Set in a medieval European village where three itinerant Jewish actors put God on trial to answer for His silence during a pogrom, a powerful drama considers historical and especially post-Holocaust issues surrounding faith. While interred in Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel witnessed a trial. While such things are not unusual, this trial was. It was unusual […]
Plenty of books try to explain the origin of the universe, but despite the ascendance of the Big Bang theory, numerous details of that theory remain in flux as new observations are made and new hypotheses formed (and then confirmed or rejected). Timothy Ferris’s The Whole Shebang is an up-to-date account of the various mechanisms […]
Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy describes what the Vatican did–or did not do–to help Jews in Italy in World War II. Author Susan Zuccotti, who has written two other books about the Holocaust, demonstrates that little help of any kind came from Popes Pius XI and XII or their […]
Thrower’s excellent little tome (at 151 pages) introduces you to the major currents of atheistic thought within Western Civilization. It makes a great addition to your home library.
The names we associate with the gospel writers are all second century guesses. If this comes as a surprise, welcome to the cutting edge of modern biblical scholarship. According to Helms, the gospels were written to convert or confirm their highly colored arguments of powerful authors, not just transparent windows upon the historical Jesus. If […]
UFO abductions… television psychics… creationism… Holocaust denial. Faced with the rapid changes and anxiety of modern life, many people are turning to the alluring comforts of pseudoscience and the occult. In Why People Believe Weird Things, science historian Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic magazine and director of the Skeptics Society, explores the very human […]
Book Description In his new book, A 21st Century Rationalist in Medieval America: Essays on Religion, Science, Morality, and the Bush Administration, (a collection of his newspaper opinion columns–highly critical of religion, faith, and the Bush administration–published between 2002 and 2006), John Bice demonstrates that it is possible to present religious criticism from an unapologetically […]
A Rebel to His Last Breath is the first biography of Joseph McCabe (1867-1955), a former Catholic priest who became one of the best-known champions and a prolific popularizer of freethought and rationalism in the first half of the twentieth century. McCabe’s encyclopedic curiosity, rigorous scholarship, and unswerving intellectual honesty led him through a tumultuous […]
This anthology fills a conspicuous gap in the discussion of religion and theism. The issues that theology addresses, the meaning of life, the existence of God, the truth of the Bible, the possibility of life after death, are so important to people that they ought to examine both sides of these fundamental questions. The atheist […]
A detailed and scholarly justification of atheism. Contains an outstanding appendix defining terminology and usage in this (necessarily) tendentious area. Argues both for “negative atheism” (i.e. the “non-belief in the existence of god(s)”) and also for “positive atheism” (“the belief in the non-existence of god(s)”). Includes great refutations of the most challenging arguments for god.
This is the most recent and most extensive apologetics reference work ever written. Geisler is a prominent apologist who writes from an Evangelical perspective on virtually every subject conceivable: persons, issues, movements, concepts, arguments of all kinds are all addressed. For secularists who want to know what tunes the Devil is playing, this is the […]
Susan Blackmore’s Beyond the Body provides a comprehensive historical overview of out-of-body experience (OBE) research. She surveys anecdotal case studies, including cross-cultural comparisons of OBEs, and concludes that there are no essential experiential differences between spontaneous OBEs and voluntarily-induced OBEs. Blackmore considers how common OBEs are in the population at large, reviews proposed techniques for […]
Widely acclaimed as the most authoritative and accessible one-volume dictionary available in English (and now with translations into Chinese, Korean, Russian, Italian, and Spanish underway) this second edition offers an even richer, more comprehensive, and more up-to-date survey of ideas and thinkers written by an international team of 436 contributors. This second edition includes the […]
Book Description C. S. Lewis was one of the most influential Christian apologists of the 20th century. An Oxford don and former atheist who converted to Christianity in 1931, he gained a wide following during the 1940s as the author of a number of popular apologetic books such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem […]
Arguing that perhaps Jesus never existed as a historical figure, Price maintains an agnostic stance, while putting many puzzles and scholarly debates in a new light. He also incorporates neglected parallels from Islam, the Baha’i Faith, and Buddhism. Deconstructing Jesus provides a valuable bridge between New Testament scholarship and early freethinkers in a refreshing cross-fertilization […]
In a lively debate, which includes questions from the audience, Christian philosopher and ethicist J.P. Moreland and Kai Neilsen, one of today’s best-known atheist philosophers, go head to head on the fundamental issues and questions that have shaped individual lives, races, and nations throughout history. After the debate, several contributors from both sides chip in […]
Frederick Clarkson’s Eternal Hostility provides a chilling road map to a growing movement whose roots go back to the founding days of the country. Clarkson asks the reader to consider what it would be like if having an abortion was punishable by death, if gays and lesbians were thrown into jail, or if our constitutional […]
Guthrie proposes that religion is basically an outgrowth of the natural human propensity, probably hardwired in by evolution, to interpret vague or random appearances anthropomorphically. That is, we naturally tend to see faces in clouds or the image of Jesus in a spaghetti ad. This makes perfect sense from an evolutionary viewpoint since it would […]
A stunning testament to ISaac Asimov’s creative genius, Forward The Foundation is a the Foundation saga’s dramatic climax — the story Asimov fans have been waiting for. An exciting tale of danger, intrigue, and suspense, Forward The Foundation brings to vivid life Asimov’s best loved characters: hero Hari Seldon, who struggles to perfect his revolutionary […]
This book is a collection of essays by nearly two-dozen different contributors on all sides of the debate about whether the designs of a theistic God are the best explanations for the observations of scientists. The contributors are of the highest quality, including: Michael Behe, William Lane Craig (Does God Exist: The Craig-Flew Debate, and […]
In this slim and readable book, Helms analyzes the most familiar and powerful stories about Jesus, and suggests that the Gospels are works of narrative art, contrived and creative interpretations, the supreme fictions of our culture.
A controversial look at the therapy profession today. Noted psychological research scientist Dawes critically examines some of the most cherished clinical assumptions and therapeutic methods now in use. In addition, he takes issue with many of the treatment methods commonly used in therapy practices.
Showalter takes on the history of mass cultural hysteria, from witch hunts to mesmerism, and discusses today’s versions–ranging from chronic fatigue or Gulf War Syndrome to recovered memories–and the attendant publicity.
The last decade saw the arrival of a new player in the creation/evolution debate–the intelligent design creationism (IDC) movement, whose strategy is to act as “the wedge” to overturn Darwinism and scientific naturalism. This anthology of writings by prominent creationists and their critics focuses on what is novel about the new movement. It serves as […]
In a profound and provocative work of scholarly detection, Professor Robert Eisenman establishes James–a figure marginalized in the New Testament–as the leader of all opposition groups in the Jerusalem of his day and spiritual heir–rather than Peter–to his famous brother, Jesus.
A collection of essays from various perspectives addressing basic issues inherent in a philosophy of death, exploring themes such as the meaning of death, the nature of the soul, and the prospects for immortality. This second edition includes ten new essays and a new introduction.
Description William Lobdell’s journey of faith—and doubt—may be the most compelling spiritual memoir of our time. Lobdell became a born-again Christian in his late 20s when personal problems–including a failed marriage–drove him to his knees in prayer. As a newly minted evangelical, Lobdell–a veteran journalist–noticed that religion wasn’t covered well in the mainstream media, and […]
When world-class biblical scholar Bart Ehrman first began to study the texts of the Bible in their original languages he was startled to discover the multitude of mistakes and intentional alterations that had been made by earlier translators. In Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman tells the story behind the mistakes and changes that ancient scribes made to […]
Mormons believe that the Book of Mormon was revealed to church founder Joseph Smith on gold plates. Brent Lee Metcalfe and other important Mormon researchers present the linguistic, textual, archeological and other evidence which shows that that Book of Mormon was probably written in the 19th century based on the King James Version of the […]
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