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Our selection of books and associated reviews. Each cover is an affiliate link to Amazon for purchase.
Johannes Brahms: A Biography
It is sometimes said that only religion has inspired truly great, moving music, especially symphonies. Of course, this is not true (the works of conductors from Gustav Holst to Ennio Morricone prove that religious themes or inspiration need not lie behind some of the greatest music ever written). But the myth is even more strongly […]
Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God
A distinctive voice somewhere between Mark Twain and Michel Montaigne is how Psychology Today described A.C. Grayling. In Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God, readers have the pleasure of hearing this distinctive voice address some of the most serious topics in philosophy–and in our daily lives–including reflections on guns, anger, conflict, war; […]
Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age
Magnanimity is in short supply, writes A. C. Grayling is this wonderfully incisive book, “but it is the main ingredient in everything that makes the world a better place” And indeed Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age is itself a generous, insightful, wide-ranging, magnanimous inquiry into the philosophical and ethical questions that […]
Mystery of Mysteries : Is Evolution a Social Construction
With the recent Sokal hoax-the publication of a prominent physicist’s pseudo-article in a leading journal of cultural studies-the status of science moved sharply from debate to dispute. Is science objective, a disinterested reflection of reality, as Karl Popper and his followers believed? Or is it subjective, a social construction, as Thomas Kuhn and his students […]
Notes from the Underground
“I am a sick man, full of bile and spite. I think there is something wrong with my liver,” begins Dostoevsky’s haunting novella narrated in the first-person by a man who is at odds with himself. This classic work shocked and inspired Nietzsche who went on to develop his own existential philosophy. At less than […]
Out of God’s Closet
Description Faithful Catholic priest-become-atheist psychologist shows how he did—and how you, too—can unlearn childhood prejudices and superstitions, and really enjoy the modified Golden Rule. This book could have been titled The Book of Tolerance. The psychologist author recognizes that every child learns a lot of traditions and beliefs when too young to evaluate them. Such […]
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 […]
The Life of David Hume
Mossner’s Life of David Hume remains the standard biography of this great thinker and writer. First published in 1954, and updated in 1980, it is now reissued in paperback, in response to increased interest in Hume.
The Mighty and the Almighty : Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs
Does America, as George W. Bush has proclaimed, have a special mission, derived from God, to bring liberty and democracy to the world? How much influence does the Christian right have over U.S. foreign policy? And how should America deal with violent Islamist extremists? In The Mighty and the Almighty, Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary […]
The Mythmaker’s Magic: Behind the Illusion of ‘Creation Science’
Philosopher Delos McKown ridicules the claim that creationism is as plausible as the theory of evolution. He points out the inconsistencies and fallacies of creationism, and exposes the danger creationism poses to science education.
The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing
Description The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is a rich and vibrant anthology that captures the poetry and excitement of scientific thought and discovery. Boasting almost one hundred articles and book excerpts, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is a breathtaking celebration of the finest writing by scientists—the best such collection in print—packed […]
The Psychological Origins of the Resurrection Myth
Kent offers a naturalistic explanation for the origin of the Christian faith: namely, that the first experiences of Jesus were bereavement hallucinations. Includes a discussion of the Habermas-Flew Debate on the Resurrection.
The Science of Good and Evil : Why People Cheat, Share, Gossip, and Follow the Golden Rule
In his third and final investigation into the science of belief, bestselling author Michael Shermer tackles the evolution of morality and ethics. A century and a half after Darwin first proposed an ‘evolutionary ethics,’ science has begun to tackle the roots of morality. Just as evolutionary biologists study why we are hungry (to motivate us […]
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory
The world’s most revered and eloquent interpreter of evolutionary ideas offers here a work of explanatory force unprecedented in our time–a landmark publication, both for its historical sweep and for its scientific vision. With characteristic attention to detail, Stephen Jay Gould first describes the content and discusses the history and origins of the three core […]
The View from Nowhere
Human beings have the unique ability to view the world in a detached way: We can think about the world in terms that transcend our own experience or interest, and consider the world from a vantage point that is, in Nagel’s words, “nowhere in particular”. At the same time, each of us is a particular […]
Toward a Genuine Spirituality: A Human Strategy
This book attempts to guide people of all religious and nonreligious persuasions toward a genuine humanistic spirituality. The author writes, “Perhaps this is the soft underbelly of a book exposed to the modern world: to say that one can be happier and more valuable without a ‘beyond’ … that one can not only learn to […]
