Armin Navabi

Okay, before I start, let me note that this review refers to the 2014 paperback edition of this book. If a revised edition exists now or in the future, it may address the following issues.
Have you ever been to a lecture or a gig or a play and your appreciation of the content is ruined by something that SHOULD be irrelevant? Perhaps the speaker keeps mispronouncing some common word or stepping into and out of a shaft of light, so that you’re utterly infuriated and distracted by those presentational aspects. Well, the print equivalent of that is my experience of this book.
Look, I’ve read atheist authors like Hitchens and Dawkins, and atheist-leaning philosophy writers like Julian Baggini, and I’m generally in agreement with all the arguments presented here. In fact, in retrospect I’m not sure why I bought the thing in the first place – perhaps I wanted, as the subtitle says, specific things to say in response to anyone making the case for God’s existence at me.
The prose is clear enough and easy to read, but I struggled not to get annoyed with this book because of those presentational aspects.
That is to say: it is truly, truly appallingly typeset, and pretty poorly proofread (if at all).
Examples of the distractingly bad typesetting:
1) With short lines set in a largish typeface, you should either go with left-aligned or, if you want to do fully justified, switch on hyphenation and let some words break at line ends. Nope: they’ve gone for un-hyphenated fully justified text, which results in some HUMONGOUS word spaces. Not just in body text, but in headings and chapter titles. Really, chapter titles should never be set fully justified. There’s at least one line where they’ve used a mixture of regular and fixed-width spaces, so the word spacing on that line is a mixture   of  really  wide and normal.
2) For a couple of paragraphs here and there, the right margin randomly changes for no readily apparent reason.
3) Although the quotation marks used are proper typographer’s “curly” ones, ALL apostrophes throughout are straight-up-and-down typewriter-style ones. I don’t even know how they managed that.
4) Inconsistent use/styling of dashes. Unspaced em dashes on page 28: “…individuals—human or otherwise—to assign causal…” Spaced en dashes on page 71: “…origin of the universe – or. indeed, the origin of reality in general – are…” A spaced hyphen on page 52: “10 Failed Attempts To Heal Children With Faith - Listverse.” An unspaced hyphen on page 106: “…miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable…” A triple hyphen (!) on page 31: “…Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs…”
5) A heading at the foot of a page, separated from the content that follows it (page 110).
6) Inconsistent reference formatting: page 103 lists four books; the titles of three are in title case, while the fourth is in sentence case.
Examples of poor proofreading:
1) Page 71: “does not give us free range to make something up” should be “free rein”.
2) Page 89: “We do not need any minds for them to exit” should be “to exist”.
3) Page 100: “in order for that happen” should be “for that to happen”.
4) Page 122: “After making up his mind and stealing his resolve” should be “steeling”.
5) Page 104: “Only an atheist until the plane start to fall” should be “starts”.
Yes, each of these is a little thing, and no book is perfect, but they piled up and up on top of each other until I was begging for a source file of the whole thing just so I could fix them all and make it possible to concentrate on the arguments themselves. Sorry Armin, but you need to be more professional.… (más)

This book offers concise and logical arguments against the existence of God. Many contradictions from Quran and the various version of Bible are exposed and their ill-effects of human beings are detailed.

The book, no doubt, is a quick and an easy read and helps anyone who likes to critically think about their inclination / perception about God.

More on this topic can be found in the following books:
The God Delusion
Why Evolution Is True
The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True - Richard Dawkins
The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design

In his next version, I'd like the author to include 'absurdisms' from Hinduism as well. This might appeal followers of another big religion.… (más)

The introduction of this book states: "This book is meant to provide to-the-point and easy-to-understand counterarguments to many of the popular arguments made for the existence of God." The structure is therefore responses to 20 arguments that a deity (prefereably the believer's) must exist. One of the most interesting things about the book is that Armin Navabi was a Muslim. Indeed, so devout and believing was he that he attempted suicide at 14, based on the teaching that a Muslim male who dies before the age of 15 automatically enters Paradise. It was as he was recovering from his serious injuries, that he began to rethink religion.

The book does not contain a lot of novel material, but it is a solid case, and the format is very convenient for one dealing with a particular assertion. The answers are very complete and well-thought out. I also liked Navabi's relatively mild and respectful way of putting forth his opinions. There is no question what he believes, but he doesn't get offensive, except of course for people who are offended by disagreement with their views. I prefer this to some of the more belligerent versions of the arguments against god, and it might be more effective in persuading someone who is on the fence about these issues.… (más)