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Our selection of books and associated reviews. Each cover is an affiliate link to Amazon for purchase.
In Freedom We Trust
Description Opponents attack the president of the United States for not being a real Christian. Bitter arguments erupt over whether the United States is or should be a Christian nation. Sound familiar? These contentious issues are not just recent developments but were also the topics of fierce debate in the late eighteenth century. President Thomas […]
Is It God’s Word?
Simply the best book available on biblical discrepancies, inconsistencies, contradictions, anachronisms, and myth.
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; […]
Merely Mortal? : Can You Survive Your Own Death?
“Whether we are to live in a future state . . . is the most important question which can possibly be asked. . . . Yet strange perplexities have been raised about the meaning of that identity or sameness of person, which is implied in the notion of our being now and hereafter. . . […]
Natural Atheism
From the Introduction “I was born an Atheist. All humans are born Atheists. No baby born into the world arrives with specific religious beliefs or knowledge. Such beliefs and knowledge must be acquired, which means that they must first exist before and apart from the new life and that they must be presented to and […]
Nothing: Something to Believe In
Book Description “It’s like this–all my friends are something. Vanessa is a Unitarian, Michelle is Catholic, Lucy is Presbyterian … so I just want to know–what am I?” “We’re nothing.” My father was looking right at me; he had a pleasant, friendly kind of an expression. “Nothing,” he said again. “That’s right,” said my mother. […]
Outside, Looking In
The three Geminni brothers were of superior intellect, yet the trio followed downward spirals until only Gene, the oldest at age thirty with a wife and two daughters, was able to pull back on the wheel and end the nose dive for himself. His siblings never do find their way, and they end up broken […]
Prayers in the Precincts : The Christian Right in the 1998 Elections
In the wake of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, the Christian Right expected major victories in the 1998 elections. Instead, many of its allies lost close contests, and the movement was seen as a liability in some high-profile campaigns. In the only in-depth study of the Christian Right’s role in these races, leading scholars analyze the role […]
Reason for the Hope Within
Anthology of modern Christian apologetics.
Reviews of Creationist Books
A collection of book reviews of creationist books. A very handy reference!
Science and Nonbelief
Book Description Can science and religious belief coexist? Many people–including many practicing scientists–insist that one can simultaneously follow the principles of the scientific method and believe in a particular spiritual tradition. But throughout history there have been people for whom science challenges the very validity of religious belief. Whether called atheists, agnostics, skeptics, or “infidels,” […]
Slaves to Faith: A Therapist Looks Inside the Fundamentalist Mind
Description Based upon the author’s twenty years of classroom and clinical study, Slaves of Faith explores and explains the emotionally laden dynamic at work in the fundamentalist mind. As Dr. Mercer posits, the fundamentalist is fundamentally driven by anxiety layered over a fragile sense of self-identity constructed upon a system of beliefs that is both […]
Story of Philosophy
An endlessly inspiring and instructive chronicle of the world’s great thinkers, from Aristotle to Santayana. Eleven years of research and three years of writing went into the creation of this work, which should appeal to the layman as well as educators.
Teranesia
Nine-year-old Prabir Suresh lives alone with his baby sister, Madhusree, and his biologist parents on a tropical Indonesian isle. Teranesia is so small and remote, it’s not on the maps, and its strange native species of butterfly remained undiscovered until the 21st century. Prabir never wants to leave, but war forces him to flee with […]
The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882
Charles Darwin’s Autobiography was first published in 1887, five years after his death. It was a bowdlerized edition: Darwin’s family, attempting to protect his posthumous reputation, had deleted all the passages they considered too personal or controversial. The present complete edition did not appear until 1959, one hundred years after the publication of The Origin […]
The Borderlands of Science
Subtitled: Where Orthodoxy Meets Heresy Shermer argues that science is the best lens through which to view the world, but he recognizes that it’s often difficult for most of us to tell where valid science leaves off and borderland science begins. To help us, Shermer looks at a range of topics that put the boundary […]
The Christian Right in American Politics
From the first rumblings of the Moral Majority over twenty years ago, the Christian Right has been marshalling its forces and maneuvering its troops in an effort to reshape the landscape of American politics. It has fascinated social scientists and journalists as the first right-wing social movement in postwar America to achieve significant political and […]
The Dream of Eternal Life: Biomedicine, Aging, and Immortality
Can we grow old without dying? Why do we have to grow old at all? In this fascinating book Mark Benecke investigates the biological meaning of life and death and the prospects for extending human longevity, or even achieving immortality. The first section of the book discusses the biological fundamentals of why death exists and […]
The Ethics of Ambiguity
In this philosophical essay, Beauvoir attempts to build an existential ethics on the universal basis of human freedom. Those interested in understanding Sartre would do well to read this book first since Beauvoir renders Sartre’s sometimes confusing technical terms in clear language.
The Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity
Two brilliant young physicists, Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin, captured the attention of the world when they announced they had identified the five ages of time. But is it possible for us to know the complete life story of the universe from beginning to end? The astonishing truth is that recent study has defined the […]
The Heathen’s Guide to World Religions
The Heathen’s Guide to World Religions is the history they don’t teach in Sunday school. With a sharp wit and a flair for research, author William Hopper brings the world’s religions back down to earth, dissecting the traditional tales and exposing the treachery, deceit, and hilarity at the heart of the myths. The Heathen’s Guide […]
The Inflationary Universe
Just about everyone in the scientific community accepts the theory that our universe began in a “big bang” — but that theory leaves numerous unanswered questions about why the cosmos formed in just the manner we observe today. In The Inflationary Universe, physicist Alan Guth recounts his and others’ struggle to expound a theory that […]
The Life of the Cosmos
Lee Smolin is not afraid to think big–really, really big. His theory of cosmic evolution by the natural selection of black-hole universes makes what we can experience into an infinitesimal, yet crucial, part of an ever-larger whole. Smolin says, “the new view of the universe is light, in all its senses, because what Darwin has […]
The Militant Agnostic
With sword and buckler, E. Haldeman-Julius, publisher of the famed Blue Books, declared war on the enemies of freethought. This wide-ranging, candid, and humorous collection of articles and essays attacking organized religion in its various forms, covers such topics as biblical errancy, the miraculous, the number of churches in America, the skepticism of Mark Twain, […]
The Nature of All Being
Book Description In this comprehensive study of Wittgenstein’s modal theorizing, Bradley offers a radical reinterpretation of Wittgenstein’s early thought and presents both an interpretive and a philosophical thesis. A unique feature of Bradley’s analysis is his reliance on Wittgenstein’s Notebooks, which he believes offer indispensable guidance to the interpretation of difficult passages in the Tractatus. […]
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy
“This is a comprehensive enyclopedia of philosophy covering all the main issues and terminology used in historical and contemporary philosophy. It is a good starting point for getting a feel for what issues are involved in a topic such as epistemology or the philosophy of mind. It also includes charts illustrating how various branches of […]
The Psychological Roots of Religious Belief: Searching for Angels and the Parent-God
Book Description “Angels are indeed messengers, with extraordinary things to tell us, but they do not come from the supernatural realm, from God, from …” In this insightful new study, M.D. Faber, whose previous work on the psychology of religion has won widespread critical acclaim, offers a comprehensive, naturalistic explanation of religious experience from the […]
The Science of Morality: The Individual, Community, and Future Generations
This is an excellent example of proving with facts and argument that ethics can be a branch of science, and that the nature of man and the universe does entail certain universal moral truths without any reference to God or the supernatural. Some really excellent work in this arena has been done the past few […]
The Supreme Court on Church and State
This collection of major Supreme Court decisions offers a non-partisan guide to the Court’s opinions on the meanings and implications of the First Amendment.
