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Our selection of books and associated reviews. Each cover is an affiliate link to Amazon for purchase.
A Drop of Reason: Essays from the Secular Web
Keith Augustine | David Misialowski | Richard Carrier | Edouard Tahmizian | John MacDonald | B. Steven Matthies | Edward Babinski | Raymond D. Bradley | Brian Vroman | Andrew Melnyk
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March 13, 2025
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Kiosk Book, Publications
In 1995, the Secular Web made its debut online with the goal of promoting a naturalist view of reality, without recourse to God or gods or any supernatural realm. Now, thirty years on, the site is still going strong, and during that period it has assembled an impressive collection of scholarly essays from contributors. Now, to commemorate the site's 30th anniversary, we have assembled a number of those essays in book form: A Drop of Reason. Please enjoy this stellar collection of critical thinking.
Where did Everything Come From? A Short Philosophy Novel for Kids (Starring Billy and Bee, Who are Blue and Green)
Join young Billy and Beatrice, squabbling siblings, as they visit imaginary neighborhoods in different time periods, and even blast off into outer space! Engaging with oddball characters like Mr. Whom (a balloon), Mr. Sour Hour (a vulture) and Mr. Darwinkle (a bearded moose), they come to grips with Big Questions, like the nature of God, time, evolution, death, and the biggest question of all: where did everything come from?
Heterodox Hymns: Three Poets, One Purpose
The following works are from three writers who are members of the Internet Infidels Discussion Board (IIDB), which, in affiliation with the Secular Web, promotes a naturalistic world view, free of God or gods and the supernatural. The works in the main are in keeping with the basic idea of metaphysical or methodological naturalism, and the idea that ultimately we are responsible for our own lives, and not beholden to some eye in the sky always watching and judging us.
Killing History: Jesus in the No-Spin Zone
Description Killing Jesus, the bestselling blockbuster by Bill O’Reilly, claims to be a purely historical account of the events in the life of Jesus leading up to his crucifixion. New Testament scholar Robert M. Price (a member of the Jesus Seminar) shows how unfounded this claim is in this critical review of O’Reilly’s work. In […]
God’s Gravediggers: Why No Deity Exists
Description Raymond Bradley is probably the most important atheist you’ve never heard of. 16 years before the release of Richard Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene, Professor Bradley was completing his Ph.D. regarding the theological problem of free will, setting off a long, esteemed and distinguished career. As a veteran professor of philosophy back in 1994–long before […]
The Bad Jesus: The Ethics of New Testament Ethics
Description Did Jesus ever do anything wrong? Judging by the vast majority of books on New Testament ethics, the answer is a resounding “No.” But since the historical Jesus was a human being, must he not have had flaws, like everyone else? According to Avalos, it shows that New Testament ethics is still primarily an […]
The Bible Against Itself: Why the Bible Seems to Contradict Itself
Description All books are written for or against some point of view, and the books of the Bible are no different. Bible book authors were often motivated to write because they wanted to challenge or correct those who had written before them. As Helms explains, The Bible is a war zone, and its authors are […]
What If I’m an Atheist?: A Teen’s Guide to Exploring a Life Without Religion
Description Can you have guidance without God? This thoughtful, one-of-a-kind guide offers answers to all of your questions about atheism and nonbelief. Have you ever wondered what religion and belief mean for your life? Maybe you believe in nothing at all. Does that mean you’re an atheist? What does atheism even mean? Regardless of the […]
God or Godless? One Atheist. One Christian. Twenty Controversial Questions
Description Perhaps the most persistent question in human history is whether or not there is a God. Intelligent people on both sides of the issue have argued, sometimes with deep rancor and bitterness, for generations. The issue can’t be decided by another apologetics book, but the conversation can continue and help each side understand the […]
50 Simple Questions for Every Christian
Description Written in a respectful and conversational style, this unique book is designed to promote constructive dialogue and foster mutual understanding between Christians and non-Christians. The author, a skeptic and journalist, asks basic questions about Christian belief. What is the born-again experience? Why would God want to sacrifice his only son for the world? Do […]
Doubting Jesus’ Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box? (2nd Edition)
In this outline of what may have given rise to the beliefs and traditions in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 if Jesus did not rise from the dead, Kris D. Komarnitsky explains why using these verses to support the historical reliability of the Gospels is problematic.
Sword of Islam: Muslim Extremists from the Arab Conquests to the Attack on America
Undoubtedly timely and full of fascinating detail, Sword of Islam is a thorough, well-researched, and revealing account of global Islamic terrorism. A military historian, John F. Murphy Jr. traces the intricate interconnections among various terrorist cells, including Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda and its relationship with the Taliban of Afghanistan, the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, Islamic […]
The Historical Jesus Quest: Landmarks in the Search for the Jesus of History
The possibility of finding reliable information about the life of the historical Jesus has fascinated the imagination of generations of scholars from as early as the seventeenth century. Opinion on the issue has moved in waves, coming and going along with moods of pessimism and optimism. Until now, no one has brought together a comparison of the points of view of the most influential writers about the historical Jesus.
The Historical Jesus Quest brings together substantial extracts from the seminal works in Jesus studies over the last two centuries. The extracts are accompanied by brief introductions to each writer, helpful summaries of the central arguments of the works from which the extracts are taken, and incisive assessments of their continuing relevance to current debates. In one resource, this compendium provides the foundation upon which modern research is based and allows these great scholars—Spinoza, Troeltsch, D. F. Strauss, Wrede, Schweitzer, Kahler, Bultmann, Kasemann, and others—to speak in their own words. It is essential reading for all serious students of the Gospels and of the historical Jesus.
The Historical Jesus Quest brings together substantial extracts from the seminal works in Jesus studies over the last two centuries. The extracts are accompanied by brief introductions to each writer, helpful summaries of the central arguments of the works from which the extracts are taken, and incisive assessments of their continuing relevance to current debates. In one resource, this compendium provides the foundation upon which modern research is based and allows these great scholars—Spinoza, Troeltsch, D. F. Strauss, Wrede, Schweitzer, Kahler, Bultmann, Kasemann, and others—to speak in their own words. It is essential reading for all serious students of the Gospels and of the historical Jesus.
Vision of War
Originally published: 1915 Genre: Poetry Subject: World War, 1914-1918 — Poetry
Physics and Psychics : The Search for a World Beyond the Senses
Editorial Reviews From Book News, Inc. , June 1, 1990 Stenger (physics, U. of Hawaii) critically examines theories of a transcendentreality in terms of what is currently known about matter at its most fundamentallevel. He offers a convincing rebuttal to those who attempt to link physicsto mystical truths.Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or
Porphyry’s Against the Christians
Throughout its first three centuries, the growing Christian religion was subjected not only to official persecution but to the attacks of pagan intellectuals, who looked upon the new sect as a band of fanatics bent on worldwide domination even as they professed to despise the things of this world. Prominent among these pagan critics was […]
Reason and Existenz
Written during the rise of German National Socialism, Jaspers’ Reason and Existenz attempts to systematize existentialist philososphy. Unlike Sarte’s notion that the future holds infinite choice, Jaspers argues (in agreement with his colleague Heidegger) that the future is a mere rehash of the past where every action has already been anticipated. Thus, for Jaspers only […]
Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and John in Controversy
Description Resurrection Reconsidered is an eye-opening exposition of the various views of resurrection among early Christians that centers on the protracted debate within early Christian circles concerning a foundational aspect of the Gospel of Thomas and its related literature: the concept of the body and resurrection. It traces the background of this idea in the […]
Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy
If you buy only one book on evolution, buy this book. This (newly revised) book covers everything you could ever possibly want to know about evolution and how to answer creationist objections to it.
Skeptical Philosophy for Everyone
This lucid, informal, and very accessible history of Western thought takes the unique approach of interpreting skepticism, i.e., doubts about knowledge claims and the criteria for making such claims is an important stimulus for the development of philosophy. The authors argue that practically every great thinker from the time of the Greeks to the present […]
State of the Art
A collection of short fiction by the author of “The Wasp Factory” and “Against a Dark Background”.The title story is a novella continuing the “Culture” sequence but set on Earth in 1977. The otherstories range from science fiction to horror, and dark-coated fantasy to morality tale.
Ten Philosophical Mistakes
Adler’s general argument is this: the important modern philosophers, beginning with Descartes, made certain errors which have had disastrous results for contemporary notions of the objects of consciousness, the nature of the human mind, the nature of language, of knowledge, of moral principles, of free will, and even the nature of happiness. Succeeding philosophers, especially […]
The Atheist’s Creed
Description In The Atheist’s Creed Dr. Michael Palmer presents the most comprehensive anthology of the major philosophical arguments for atheism. While the so-called ‘new atheism’ of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and others, has attracted considerable publicity, it is the philosophical arguments that have been presented down through the ages that provide the principal […]
The Book Your Church Doesn’t Want You to Read
Consider this book as a kind of consumer protection guide to religion, a big step forward toward religious literacy. Readers will explore myths, origins, fundamentalism, television ministries, the identical stories of Stellar/Pagan/Christian beliefs, unfounded doctrines, child abuse, the Year 200, and women’s rights. It’s entertaining and readable, with a sense of humor reflecting the absurdities […]
The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails
Description In this anthology of recent criticisms aimed at the reasonableness of Christian belief, former evangelical minister and apologist John W. Loftus, author of the critically acclaimed Why I Became an Atheist, has assembled fifteen outstanding articles by leading skeptics, expanding on themes introduced in his first book. Central is a defense of Loftus’ “outsider’s […]
The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft : Dreams of Terror and Death
This volume collects, for the first time, the entire Dream Cycle created by H. P. Lovecraft, the master of twentieth-century horror, including The Doom that Came to Sarnath, The Statement of Randolph Carter, The Nameless City, The Cats of Ulthar, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadith, and twenty more tales of surreal terror. “[Lovecraft’s] dream […]
The Eternal Footman
The Eternal Footman completes Morrow’s darkly comic trilogy about God’s untimely demise. With God’s skull in orbit, competing with the moon, a plague of “death awareness” spreads across the Western hemisphere. As the United States sinks into apocalypse, two people fight to preserve life and sanity. One is Nora Burkhart, a schoolteacher who will stop […]
The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe
One of the great classics of modern cosmology.
The Happy Heretic
When Judith Hayes started writing her monthly Internet column, The Happy Heretic, in 1996, she never imagined how great the response would be. Within the first year, she received e-mail messages from readers in forty countries, many expressing in some way her favorite reader reaction: “You know I never really thought about that before!” It’s […]
The Infernova
Description A young man’s struggle to find his path in a world of human illusion and error is the theme of The Infernova. A novel in verse, this secular parody of Dante’s classic takes the reader through a new Hell—an abyss devised not to punish those damned by Christian doctrine, but rather those greater agents […]
