Skepticism of Religion: An Informal Bibliography
for a while now i've been thinking about putting together a reading list
that would cover subjects relevant to skepticism of religion. a couple
of weeks ago i set out to do that. the list will enable the reader to
mount a full-fledged intellectual defense of skepticism of religion as i
believe we all should be capable of. credit to Greg
Gorey, TA member, for his help with suggestions- particularly in
the Philosophy section- and as a sounding board for my own ideas on what
shape the list should take (please assume, however, that any failings
that you perceive the list to have are my own doing).
by no means do I think that this list is utterly complete, merely comprehensive (exhaustive?). as such, i hope the list will also exist as a conversation starter on which titles you think are important when it comes to the ability comprehensively defend skepticism of religion. may it also be helpful to the questioning theist who is generally interested in knowing whether her beliefs are in accord with objective reality.
the titles are listed alphabetically within each category and so a title's position in the list shouldn't indicate the emphasis with which they are suggested to the reader. the titles vary in the author's assumption of the familiarity the reader has with the subject matter. therefore, the reader should, before selecting a title to read, check out descriptions and reviews of the titles in order to see that they do not select a title that is beyond their current depth.
I hope you find this list useful to you. please also find it attached below in PDF form for convenience and to enable you to easily share it.
ANE History/The Historian's Endeavor/Biblical Criticism and Historical Jesus Scholarship and The Resurrection/Syro-Palestinian Archaeology
-Syro-Palestinian Archaeology
William Dever- Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?
Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman- The Bible Unearthed
Lester L. Grabbe- Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?
Jonathan M. Golden- Ancient Canaan and Israel: An Introduction
Ziony Zevit- Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches
-The Historian's Endeavor
Averil Cameron (editor)- History As Text: The Writing of Ancient Historiography
David Hackett Fischer- Historian’s Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought
Charles Fornara- The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome
Bruno Gentili & Giovanni Cerri- History and Biography in Ancient Thought
Michael Grant- Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinformation
Martha C. Howell- From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods
Margaret Macmillian- The Uses and Abuses of History
John Marincola- Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography
Christopher McCullagh- Justifying Historical Descriptions
-Biblical Criticism/Historical Jesus Scholarship/The Resurrection
Dale Allison- Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters
Hector Avalos- The End of Biblical Studies
Ferdinand Christian Baur- Paul, The Apostle of Jesus Christ: His Life and Works
Rudolf Bultmann- History of the Synoptic Tradition
Richard Carrier- On The Historicity of Jesus Christ (forthcoming)
John Dominic Crossan- The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant
Earl Doherty- The Jesus Puzzle
James D.G. Dunn- Did The First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence
James D.G. Dunn- Jesus Remembered (Christianity In The Making Vol. 1)[Vol. 2 is below under “ANE
History”]
Bart Ehrman- Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of The New Millennium
Bart Ehrman- The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies
on the Text of the New Testament (alternately, though with less detail and technical explanation, read
the “Cliff’s Notes” version Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why)
Paula Fredriksen- Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of
Christianity
Richard Elliot Friedman- Who Wrote the Bible?
Richard Elliot Friedman- The Bible With Sources Revealed
Reginald Fuller- The Foundations of New Testament Christology
Robert Funk- Honest to Jesus: Jesus For a New Millennium
Chris Hallquist- UFO’s, Ghosts, and a Rising God: Debunking the Resurrection of Jesus
John Kloppenborg- Q, The Earliest Gospel: An Introduction to the Original Sayings and Stories of Jesus
Kris Komarnitsky- Doubting Jesus’ Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box?
Amy-Jill Levine, Dale Allison, and John Dominic Crossan (editors)- The Historical Jesus in Context
Burton Mack- Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth
Burton Mack- The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins
Stanley E. Porter- Criteria For Authenticity in Historical-Jesus Research
Robert M. Price- The Case Against The Case For Christ (book length refutation of popular Christian
apologist Lee Strobel’s The Case For Christ)
Robert M. Price- Deconstructing Jesus
Robert M. Price and Jeffrey Jay Lowder (editors)- The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave
William Sanday (editor)- Studies in the Synoptic Problem
E.P. Sanders- The Historical Figure of Jesus
Chris Sandoval- Can Christians Prove the Resurrection?
Albert Schweitzer- The Quest of the Historical Jesus
David Friedrich Strauss- The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined
Geza Vermes- Jesus the Jew: An Historian’s Reading of the Gospels
Julius Wellhausen- Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel)
G.A. Wells- The Jesus of the Early Christians: A Study in Christian Origins
-ANE History
Rainer Albertz- A History of the Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period: Vol. 1, From The
Beginnings to the End of the Monarchy
Rainer Albertz- A History of the Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period: Vol. 2, From Exile to
the Maccabees
Walter Bauer- Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity
Richard Carrier- Not The Impossible Faith (a book length refutation of J.P. Holding’s The Impossible
Faith)
Henry Chadwick- The Early Church
Shaye Cohen- From the Maccabees to the Mishnah
John Dominic Crossan- The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened In The Years
Immediately After the Execution of Jesus
James D.G. Dunn- Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?
James D.G. Dunn- Beginning From Jerusalem (Christianity In The Making Vol. 2) [Vol. 1 is above
under “Biblical Criticism/ Historical Jesus Scholarship/The Resurrection”]
Bart Ehrman- Lost Christianities: The Battle For Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Cyrus H. Gordon and Gary A. Rendsburg- The Bible and the Ancient Near East, 4th Edition
Sarah Iles Johnston- Ancient Religions
E.P. Sanders- Judaism: Practice and Belief
Emil Schurer- A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus
Martin Werner- The Formation of Christian Dogma: An Historical Study of its Problem
Evolution (and the Evolution/Creation “debate”)
John Avise- Inside the Human Genome
Sean B. Carroll- The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution
Jerry Coyne- Why Evolution is True
Charles Darwin- On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of
Favoured Races in the Struggle
for Life
Charles Darwin- The Descent of Man
Richard Dawkins- Climbing Mount Improbable
Richard Dawkins- The Greatest Show on Earth
Richard Dawkins- The Selfish Gene
Daniel Dennett- Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall- Human Origins: What Bones and Genomes Tell Us About Ourselves
Ronald De Sousa- Why Think? Evolution of the Rational Mind
Jared Diamond- The Third Chimpanzee
John Endler- Natural Selection In The Wild
Douglas Futuyma- Evolution
Stephen Kitcher- Living With Darwin
Paul F. Lurkin and Linda Stone- Evolution and Religious Creation Myths: How Scientists Respond
Ernst Mayr- What Evolution Is
Robert Pennock- The Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism
Ian Pilmer- Telling Lies for God
Donald Prothero- Evolution: What the Fossils Tell Us and Why It Matters
Stanley Rice- Encyclopedia of Evolution
Matt Ridley- Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters
Michael Ruse and Joseph Travis (editors)- Evolution: The First Four Billion Years
Robin Sayfarth- Baboon Metaphysics
Nial Shanks and Richard Dawkins- God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design
Theory
Neil Shubin- Your Inner Fish
Jonathan Weiner- The Beak of the Finch
Carl Zimmer- The Tangled Bank
Arguments
John Beversluis- C.S. Louis and the Search for Rational Religion
Gregory W. Dawes- Theism and Explanation
Taner Edis- Science and Nonbelief
Richard M. Gale- On The Nature and Existence of God
Guy Harrison- 50 Reasons People Give For Believing in God
John Loftus- Why I Became An Atheist
John Loftus (editor)- The Christian Delusion
J.L. Mackie- The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For And Against The Existence of God
Michael Martin- Atheism: A Philosophical Justification
Michael Martin- The Case Against Christianity
Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier (editors)- The Impossibility of God
Graham Oppy- Arguing About Gods
Graham Oppy- Ontological Arguments and Belief in God
Robin le Poidevin- Arguing For Atheism
J.L. Schellenberg- The Wisdom To Doubt: A Justification of Religious Skepticism
George H. Smith- Atheism: The Case Against God
Jordan Howard Sobel- Logic and Theism: Arguments for and Against Beliefs in God
Victor Stenger- God: The Failed Hypothesis (How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist)
Victor Stenger- Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe
Nick Trakakis- The God Beyond Belief: In Defense of William Rowe’s Evidential Argument From Evil
Andrea M. Weisberger- Suffering Belief: Evil and the Anglo-American Defense of Theism
Naturalism, a Worldview
Simon Altmann- Is Nature Supernatural? A Philosophical Exploration of Science and Nature
Richard Carrier- Sense and Goodness Without God
Daniel Dennett- Freedom Evolves
Gary Drescher- Good and Real
Taner Edis- The Ghost in the Universe: God in the Light of Modern Science
Andrew Melnyk- A Physicalist Manifesto: Thoroughly Modern Materialism
Kai Nielson- Naturalism and Religion
Robert Nozick- Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World
Greg Reinking- Cosmic Legacy: Space, Time, and the Human Mind
Joseph Rouse- How Scientific Practices Matter: Reclaiming Philosophical Naturalism
John Shook- Pragmatic Naturalism and Realism
Matt Young- No Sense of Obligation: Science and Religion in an Impersonal Universe
Natural Morality
Mark Bekoff and Jessica Pierce- Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals
Frans de Waal- Good Natured: The Origin of Right and Wrong in Primates
Marc Hauser- Moral Minds
Leonard Katz- Evolutionary Origins of Morality
Shaun Nichols- Sentimental Rules: On The Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment
James Q. Wilson- The Moral Sense
Matt Ridley- The Origin of Virtue
Michael Shermer- The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow
the Golden Rule
Walter Sinott-Armstrong- Moral Psychology, Vol. 1: The Evolution of Morality: Adaptations and Innateness
Walter Sinott- Armstrong- Moral Psychology, Vol. 2: The Cognitive Science of Morality: Intuition and Diversity
Walter Sinott-Armstrong- Moral Psychology, Vol. 3: The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Brain Disorders, and
Development
Walter Sinott-Armstrong- Morality Without God
Psychology and the Neurocognitive Underpinnings of Religion/Anthropology of
Religion/Consciousness
Scott Atran- In Gods We Trust
Robert Aunger- The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think
Justin L. Barrett- Why Would Anyone Believe in God?
Susan Blackmore- Consciousness: An Introduction
Pascal Boyer- Religion Explained
Walter Burkert- Creation of the Sacred
Patricia Smith Churchland- Brain-Wise: Studies In Neurophilosophy
Daniel Dennett- Consciousness Explained
Daniel Dennett- Kinds of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Consciousness
Michael Shermer- Why People Believe Weird Things
Michael Shermer- Why We Believe
Gerald Edelman- Wider Than The Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness
David Eller- Atheism Advanced
Jack Eller- Introducing Anthropology of Religion
Steven Pinker- How the Mind Works
Michael S. Gazzaniga- The Mind’s Past
Nicholas Humphrey- Leaps of Faith
Steven Johnson- Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
Julian Paul Keenan, Gordon G. Gallup, and Dean Falk- The Face in the Mirror: The Search For the
Origins of Consciousness
Christof Koch- The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach
E. Thomas Lawson and Robert McCauley- Rethinking Religion
Joseph Ledoux- Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are
Rudolfo Llinas- I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self
Jason Slone- Theological Incorrectness: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't
Todd Tremlin- Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion
Eckart Voland and Wulf Schiefenovel- The Biological Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior
Harvey Whitehouse- Mind and Religion: Psychological and Cognitive Foundations of Religion
David Sloan Wilson- Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society
The Apologists
Paul Copan- True For You, But Not For Me: Overcoming Objections to Christian Faith
Paul Copan and William Lane Craig- Contending With Christianity’s Critics: Answering New Atheists
and Other Objectors
William Lane Craig- Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics
Norman L. Geisler- Christian Apologetics
Gary Habermas and Michael R. Licona- The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus
J.P. Moreland- Consciousness and the Existence of God: A Theistic Argument
Alvin Plantinga- Warranted Christian Belief
Richard Swinburne- The Existence of God, 2nd edition
Philosophy
Simon Blackburn- Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics
Nicholas Capaldi and Miles Smit- The Art of Deception: An Introduction to Critical Thinking
Irving Copi and Carl Cohen- Introduction to Logic, 13th Edition
John Cottingham (editor)- Western Philosophy: An Anthology, 2nd Edition
Alec Fisher and Nicholas Everitt- Modern Epistemology: A New Introduction
Alonzo Fyfe- A Better Place
Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa (editors)- Metaphysics: An Anthology
Bertrand Russell- The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell- The Problems of Philosophy
Peter Singer- Practical Ethics
Erik Weilenberg- Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe
Antony Weston- A Rulebook For Arguments
Cosmology/Physics
Sean M. Carroll- From Eternity to Here: The Quest For The Ultimate Theory of Time
Paul Davies- About Time: Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution
Richard Feynman- Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics By Its Most Brilliant Teacher
Richard Feynman- Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein’s Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time
Brian Greene- The Fabric of the Cosmos
Alan Guth- The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins
Stephen Hawking- The Universe in a Nutshell
Lawrence Krauss- Atom: A Single Oxygen Molecule’s Journey From The Big Bang to Life on Earth…
And Beyond
Heinz R. Pagels- Perfect Symmetry: The Search For The Beginning of Time
Barry Parker- The Vindication of the Big Bang: Breakthroughs and Barriers
Huw Price- Time’s Arrow and Archimedes’ Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time
Martin Rees- Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others
Joseph Silk- The Big Bang, 3rd edition
Simon Singh- Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe
Lee Smolin- The Life of the Cosmos
Eric Steinhart- More Precisely
Victor Stenger- Timeless Reality: Symmetry, Simplicity, and Multiple Universes
Steven Weinberg- The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe
- Attachments:
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Reggie on -
Holy cow! That is a lot more reading than I have time for. My book queue is at about 9 or 10 at the moment and I doubt I'll get through it in the next year or two with work demands and baby on the way. But it looks like a comprehensive list of books for those wanting to do the reading and have time for it! I certainly wish I did!
Nice work, Nelson!
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Permalink Reply by Nelson on -
no worries Reg. :) i get a lot of requests for reading suggestions so i figured i'd just put together a little reading list.
if you like, rather than reading through every single one, i could pick one or two from each topic to suggest.
anyway, thanks for commenting! :)
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Permalink Reply by Nelson on
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thanks doone! i hope you'll come back here to give your impressions of any of the titles you read in the future. not only am i interested in your thoughts but it would be helpful to others.
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Permalink Reply by Nelson on
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alright. :) let's see... this is gonna be harder than deciding which ones to include in the full list! there's no way to choose just one from each category as, often, each category is a "slash", where the category itself covers multiple subjects. i will give you a much condensed version though!
for Syro-Palestinian archaeology i'd go with William Dever's Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman's The Bible Unearthed would be my next choice. it says the same things about the historicity of the OT narrative as far as archaeology can reveal it but they have a different theory of where the peoples who came to be called (and call themselves) Israelites came from. i think Dever's theory is more likely but certainly not to the extent that i would argue very much or very long with someone preferring Finkelstein and Silberman's theory.
on the historian's endeavor, important because whether or not the gospel authors intended their audience to understand the gospels as being biographical historical documents goes to their reliability as historical documents, i'd go with Bruno Gentili & Giovanni Cerri's History and Biography in Ancient Thought and, because, key to deciding whether or not an account is likely to represent history or not, and because Christian apologists like to misrepresent him, Christopher McCullagh's Justifying Historical Descriptions.
on biblical criticism there's a whole host of issues. it's impossible to pick just five, much less one. however, definitely check out Bart Ehrman's The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture to learn that copyist scribes changed the text of the NT in order to make it fit with their preconception of what the gospels should say given their political-christological-cultural views. i'd also check out Hector Avalos' The End of Biblical Criticism since he shows how biblical criticism is, to a large extent, an exercise in defending the faith and, as such, in its traditional guise, needs to be replaced with a secular study of the bible as any other ancient document (as he argues the discipline has shown despite the defenders' attempts). to grasp the Documentary Hypothesis read Richard Elliot Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible?
on historical-Jesus scholarship there've been some scholars challenging the long-held view (the last hundred years or so) that Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet. that's still the general consensus (Dale Allison, E.P. Sanders, and Paula Frederiksen all argue so effectively. see also Loftus' The Christian Delusion for a short essay that argues the position.) but it's hard to say that that's absolutely who he was given the plurality of views right now (to say nothing of the fact that history is a probabilistic science in the first place). since it is the consensus i'd recommend Bart Ehrman's Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet. he'll show you what we know and how we know it (the methodology. although, Stanley Porter's Criteria for Authenticity in Historical-Jesus Research along with Richard Carrier's forthcoming On the Historicity of Jesus Christ challenge that the methodology can lead to firm claims [early indications are that Carrier's book will propose a new methodology and apply it to the sources]). Burton Mack's notion of Jesus as a cynic sage is the least plausible to me. i include it in order to represent the current views of who Jesus was. you'll find that none of these scholars find that Jesus was the person that a straightforward reading of the gospels portray him to be. as such, it doesn't matter whether you go with Ehrman's Jesus (the consensus) or with Sanders' or Crossan's or anyone else's, none of them will tell you that the Jesus of history and the Jesus of the Christian faith are the same thing. interestingly, several of these scholars are Christians themselves and readily admit that the Jesus of history is different than the Christ of their faith.
when it comes to the resurrection you can't go wrong with either Kris Komarnitsky's Doubting Jesus’ Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box? or the edited work of Robert Price and Jeffrey Jay Lowder, The Empty Tomb. just know that these discussions can get rather scholastic as they raise objections to a straightforward reading of Paul's appearance stories by parsing Paul's letters. (don't let that scare you off though as Carrier's essay in The Empty Tomb is excellent!)
on Ancient Near East history i'd definitely go with Richard Carrier's Not the Impossible Faith. the way he tears down J.P. Holding on pretty much every page is not only great entertaining reading but the information he gives is very interesting. he shows how, contrary to what is argued by Christian apologists, in the context of first century Jerusalem, Christianity need not have been true to succeed. indeed, the cultural milieu was such that the people were ready to receive something just like what Christianity offered them and they snapped it up regardless of whether it was true because it filled that niche. also check out Henry Chadwick's The Early Church. it's short and wonderful, showing the arbitrary and, often, vicious way in which orthodox doctrine was decided. you're left with either one of three conclusions: either god didn't inspire orthodoxy, he did and he's a disgusting being for inspiring orthodoxy in such a way, or orthodox doctrine has no inspiration of any kind behind it. :) also, check out Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities. he shows that there was no such thing as a once pure and unified church that was then perverted by heretical teachings as the doctrine of Apostolic Succession would have us believe. indeed, many of the theological threads of early Christianity were "heretical" while what is referred to as orthodoxy developed later. if you're willing to continue down that road then check out Walter Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. it's fascinating and absolutely destroys the whole notion of orthodoxy and heresy but it's dry and scholarly; you really have to be interested to find it compelling reading.
on evolution, really, any of these are fantastic. Jonathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch won the Pulitzer so, yeah, that's got to be at the top of the list. Dawkins' The Greatest Show and Coyne's WEIT are both excellent. Sean Carroll's The Making of the Fittest gets into molecular biology as it concerns evolution and shows how we can see evolution take place at the level of the genes. Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish is great reading, is filled with little tidbits about how evolution's mechanism of repurposing existing resources leads to solutions we would think absurd if they had been designed, and shows how the modern synthesis of Darwin's theory can make powerful predictions, a hallmark of a successful scientific theory.
on the arguments, any of these is great and important to read. too many atheists have this idea that Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris are all that's required to understand the depth of the discussion. these titles will go a long way to doing what they do not. be warned though, they're not as easy to read as Dawkins et. al. are. my recommendations would be Gregory Dawes' Theism and Explanation- he explains how positing theism as an explanation for anything fails because of what we reasonably expect from an explanation (explanatory scope and power without ad hoc'ness). read John Loftus' Why I Became an Atheist. he goes over the common arguments and shows where and why they fail. read, too, Loftus' recent edited work, The Christian Delusion. included are essays on anthropology, psychology, neurocognition, an overview of modern biblical scholarship's findings, the resurrection, etc. on the problem of evil see A.M. Weisberger's Suffering Belief.
as for naturalism, you can't go wrong with Richard Carrier's Sense and Goodness Without God. it's been called a worldview in a box for good reason. everything is covered in an accessible, easy to read way.
on natural morality see Marc Hauser's Moral Minds and Matt Ridley's The Origin of Virtue. Hauser's book is filled with the results of fascinating psychological and neuropsychological studies that prove that morality is innate at a fundamental level. (theists will argue that this is because our morality is given to us by god- we are made in his image- but they can't answer why then our moral intuitions are so different from god's as described in the Hebrew Bible!) Ridley's book is extremely readable (as are two of his other books Genome and The Red Queen).
when it comes to psychology and neurocognition you must check out Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained. just as with Hauser's book Moral Minds, Boyer provides the results of ingenious studies that show that religious thought (as distinct from the formalized ritual that is religion) is the result of a perfectly natural hijacking of our neurocognitive template system. along these same lines is Scott Atran's In Gods We Trust. also check out Mind Wide Open by Steven Johnson so you can see how the theory of mind template system that is hijacked by religion works behinds the scenes to allow us to think the way we do.
Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained shows how consciousness is just an emergent property of the evolved human brain. accordingly, dead is the concept of mind/brain duality; a mind that exists apart from the brain- the brain is the mind and vice versa. neither can exist without the other and, as such, any notion of a consciousness or some other sense of self that could continue post-death is out as well.
when you get to the apologists you need to read, at least, Craig's Reasonable Faith and Plantiga's Warranted Christian Belief. Craig is certainly the most active and respected of Christian apologists while Plantiga's notion of warrant is found in the works of most of the others in one way or another.
philosophy- gotta be Nicholas Capaldi and Miles Smit's The Art of Deception: An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Antony Weston's A Rulebook For Arguments. learn how to properly formulate arguments and spot when they're ill-formulated. learn too how to think critically and in so doing be able to spot the holes in arguments.
finally, when it comes to cosmology and physics, you'll at least want to read Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell, Lee Smolin's The Life of the Cosmos, and Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos. find out that the universe requires no supernatural fine-tuner or first cause. there's no room even for a deistic god.
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Permalink Reply by e on -
WOW. Thanks for the education. As someone else said, if only there were enough time and money.
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Permalink Reply by Nelson on
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thanks for the comment e. as for time, eh, yeah, i hear ya. but as for money, many of these titles will be available at your local university or college library. if it's a big university then almost all of them will be (they may lag behind on the newest titles).
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Permalink Reply by jcmmanuel on -
"on the arguments, any of these is great and important to read. too many atheists have this idea that Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris are all that's required to understand the depth of the discussion."
Great point.
Good reading list, although (obviously?) meant to propagate the atheistic view. Why not include Andrew Neuberg & Mark R. Waldman's "How God Changes your Brain" for instance? They are scientific and they think Dawkins did a quite miserable (unscientific) job almost whenever he's talking outside his own domain (biology).
PS. John Beversluis has written about C.S. Lewis, not C.S. Louis.
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