Based on over twenty years of original archival research, this history unfolds a nearly day-by-day narrative of the Salem Witch Trials as the citizens of Salem experienced the outbreak of hysteria.
In this provocative book, the authors look at the interaction between population and food supply and offer a powerful and radical strategy for balancing human numbers with nutritional needs. Their proposals include improving the status of women, reducing racism and religious prejudice, reforming the agricultural system, and shrinking the growing gap between rich and poor.
The twentieth century brought about a dramatic change in our conception of reality. Advances in the natural sciences radically altered our understanding of human existence and the universe; biblical scholarship demystified the Bible; and scientific inquiry has superseded biblical and church authority. Despite these dramatic developments, the public seems largely unaware of the radical conceptual […]
The famous author of the Historical and Critical Dictionary gives a reasoned response to superstitious hysteria accompanying the appearance of a comet in 1680. In the process, he also becomes the first recorded person to suggest that a society of atheists would not necessarily be any less moral than a society of theists.
Islam has worldwide influence, and even in the United States is experiencing a period of unprecedented growth. Its sacred book, the Koran, is the subject of voluminous commentary, yet it rarely receives the kind of objective critical scrutiny that has been applied to the texts of the Bible for over a century. To correct this […]
The renowned lawyer Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) was also an impassioned defender of intellectual freedom, individual liberties, and social injustice. In these wide-ranging essays, Darrow attacks beliefs in the inerrancy of the Bible, the immortality of the soul, miracles, and heaven as being completely at odds with human experience and science.
In Women and the Koran, Anwar Hekmat challenges the mullahs who would stifle freethought and open discussion of how Muslim holy writ debases and dehumanizes women. From arranged marriages of female children (some only nine years old!) to religious laws that dictate what women can learn, how they must dress, where they may be seen […]
In this important and controversial work, historian, diplomat, and the first president of Cornell University Andrew White exhaustively documents the battle between science and religion in such matters as creation vs. evolution, the geocentric vs. the heliocentric, and the “fall of man” vs. humanistic elevation.
This is an introduction to philosophy of religion written by an atheist. Le Poidevin manages to discuss a number of technical metaphysical issues in a highly readable way, which is exactly what we would hope to find in a college textbook such as this. Arguing for Atheism is an outstanding atheist introduction to philosophy of […]
Book Description This hugely controversial work demonstrates convincingly how the world’s three major monotheistic religions–Christianity, Judaism, and Islam–have attempted to suppress knowledge, science, pleasure, and desire, condemning nonbelievers often to death. Not since Nietzsche has a work so groundbreaking and explosive appeared, to question the role of the world’s three major monotheistic religions. If Nietzsche […]
Among the many thinkers and writers of contemporary Western culture, Bertrand Russell stands out as one of the most brilliant and prolific. The range of his inquiring mind is virtually without parallel, and never more sharp than when it seeks to critically analyze cherished popular beliefs respecting God and religion. Al Seckel has rescued many […]
Book Description Pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives. Surgeons who pray in the operating room. Pro-life clinics and end-of-life interventions, intelligent-design activists and stem-cell-research opponents–is this the state of modern medicine in America? In an America that increasingly turns its back on the teachings of science, the worlds of religion and medicine have […]
Book Description In Christian No More Jeffrey Mark dismantles Christianity, showing how it is a fraud founded on myths that have no basis in reality, built on a theology of threats, including hell, that cannot be real. He takes the reader through a wonderful journey of science, history, myth–and even theology. Mark details his own […]
Cosmic Suicide is the definitive study of the Heaven’s Gate cult. Consisting of neither tabloid trash nor New Age pabulum, it details the group from its origin in the early 1970’s to the sensational mass suicide in 1997. By providing perspective and insight into the cult’s attitudes and beliefs, Cosmic Suicide places Heaven’s Gate within […]
From the book cover: “In the past couple of years, there has been an explosion of interest in ‘memes’. However, the one thing noticeably missing has been any kind of proper debate over the validity of a concept many regard as scientifically suspect. Darwinizing Culture pits leading intellectuals (both supporters and opponents of meme theory) […]
Durbin, history and philosophy of science scholar and writer, has created a volume that includes about 100 terms from the natural and social sciences. For each term there is an extended definition and discussion of related philosophic issues. Each entry, about three and one-half pages, also provides a bibliography of some six to a dozen […]
Near-death experiences (NDEs) have remarkably similar characteristics the world over, leading many to cite them as proof of a hereafter. Blackmore, a British psychologist, carefully reviews the literature and her own research for something like an opposite claim. NDEs do indeed have universal aspects, but that’s because they manifest the chemistry of dying brains; what’s […]
While its opponents may sneer that “it’s just a theory,” evolution has transcended that label to take its place as one of the most important ideas in human history. Science journalist Carl Zimmer explores its history and future in Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, a companion piece to the epic PBS series of the […]
Bill knew his destiny lay in the stars, but how was he to get there? George Lerner was shipping out for Ganymede to join the fledgling colony, and Bill wanted to go along. But his father would not hear of it — far too dangerous a mission! Bill finally talked his way aboard the colony […]
Isaac Asimov, the modern master of science fiction and fact, and Martin H. Greenberg, a leading anthologist of our time, team together to produce an unprecedented collection of science fiction audio books. This landmark series presents their favorite robot stories from Asimov’s private library, with a personal introduction read by the master himself. This volume […]
One minute Kip Russell was walking about in his backyard, testing out an old space suit and dreaming about going to the Moon — and the next he was out cold, the captive of an insidious space pirate. The whole thing seemed like a bad dream until Kip discovered there were other prisoners on board, […]
Howl came on the American scene during the Beat movement of the late 1950s. Ginsberg’s Howl was to Beat poetry what Kerouac’s On the Road was to Beat literature, proclaiming the subtle malaise that manifested itself among American youth, which eventually led to a full-blown crisis of meaning during the 1960s.
Explores one of the most colorful but least understood phenomena in American religion: controversies over Bible translation. Modern Bible translation controversies arose during the late nineteenth century, when rapid advances in textual criticism and translation seemed to threaten the inherited historical picture of Jesus. Unable to separate the quest for accurate translation from the quest […]
Description The gloves come off in this rowdy literary bout (originally hosted by, and published in, Christianity Today) as atheist Christopher Hitchens (“one of the beltway’s most respected public intellectuals,” “an intimidating intellectual Goliath”) and Christian apologist Douglas Wilson (“an ultra-conservative pastor from Idaho who looks like a lumberjack”) go head-to-head on this divisive question. […]
The most up-to-date and detailed historical and linguistic study of the rise and evolution of the concept of “Holy War” within Islam, tracing it to social, theological and pre-Islamic Arabic influences. As a study of a religious and ethical idea, Firestone’s work makes a nice supplement to Paul Fregosi’s Jihad in the West, which covers […]
A magisterial work of social history, Life After Death illuminates the many different ways ancient civilizations grappled with the question of what exactly happens to us after we die. In a masterful exploration of how Western civilizations have defined the afterlife, Alan F. Segal weaves together biblical and literary scholarship, sociology, history, and philosophy. A […]
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