Richard Brautigan

The End of Christianity

In this successor volume to his critically acclaimed first anthology, The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, John Loftus—a former minister and now a leading atheist spokesperson—has assembled a stellar group of respected scholars to continue the critique of Christianity begun in the first volume. The contributors include Victor Stenger, Robert Price, Hector Avalos, Richard Carrier, Keith Parsons, David Eller, and others. Loftus is the author of Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity. Taken together, the Loftus trilogy poses formidable challenges to claims for the rationality of the Christian faith. Amazon

Darwin's Ghost - The Origin of the Species Updated

"There are few better or more entertaining accounts of the evolutionary process in print today than Darwin's Ghost."

—The New York Times Book Review

The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good [2012]

"Competition often serves the parts better than the whole. This is true for both species evolution and human society. Only a fool would count on the invisible hand. In his usual clearheaded and lively style, Robert Frank explains how Charles Darwin thought more deeply about these issues than most contemporary economists."
—Frans de Waal, author of Our Inner Ape

Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World [2012]

Lisa Randall is Professor of Physics at Harvard University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She is one of today’s most influential theoretical physicists.

The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the world: its makeup, its evolution, and the fundamental forces that drive its operation. Knocking on Heaven’s Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and an impassioned argument for the significance of science.

Colin Howson - Objecting to God [2012]

The growth of science and a correspondingly scientific way of looking at evidence have for the last three centuries slowly been gaining ground over religious explanations of the cosmos and mankind's place in it. However, not only is secularism now under renewed attack from religious fundamentalism, but it has also been widely claimed that the scientific evidence itself points strongly to a universe deliberately fine-tuned for life to evolve in it. In addition, certain aspects of human life, like consciousness and the ability to recognise the existence of universal moral standards, seem completely resistant to evolutionary explanation. 

In this book Colin Howson analyses in detail the evidence which is claimed to support belief in God's existence and argues that the claim is not well-founded. Moreover, there is very compelling evidence that an all-powerful, all-knowing God not only does not exist but cannot exist, a conclusion both surprising and provocative.

GOD: The Failed Hypothesis [2008]

"Darwin chased God out of his old haunts in biology, and he scurried for safety down the rabbit hole of physics. The laws and constants of the universe, we were told, are too good to be true: a setup, carefully tuned to allow the eventual evolution of life. It needed a good physicist to show us the fallacy, and Victor Stenger lucidly does so. The faithful won't change their minds, of course (that is what faith means), but Victor Stenger drives a pack of energetic ferrets down the last major bolt hole and God is running out of refuges in which to hide. I learned an enormous amount from this splendid book."
—Richard Dawkins

This Will Make You Smarter [2012]

What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit? This is the question John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org, posed to the world’s most influential thinkers. Their visionary answers flow from the frontiers of psychology, philosophy, economics, physics, sociology, and more. Surprising and enlightening, these insights will revolutionize the way you think about yourself and the world. 

Topics:

Richard Dawkins on experimentation 

Sam Harris on the flow of thought 

Lawrence Krauss on living with uncertainty 

Daniel C. Dennett on benefiting from cycles 

Steven Pinker on win-win negotiating 

V. S. Ramachandran on paradigm shifts 

Matt Ridley on tapping collective intelligence 

J. Craig Venter on the multiple possible origins of life 

Brian Eno on “ecological vision” 

Daniel Kahneman on the “focusing illusion” 

Jonah Lehrer on controlling attention 

Aubrey De Grey on conquering our fear of the unknown 

Martin Seligman on the ingredients of well-being 

Nicholas Carr on managing “cognitive load” 

Jaron Lanier on resisting delusion 

Frank Wilczek on the brain’s hidden layers 

Clay Shirky on the “80/20 rule” 

Daniel Goleman on understanding our connection to the natural world 

John McWhorter on path dependence 

Lisa Randall on effective theorizing 

Richard Thaler on rooting out false concepts 

Helen Fisher on temperament