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Our selection of books and associated reviews. Each cover is an affiliate link to Amazon for purchase.
Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine
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 […]
Christian No More: On Leaving Christianity, Debunking Christianity, and Embracing Atheism and Freethinking
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: The Tragedy and Transcendence of Heaven’s Gate
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 […]
Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics As a Science
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) […]
Dictionary of Concepts in the Philosophy of Science
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 […]
Dying to Live: Near-Death Experiences
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 […]
Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea
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 […]
Farmer in the Sky
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 […]
Friends, Robots, Countrymen (Abridged Audio Cassette)
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 […]
Have Space Suit, Will Travel
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, […]
Human, All Too Human
The first new translation of this work to appear since the beginning of the 20th century. Subtitled “A Book for Free Spirits”, it marked a new positivism and skepticism for Nietzsche with which he challenged his previous metaphysical and psychological assumptions.
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; […]
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 […]
