What's New Archive ● 2009 ● February
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February 26, 2009
New in the Bookstore: Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America and Found Unexpected Peace (2009) by William Lobdell.
As a newly minted evangelical, Lobdell--a veteran journalist--noticed that religion wasn't covered well in the mainstream media, and he prayed for the Lord to put him on the religion beat at a major newspaper. In 1998, his prayers were answered when the Los Angeles Times asked him to write about faith. Yet what happened over the next eight years was a roller-coaster of inspiration, confusion, doubt, and soul-searching as his reporting and experiences slowly chipped away at his faith. Losing My Religion is a book about life's deepest questions that speaks to everyone: Lobdell understands the longings and satisfactions of the faithful, as well as the unrelenting power of doubt. How he faced that power, and wrestled with it, is must reading for people of faith and nonbelievers alike.
February 3, 2009
New in the Bookstore: Living Without God: New Directions for Atheists, Agnostics, Secularists, and the Undecided (2008) by Ronald Aronson
Ronald Aronson has a mission: to demonstrate that a life without religion can be coherent, moral, and committed. In the last few years, the "New Atheists"--Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens--have created a stir by criticizing religion and belief in God. Optimistic and stirring, Living Without God is less interested in attacking religion than in developing a positive philosophy for atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, skeptics, and freethinkers. Aronson moves beyond the discussion about what not to believe, proposing contemporary answers to Immanuel Kant's three great questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?