What Are Your Favorite Skeptical Books?
I've listed ten of my favorites right here. Let me add to this list David Eller's book, Atheism Advanced: Further Thoughts of a Freethinker
, and Jason Long's book, The Religious Condition: Answering And Explaining Christian Reasoning
. As you can see, my favorite skeptical books are not scientifically or philosophically related primarily because of what I think about Natural Theology. There are many others. What others are your favorites?
, and Jason Long's book, The Religious Condition: Answering And Explaining Christian Reasoning. As you can see, my favorite skeptical books are not scientifically or philosophically related primarily because of what I think about Natural Theology. There are many others. What others are your favorites?
11 comments:
I personaly like alot of works by Robert G Ingersoll.
"How are we saved", The Brian And The Bible", "Foundations", and "The Gods", are all interesting reads, i found them on the bank of wisdom is they date back to the 1800's.
John, I'm glad you asked this question, as this is probably a good place to tell you about a couple of recent skeptical books that just came out that are probably worth reading. Here they are:
(1) Can Christians Prove the Resurrection?: A Reply to the Apologists
(2) The Failure of Bible Prophecy
The author, Chris Sandoval (a pseudonym), wrote an excellent paper for the secular web a few years ago called, "The Failure of Daniel's Prophecies" Link
So I have a feeling the books will be pretty darn good.
. . . Anyway, some of my favorites are:
(1) Atheism Explained
(2) C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion
(3) The Psychological Roots Of Religious Belief
(4) The Mystery of Acts: Unraveling Its Story
(5) The Incredible Shrinking Son Of Man
(6) The God Virus
(7) The Improbability of God
I'll be reading your book soon.
Oh, and Ken Daniels', "Why I Believed: Reflections of a Former Missionary" was excellent.
I note from the post on natural theology you linked that William Lane Craig refuses to debate biblical reliability.
When I was watching Dinesh D'Souza debate Dan Barker on the weekend, D'Souza made the same refusal. I agree with you it's because he can't. But I was bemused by D'Souza's reason for not debating the Bible. He said something like (I paraphrase) "I don't want to get into all that hocus pocus."
A bizarre, but perhaps revealing thing for a conservative Christian apologist to say.
A few years after realizing that my fundamentalist Christian beliefs were bunkum and after reading widely from authors like Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, Hitchens, Stenger, Owen Flanagan, and Shermer, the interesting question to me became “Why do people believe religion to be true when it isn’t?” And to answer that I turned to the cognitive science/ anthropology/ psychology of religion. Before I list those, I will say that my favorite general skeptical author is Taner Edis. All of his books are extremely worthwhile. Another general skeptical book that remains very high on my list is Philosophers Without Gods: Reflections on Atheism and the Secular Life edited by Louise Antony. Perhaps an oddball on my list too is the work of fiction 36 Arguments for the Existence of God by Rebecca Goldstein. It’s worth the price for the appendix alone which states and refutes “36 Arguments for the existence of God.” My favorites in the field of cog sci of religion are:
Atran, S. (2002). In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.
Barber, E. &. (2004). When They Severed Earth From Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bloom, P. (2004). Descartes' Baby. New York: Basic Books.
Boyer, P. (2001). Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books.
Guthrie, S. (1993). Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.
Malley, B. (2004). How the Bible Works: An Anthropological Study of Evangelical Biblicism. New York: AltaMira.
Newberg, A., & Waldman, M. R. (2006). Born to Believe: God, Science, and the Origin of Ordinary and Extraordinary Beliefs. New York: Free Press.
Pyysiainen, I. (2009).
Supernatural Agents: Why We Believe in Souls, Gods, and Buddhas. New York: Oxford University Press.
Tremlin, T. (2006). Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.
Whitehouse, H. (2004). Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. Walnut Creek: AltaMira.
John, you might particularly be interested in the book by Malley.
I liked:
Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave
Incredible Shrinking Son of Man
The Dark Side
godless
The Portable Atheist
The Age of Reason
Philosophers Without Gods
Not the Impossible Faith
The Reason Driven Life
Rejecting Pascal's Wager
The End of Faith
Does the New Testament Imitate Homer? Four Cases from the Acts of the Apostles
Synopsis of the Four Gospels
Ancient Christian Magic
The Jesus Mysteries
Jesus Interrupted
The Passover Plot
The Masks of Christ
Who Wrote the New Testament: The Making of Christian Myth
Supersense
Spook
Mysterious Flame
Darwin's Dangerous Idea
Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design
The Greatest Show on Earth
Why Evolution is True
etc. etc.
T.A. Lewis, thanks for the list of books, a number of them I have never heard of before and will be adding them to my wish list.
Wow, that Mallery book at 184 pages will have to wait. At $85 this is highway robbery.
Wow. It must have went out of print and shot the price up. It was around $15 when I made the purchase. It's a really good book though. The author spent around a year or so conducting detailed interviews and research in an evangelical church with particular emphasis on the reasoning surrounding the Bible - how these beliefs are validated, rationalized, etc.
JWL: At $85 this is highway robbery.
That's the retail price for the hardback, the paperback is $29.95 new. If you are interested in getting a used one at a cheaper price go to this link. I saw a couple copies for as low as $4.00.
Off the top of my head:
1. The Demon Haunted World (Carl Sagan)
2. Why People Believe Weird Things (Michael Shermer)
3. Supersense (Bruce Hood)
4. The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins)
5. How We Believe (Michael Shermer)
6. Bad Science (Ben Goldscre)
7. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (David Hume)
8. The End Of Faith (Sam Harris)
9. The Atheist Manifesto (Michel Onfray)
10. Science Friction (Michael Shermer)
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