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Our selection of books and associated reviews. Each cover is an affiliate link to Amazon for purchase.
Beyond Contact
Subtitled: A Guide to SETI and Communicating with Alien Civilizations In Beyond Contact: A Guide to SETI and Communicating with Alien Civilizations, author Brian McConnell examines what goes into the search for intelligent life in space. The book explains the science and technology behind the search, from the physics of inter-stellar laser and radio communication, […]
But Is It Science?
This book is a collection of essays on the history and development of Darwinian theory, demarcation criteria that separate scientific theories from pseudoscientific theories, and the 1982 trial on the Arkansas “equal time” law.
Churches Ad Hoc: A Divine Comedy
Description With its eighty-six duotone illustrations and a foreword by Kern Trembath (Assistant Chairman, Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame) this is a humorous look at churches in America by photographer Herman Krieger. Comment “Among the best examples of satire on the Internet.” — J. Michael Raymond, Editor, Contemporary Satire “This is a fun […]
Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment explores a simple, yet profound theme in the human condition. Can someone consciously and without remorse carry out the perfect murder and get away with it? What does it mean to get away with murder? The eyes of God might not be upon the moral offender, but what do we do about […]
Decline of the West (Vol. 2)
Since its first publication in two volumes between 1926-28, this work has ranked as one of the most widely read and most talked about books of our time. Spengler probes the origin and “fate” of our civilization, presenting a world view based on the cyclical rise and decline of cultures. Time magazine calls it “an […]
Divine Hiddenness : New Essays
This book collects together all of the papers on Divine Hiddenness delivered at a conference held by the Society of Christian Philosophers in Portland, Oregon. This conference was also attended by several atheists, some of whom delivered papers which are included in this collection. So, this book should be considered as an excellent and complete […]
Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties
This is the most extensive reference in print that presents proposed solutions to numerous arguments against Biblical inerrancy, presented in the order in which the “problems” appear in the Bible, including a full index. Skeptics should always be aware of how fundamentalists reconcile various Biblical contradictions and other problems before using such problems in debates, […]
Expanded Universe
A collection of fiction and non-fiction.
For the New Intellectual
No synopsis available.
Giovanni’s Room
This somewhat autobiographical novel addresses issues of dealing with the “other” that were of equal concern to Sartre. Baldwin succeeds in telling a gripping tale while exploring the complex problems of interpersonal relationships and the desire to escape from one’s own freedom.
God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question–Why We Suffer
Book Description In times of questioning and despair, people often quote the Bible to provide answers. Surprisingly, though, the Bible does not have one answer but many “answers,” “answers” that often contradict each other. Consider these competing explanations for suffering put forth by various biblical writers: The prophets: suffering is a punishment for sin The […]
Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden
On September 11, 2001, the world in which we live was changed forever. The twin towers of the World Trade Center came crashing down, one side of the Pentagon burst into flames, and more than six thousand men, women, and children lost their lives in the most deadly attack on American soil. As shocking as […]
Humanist Manifesto 2000: A Call for New Planetary Humanism
This entirely new Humanist Manifesto, not yet available on the internet–as are Humanist Manifesto I (1933) and Humanist Manifesto II (1973), which can also be purchased together — is designed to address the problems of the twenty-first century and the millennium beyond. Providing a strong defense of scientific naturalism and technology, it is offered as […]
In The Beginning…: A Scientist Shows Why the Creationists Are Wrong
This book refutes the teachings of creationism by taking “creationist arguments point by point . . . mainly using evidence from the fossil record.”
James Dobson’s War on America
For the first time, a former high-level insider provides a behind-the-scenes look at the private world of James Dobson, one of the most powerful (yet clandestine) figures waging religious war against mainstream America. In James Dobson’s War On America we learn what only an insider could know about James Dobson, who has the power and […]
L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?
Synopsis Unavailable
Logic and Mr. Limbaugh
Anything that teaches a valuable lesson about fallacious reasoning and at the same time pokes fun at a ridiculous man has to be great!
Meyebela: My Bengali Girlhood
Meyebela, or “girlhood,” is a term coined by Nasrin (“Shame”) because no term for a girl’s childhood exists in Bengali. Nasrin, a Bangladeshi doctor-turned-writer, has been living in exile since 1994–ever since Muslim clerics issued a fatwa against her for her criticism of Islam’s repression of women. In this powerful memoir of her Muslim childhood, […]
Nausea
This is a literary, not a philosophical work, but it deals with issues fundamental to the human quest for meaning and with the question of our relation to being. Sartre paints a portrait of a life lived in reaction to the seeming absurdities underlying the most fundamental metaphysical principles. The reaction is poetic: in place […]
On The Nature of Things
With the passion of a true poet, Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99-55 B.C.E.) expounds the most coherent and eloquent system of materialism surviving from the ancient world. Developing the atomic theory of his master, Epicurus, Lucretius discusses the motion of atoms, natural phenomena, sensation, free will, and the soul’s relation to the body. Most importantly, […]
Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion
Book Description Parenting Beyond Belief is a book for loving and thoughtful parents who wish to raise their children without religion. There are scores of books available for religious parents. Now there’s one for the rest of us. It’s hard enough to live a secular life in a religious world. And bringing up children without […]
Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus
Description An essential work on historical methods. Almost all experts agree that the Jesus of the Bible is a composite of myth, legend, and some historical evidence. So what can we know about the real Jesus? For more than one hundred fifty years, scholars have attempted to answer this question. Unfortunately, the “Quest for the […]
Reincarnation: A Critical Examination
Paul Edwards’ Reincarnation surveys the state of the evidence for and against reincarnation, from the more dubious claims that feelings of deja vu, LSD experiences, and the existence of child prodigies provide indirect evidence for reincarnation to the more widespread claims that “past life” hypnotic regressions and spontaneous “memories” of past lives in children provide […]
Rivers in Time : The Search for Clues to Earth’s Mass Extinctions
Several times in the distant past, catastrophic extinctions have swept the Earth, causing more than half of all species – from single-celled organisms to awe-inspiring behemoths – to suddenly vanish and be replaced by new life forms. Today the rich diversity of life on the Earth is again in grave danger – and the cause […]
Science in a Nanosecond
Uses a question and answer format, with illustrations, to explain why the sky is blue, what a rainbow is, what atoms are, how gravity works, and many other scientific facts and events.
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
Arthur Dent is out of his bathrobe, in love, and wondering why the dolphins said…So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. Was the earth really demolished? Why did all the dolphins disappear? What is God’s final message to His creatures? Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and the new voivoid gang are off (by commercial airline) […]
Studies of the Book of Mormon
This book contains manuscripts of Roberts (who was important in the early Mormon church) in which he questions the authenticity of the Book of Mormon and admits that Joseph Smith was capable of inventing the Book of Mormon.
That Godless Court?
Here’s a book that’s wonderfully long on information and mercifully brief but very cogent in its author’s opinions. Coauthor of a text on church-state Supreme Court adjudication, Flowers is ideally informed to present the constitutional reasoning behind Court decisions in church-state cases. What’s more, he writes with crystalline clarity and great impetus; his clean prose […]
The Battle for Christmas
Book Description A Pulitzer Prize finalist, this scholarly analysis of our modern celebration of Christmas pulls together a thoroughly convincing case for the widely accepted notion that it is a 19th-century creation, indeed a deliberate reformation and taming of a holiday with wilder pagan origins. Christmas was set at December 25 in the fourth century, […]
The Bridge (Audio CD)
A darkly brilliant novel of self-discovery the cutting edge of experimental fiction. It leads from nowhere to nowhere, the mysterious world-spanning structure on which everyone seems to live. Rescued from the sea, devoid of personality or memory, all John Orr knows is the Bridge, his persistent dreams of war, and his desire for Chief Engineer […]
