Category: Reviews

Review of Why I Left / Why I Stayed: Conversations on Christianity Between an Evangelical Father and His Humanist Son, by Tony Campolo and Bart Campolo.

Review of: Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation

Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower: Finding Answers in Jesus for Those Who Don’t Believe, by Tom Krattenmaker (New York: Convergent, 2016, ISBN 978-1-101-90642-2) 245 pp. Hardcover, $25.00. Despite the title, Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower, this book is classified by the publisher on the dust jacket as “Religion-Spiritual,” and it is. One wonders …

“No matter how committed you are to logic and evidence, you cannot escape yourself, and, yes, this means that there is always a subjective
element to our thinking.”

“Here the authors—distinguished scholars from a wide range of fields—examine how the Christian faith
fits within our current scientific understanding of the cosmos.”

Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction, by Julie J. Ingersoll (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2015, ISBN 9780199913787). Endnotes, bibli­ography. 320 pp. Hardcover, $29.95. The author examines a surprisingly little-noticed segment of the Christian Right—the teachings of theologian R. J. Rushdoony and his followers, who are largely responsible for the rise …

“There is a Muslim tradition of religious skepticism, particularly among intellectuals with a modern education.”

Under Tiberius, by Nick Tosches (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2015, ISBN 978-0316405669). 336 pp. Hardcover, $26.00. As Under Tiberius draws to a close, its narrator, Gaius Fulvius Falconius, knows he is dying. Bedridden and in pain, Falconius holds no hope for an afterlife. And though he sees the world that he is about to …

“Why a cartoon
history of humanism? The obvious answer, roughly put, is
Why not?’”

“Woodwell’s conclusions on our global crisis are considered and carefully detailed in this concise (if often repetitious) summation of a life’s work.”

“Problems and questions keep mounting. Why in the [Grand Canyon] is there no mixing of land and marine animals as should have occurred in the turbulence of a massive flood?”

“… The book is not especially systematic, reading more like a
collection of diverse, thematically linked articles than a systematic effort to define,
iscuss, and defend naturalism of any kind.”

Whatever the future, the history of this issue presents yet another example of religion’s continual reliance on secular forces to show it the way.

“The task Rome’s greatest prose stylist set himself in De Senectute was to find reasons to stop complaining, to consent to aging, and to sing its virtues.”

Short reviews of books by Gene Weingarten, Stephen Van Eck, Monte Wolverton, Guy P. Harrison, John
W. Lof­­tus, Lee McIntyre, and Elicka Peterson Sparks.

“Beneath Jacoby’s gaze, each conversion proves exp
licable without treating the
‘spiritual’ matters—often thought central to any conversion experience—as in any way causally significant.”

“We are afraid that science has shown, or will soon show, that we can’t be what we want to be.”—Daniel Dennett

“With measured tones and expert scholarship, Mary Ziegler demonstrates that almost everything most of us think we know about Roe and its consequences is incorrect.”

Brief reviews from Free Inquiry Vol. 36, No. 4.

“. . . LeDrew’s attempts to weave a sweeping, if somewhat conspiratorial, analysis of it all too often founder, usually on
the rocks of his incomplete knowledge of the movement’s nineteenth- and twentieth-
century history.”

“For Baggini, the idea of free will is best understood by listening to those for whom the issue is a daily, vital reality.”

“Unfortunately, most environmental-conservation charities want nothing to do with
overpopulation concerns.”

A review of Fighting God: An Atheist Manifesto for a Religious World, by David Silverman.

A review of Creating Change Through Humanism, by Roy Speckhardt.

A review of The Faith of a Heretic, by Walter Kaufmann.

A review of Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World, by Tim Whitmarsh.

A review of What If I’m a(n) Atheist? A Teen’s Guide to Exploring a Life Without Religion, by David Seidman.

A review of Madison’s Music: On Reading the First Amendment, by Burt Neuborne.

A review of Revolutionary Ideas: The Rights of Man to Robespierre, by Jonathan Israel.

A review of Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander, M.D.

A review of Animal Liberation and Atheism: Dismantling the Procrustean Bed, by Kim Socha.

A review of Living in the Crosshairs: The Untold Stories of Anti-Abortion Terrorism, by David S. Cohen and Krysten Connon.

A review of No Longer on Pedestals, by Carol A. Kuhnert.

A review of Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution, by Mona Eltahawy.

A review of Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding, by Steven K. Green.

A review of How God Works: A Logical Inquiry on Faith, by Marshall Brain.

Published before the Islamic attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo, this book takes on even greater relevance in the massacre’s wake.

Phil Ryan’s new book, After the New Atheist Debate, is an invitation to move past the vitriol and to open a dialogue between believers and nonbelievers.

A review of The Necessity of Secularism: Why God Can’t Tell Us What to Do, by Ronald A. Lindsay.

A review of Life After Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism, by Philip Kitcher.