Category: Reviews

The Unbelievers: The Evolution of Modern Atheism, by S.T. Joshi (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2011, ISBN 978-1-61614-236-0) 300 pp. Paper, $19. Since the Four (or, depending how you count, Five) Horsemen burst onto the best-seller lists, starting with Sam Harris’s The End of Faith (2004), it has seemed that everyone is talking about atheism. How …

Multi-Secularism: A New Agenda, by Paul Kurtz (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2010, ISBN 9781412814195) 263 pp. Cloth $39.95. Humanism, like religion, is a human-made concept, and humanists are aware of and appreciate this fact. Books on humanism can be separated into three categories: (1) a descriptive (historical or systematic) outline of humanism (e.g., Richard …

Investigating Christian Privilege and Religious Oppression in the United States, edited by Warren J. Blumenfeld, Khyati Y. Joshi, and Ellen E. Fairchild (Rotterdam/Taipei: Sense Publishers, 2009, I SBN 978-90-8790-677-1 [cloth], 978-90-8790-676-4 [paper]). 184 pp. Cloth $99; paper $39. Remember consciousness-raising? Dismissing it as a trapping of the 1960s is too glib. It is the tool …

An Enlightened Philosophy: Can an Atheist Believe Anything?, by Geoff Crocker (Hampshire, U.K.: O Books, 2011, ISBN 978-1-8-84694-424-6) 132 pp. Paper $13.95. Author Geoff Crocker is, like this reviewer, an atheist and former evangelical Christian. Perhaps as a result of religious nostalgia, Crocker wants to supplement reductionistic materialism with a depth derived from biblical mythology …

Fading Faith: The Rise of the Secular Age, by James A. Haught (Cranford, N.J.: Gustav Broukal Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1-57884-009-0) 167 pp. Paper, $16.00. Jim Haught, no stranger to readers of this journal, is the longtime editor of the Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, a former press aide to the late Senator Robert Byrd, and …

Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism, by Bernard Schweizer (New York: Oxford Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-975138-9) 256 pp. Cloth $29.95. Modern theorists often pose a dichotomy of belief as “faith versus science,” but Bernard Schweizer’s book, Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism, reminds us that the situation is really more complicated. Before reviewing …

Saving Freedom: We Can Stop America’s Slide into Socialism, by Jim DeMint (Nashville, Tenn.: Fidelis Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8054-4957-0) 304 pp. Cloth $26.99. To Save America: Stoping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine, by Newt Gingrich (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2010, ISBN 978-1-59698-596-4) 356 pp. Cloth $18.95. If crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, …

C Street:The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy, by Jeff Sharlet (New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2010, ISBN 978-0-316-09107-7) 352 pp. Cloth $26.99. C Street is the continuation of The Family:The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (reviewed in FI, February/March 2010). Soon after The Family came out, there were sensational subsequent developments. …

The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, by Marci McDonald (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2010, ISBN 978-0-307-35646-8) 432 pp. Cloth $27. The problematic intersection of religion and politics is much more on the surface of public life south of the U.S.–Canada border than it is to the north, so much so that …

Christmas—Philosophy for Everyone: Better Than a Lump of Coal, edited by Scott C. Lowe (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, ISBN 1-4443-3090-8) 352 pp. Paper $19.95. Philosophy for Everyone is an Anglo-American book series “meant to promote philosophical reflection on everyday activities.” Series editor Fritz Allhoff has assembled nontechnical but incisive volumes on topics including beer, wine, …

You cant get The Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back by Charles Pellegrino at a bookstore. Amazon has used copies at ridiculous prices. A library might have it; I have a review copy. The publisher, according to the author, has recalled most copies not to the warehouse but for pulping and recycling (I …

The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism, by Paul Cliteur (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, ISBN 978-1-4443-3521-7) 328 pp. Paper $29.95. Secularism is one of those concepts that is widely used without a clear notion of what it is. Dutch humanist philosopher Paul Cliteur’s The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism …

Cognitive scientist George Lakoff, writing in his 2004 book Don’t Think of an Elephant, attacked George W. Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education “refor m” legislation. NCLB instituted a regime of testing, not only of students but also of schools. “Failing” schools could have their funding cut back. Wrote Lakoff: “Less funding in …

 The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death, and Atheism, by Mary Eberstadt (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1-58617-431-6) 148 pp. Paper $13.95. Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity, by S.E. Cupp (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010, ISBN 978-1-4391-7316-9) 269 pp. Cloth $24.00. Shortly after the 1994 United Nations …

50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk (Chichester, U.K.: Publisher, 2009, cloth ISBN 978-1-4051-9045-9) and paper 978-1-4051-9046-6) 346 pp. Cloth $69.25. Paper $26. 95. “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God,” Psalms declares and adds, “They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, …

In the Name of God: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Ethics and Violence, by John Teehan (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, ISBN 978-1-4051-8381-9) 258 pp. Paper $16.47. Evolutionary and cognitive psychology are now at the forefront of explaining the origin and function of human morality. In this book, In the Name of God: The Evolutionary Origins …

The Evolution of God, by Robert Wright (New York: Little, Brown, & Co., 2009, ISBN 978-0-3167-3491-2) 576 pp. Cloth $22.99. . . . There is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die And specious stuff that says no …

The Case for God, by Karen Armstrong (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, ISBN 978-0-307-26918-8) 406 pp. Cloth $27.95. Karen Armstrong vigorously advocates silence as the best means for understanding God. And in The Case for God, she uses more than three hundred pages of chatty text to prove her point. The title of Armstrong’s …

God and His Demons, by Michael Parenti (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2010, ISBN 978-1-61614-177-6) 281 pp. Cloth $25.00. Michael Parenti is a Yale-educated political scientist whose works have been translated into almost twenty languages. His résumé bristles with awards and, during his early teaching career, prestigious grants. He is the author of more than twenty …

The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures, by Nicholas Wade (New York: Penguin, 2009, ISBN 978-1-59420-228-5) 310 pp. Cloth $29.95. Recently, Pope Benedict XVI told his followers and other Christians, “While we are on the path towards full communion, we are called to offer a shared witness against the ever more complex …

Creation, directed by Jon Amiel. 2010. Screenplay by John Collee based on the biography by Randal Keynes. 108 minutes. The image most people have of Charles Darwin is that of an old man with a long white beard sitting in a chair, perhaps lost in contemplation about the common ancestry between apes and humans. That’s …

Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, by John W. Loftus (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2008, ISBN 978-1-59102-592-4) 428 pp. Paper $19.95. John W. Loftus was a Church of Christ minister among whose mentors was William Lane Craig, America’s best-known Christian apologist debater. For years, Loftus specialized in marshaling rational argumentation to …

W.E.B. Du Bois: Toward Agnosticism 1868–1934, by Brian L. Johnson (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008, ISBN 13: 978-0-7425-6449-7) 141 pp. Cloth $65.00. W. E.B. Du Bois was one of the most important intellectuals and activists of the twentieth century. He helped establish the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and served as …

The Death of Conservatism, by Sam Tanenhaus (New York: Random House, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4000-6884-5) 123 pp. Cloth $17.00. In The Death of Conservatism, Sam Tanenhaus, editor of The New York Times Book Review and the Times’ “Week in Review” section, has given us a useful analysis of the evolution of the conservative movement in the …

Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, by Barbara Ehrenreich (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8050-8749-9) 256 pp. Cloth $23.00. Barbara Ehrenreich dedicates her latest book, Bright-sided, “To complainers everywhere,” entreating them to “Turn up the volume!” But the book that follows this emphatic call to arms is far from …

Good without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe, by Greg M. Epstein (New York: HarperCollins, 2009, ISBN 978-0-06-167011-4) 250 pp. Cloth $25.99. Nonreligious Americans divide into multiple tribes that sometimes overlap yet are undeniably distinct. By their spokespeople we may know them: atheists have seldom wanted for charismatic authors. Madalyn Murray O’Hair was …

The Family—The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, by Jeff Sharlet (New York: Harper Perennial Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-06-56005-8) 387 pp. Paper $15.95. “The Fami ly” of the title of this book is not an organization familiar to most Americans, and its almost invisible presence (outside of political power circles) makes assessing its …

36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (New York: Random House, 2010, ISBN 978-0-307-3-37890-x) 400 pp. Cloth $27.95. There’s an old joke about two behaviorist psychologists in bed. After sex, one turns to the other and asks, “Was it as good for me as it was for …

Icons of Unbelief: Atheists, Agnostics, and Secularists, edited by S.T. Joshi (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-313-34759-7) 463 pp. Cloth $75.00.   The Faith of Scientists in Their Own Words, edited with commentary by Nancy K. Frankenberry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008, ISBN: 978-0-691-13487-1) 523 pp. Cloth $29.95.   Here are two books …

Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion, by Stuart A. Kauffman (New York: Basic Books, 2008, ISBN 978-0-46500300-6) 320 pp. Cloth $27.00. Science and religion are bicameral lawmakers that mathematical biologist and philosopher Stuart Kauffman would prefer to harmonize. Science, despite its stunning successes, can never unify all laws of nature. …

What Is Man? And Other Irreverent Essays by Mark Twain, edited by S.T. Joshi (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2009, ISBN 978-1-59102-685-3) 230 pp. Paper $16.97. Many commentators have asserted that Mark Twain was essentially a theist who merely denounced elements of religion that failed to live up to its professed ideals. S.T. Joshi, editor of …

W.K. Clifford and “The Ethics of Belief,” by Timothy J. Madigan (Newcastle, U.K.: Cambridge, 2009, ISBN 1-84718-503-7) 202 pp. Cloth $29.99. “It is wrong, always and everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything for insufficient evidence.” Many secular humanists will recognize on sight the breathtakingly skeptical credo of William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879), short-lived wunderkind of …

Darwin: A Life in Poems, by Ruth Padel (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2009, ISBN 978-0-307-27239-3) 160 pp. Cloth $26.00. Not only does Ruth Padel’s Darwin: A Life in Poems hitch its wagon to the star of the 2009 Darwin bicentennial, but its poetry sprouts within the burgeoning field of organics as well. In shaping …

Forced into Faith: How Religion Abuses Children’s Rights, by Innaiah Narisetti (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2009, ISBN 9778-1-59102-606-8) 126 pp. Paper $9.98. “Children should be brought up without allowing religion to influence them. . . . Children should not inherit religion. . . . Superstitions should not be taught under any circumstances.” These quotations summarize …

Is Goodness without God Good Enough? Edited by Robert K. Garcia & Nathan L. King (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009, ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-5171-8) 220 pp. Paper $24.95. For years, theists have maintained that it is impossible to be good without a belief in God. However, when faced with examples of nonbelievers such as Robert Green …

Playing Gods: The Board Game of Divine Domination. Created by Benjamin Radford. Available at www.PlayingGods.com. Playing Gods (created by Benjamin Radford, managing editor of our sister journal, Skeptical Inquirer) is a strategy game, perhaps like a smaller version of Risk, except you control the pieces in the manner of a jealous god rather than a …

Living Without God: New Directions for Atheists, Agnostics, Secularists and the Undecided, by Ronald Aronson (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2008, ISBN 1593761600) 288 pp. Cloth $25.00. In Declining World Order, Richard Falk claims that “only inclusivist religion, with a sense of the sacredness of every human being, can provide the political foundation in this global setting for …

Quantum Gods, by Victor J. Stenger (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2009, ISBN 978-1-59-02-713-3) 264 pp. Cloth $26.98. One of the enduring debates between atheists and theologians concerns the presence or absence of scientific evidence for the existence of a deity. While the vast majority of the scientific community would probably assert there is no reliable …

Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity, and the ACLU, by Wendy Kaminer (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 2009, ISBN 978-080704430-8) 160 pp. Cloth $24.95. Beginning in 2003, Wendy Kaminer accuses, the venerable American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lost its way. Awash in financial support since 9/11 and led by charismatic executive director Anthony Romero, the ACLU voluntarily agreed …

Pessimism to Realistic Hope: A Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment Program for Depression and Self-Esteem, by Tony Picchioni (Baltimore: PublishAmerica, 2008, ISBN 1-60563-894-3) 137 pp. Paper $24.95. For thirty years, Dr. Tony Picchioni has worked in the field of therapy, conflict resolution, and mediation. He is also chair of the Department of Human Development at Southern Methodist University …