A Skeptic's Reading List

(or "Christmas gift ideas for the skeptic on your list"!)

By Tania K ~

Up until a few years ago, I thought that I would always wear the "Christian" label. I never doubted that all the components of my religious faith would be a huge part of my life until, well, the Lord called me Home. When that faith began slipping away from me, my world felt like it was shattering. I was fortunate enough to have a co-worker, a hairdresser, a landlord, and a bunch of other people who listened to my angst, who calmed me down, who made me realize that I was going to be okay. There were also some very helpful websites (like this one!!) and many videos on Youtube.

And there were the books...oh, there were many, many books. I would visit the library's website and order books that I never imagined I'd ever read. I'd stay up late at night, reading, reading, reading. I'd slip the covers off the books (so that nobody could see the supposedly "bad" titles) and sit in Tim Hortons, consuming glazed cinnamon rolls and coffee and trying to figure out what happens now?

Here is a list of books that I've read and loved during the last several years. Some of them helped me as I began navigating life away from my religious faith. Some opened my eyes to concepts in psychology that were completely new to me. Lately, I've been reading about the absolutely fascinating events of history -- 100 years ago, 5000 years ago, 541 million years ago, 13.8 billion years ago. And of course, some Mitch Albom and some hippos helped lighten the load.

Happy reading to all!

Books about doubting your religious faith, leaving your faith, and starting over

Faith Shift: finding your way forward when everything you believe is coming apart -- Kathy Escobar

Still: notes on a mid-faith crisis -- Lauren Winner

When We Were on Fire: a memoir of consuming faith, tangled love, and starting over -- Addie Zierman

Girl at the End of the World: my escape from fundamentalism in search of faith with a future -- Elizabeth Esther

The Divinity of Doubt: the God question -- Vincent Bugliosi

Spiritual Envy: an agnostic's quest -- Michael Krasny

Faitheist: how an atheist found common ground with the religious -- Chris Stedman

Books about leading a fulfilling life outside of religion

With or Without God: why the way we live is more important than what we believe -- Gretta Vosper

Religion for Atheists: a non-believer's guide to the uses of religion -- Alain de Botton

The Good Book: A humanist/secular bible -- A.C. Grayling

Humour

Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates: using philosophy (and jokes!) to explain life, death, the afterlife, and everything in between -- Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein

Psychology

The Belief Instinct: the psychology of souls, destiny, and the meaning of life -- Jesse Bering

History

Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies -- Jared Diamond

Sapiens: a brief history of humankind -- Yuval Noah Harari

Mankind: the story of all of us -- Pamela Toler

A Short History of Progress -- Ronald Wright

Miscellaneous

Mom, Dad, I'm an Atheist: the guide to coming out as a non-believer -- David G. McAfee

Have a Little Faith: a true story -- Mitch Albom

Comments

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~ S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden – Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

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