have, at the same time, completely neglected and forgotten those thinkers who were outspoken atheists (in contrast, most of the deists thinkers are indeed espoused and anthologized for a-theistic ends by the “Four Horsemen”); (3) his atheism, or a-theologism, is much broader and explicitly directed against certain manifestations of contemporary ethics that are either not recognized as derived from Judeo-Christian thinking, and/or even actively disguised as “secular” ethics (besides more obvious examples, non-concepts such as “free will” also figure large).

What makes Onfray’s text rather a “manifest” instead of a «physique de la métaphysique», and that’s what my gripe comes down to, is that it does well to sketch these points, but fails to elaborate on them. If more philosophical and historical scope and in-depth analysis had been granted to the introduction of these—not only atheist but also explicitly non-deist—philosophers, and to the development of truly secular ethical models built on their thoughts, Onfray’s “treaty” might have, with a much higher page count, sold less, but achieved more.

Informed and fun, with the occasional lapse into that irritating (peculiarly French?) po-mo lit-crit mumbo-jumbo, but definitely worth reading.

Now I want to learn more about Christovao Ferreira and Jean Meslier. ( )