Here are 100 books that Freethunk fans have personally recommended if you like
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I was raised to be a Roman Catholic. I was not raised to think very deeply, but I did anyway. Eventually. When I was around fifteen, I started asking questions that irritated my parents. They referred me to our priest. Who basically patted me on the head and showed me the door. When the Pope said 'no contraception,' the shit really hit the fan. I haven't looked back. And I'm quite vocal about it because, damn it, religious beliefs and religions do damage, not the least of which involves hurting and killing people. (As for being funny, that's just icing on the cake.)
I confess I'm more attracted to Morrow's themes than his actual writing, but still. Towing Jehovahis premised on God having died and his corpse needs to be towed to the Arctic for preservation. It's part of a trilogy (the second and third books are titled Blameless in Abaddonand The Eternal Footman); to be honest, I don't remember reading the other two, but I must have... Also worth mentioning is Morrow's Bible Stories for Adults. All irreverent. All funny in a dark way.
On his 50th birthday, Anthony Van Horne meets the despondent angel Raphael, who tells him that God is dead, his body in the sea; and that Van Horne must captain the supertanker that will now tow the two-mile-long divine corpse northwards through the Atlantic. By the author of "City of Truth".
In my first career as an actress, I often got cast as the “comic relief” in more serious films and plays. I cut my acting chops on improv comedy before getting my BFA in drama from NYU and performing in everything from Shakespeare to Seinfeld. I wrote and performed in stage shows at Disneyland and Disney World and screamed myself hoarse in B-horror films. As an author, I like to write about serious topics but I just can’t help being funny. I received my MFA from Antioch University and have had over 30 short stories and essays published. While I read voraciously (and genre-indiscriminately), my favorite books are often “darkly comedic” or “funny yet poignant.”
Although Moore is one of my favorite authors, most of his books are not exactly about austere topics. His brand of absurdism features outlandish characters such as demons, vampires, stupid angels, tricksters, and lustful sea beasts. Yet Moore writes with a superlative intelligence that never disappoints me. This novel was an easy pick for my list. In it, Moore retells the story of Christ with a paradoxically reverent irreverence. It’s well-researched and details facts about Eastern religious traditions and Roman history as well Biblical events. I’ve recommended this book to so many people. And only a few of them were deeply offended. :-)
The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years - except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in this divinely hilarious, yet heartfelt work 'reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams' (Philadelphia Inquirer). Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes, Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the…
I was raised to be a Roman Catholic. I was not raised to think very deeply, but I did anyway. Eventually. When I was around fifteen, I started asking questions that irritated my parents. They referred me to our priest. Who basically patted me on the head and showed me the door. When the Pope said 'no contraception,' the shit really hit the fan. I haven't looked back. And I'm quite vocal about it because, damn it, religious beliefs and religions do damage, not the least of which involves hurting and killing people. (As for being funny, that's just icing on the cake.)
Published by the American Atheist Press, this isn't really a funny book, but since contradictions and absurdities figure prominently throughout the book, I'm listing it here. Next time anyonestarts to defend their faith, give them a copy of this book. I'm sure some of what's in my own book was inspired by this book.
No bible-thumping missionary will ever be safe on your doorstep again! This book includes devastating evidence needed to prove the "Holy Bible" is actually wholly babble.
I was raised to be a Roman Catholic. I was not raised to think very deeply, but I did anyway. Eventually. When I was around fifteen, I started asking questions that irritated my parents. They referred me to our priest. Who basically patted me on the head and showed me the door. When the Pope said 'no contraception,' the shit really hit the fan. I haven't looked back. And I'm quite vocal about it because, damn it, religious beliefs and religions do damage, not the least of which involves hurting and killing people. (As for being funny, that's just icing on the cake.)
Many people will be familiar with Monty Python’s The Life of Brian – the movie. But the screenplay has actually been published as a book! Available online for less than twenty bucks! So you can have a permanent reference for all your favourite lines! And if by chance you haven’t heard of it, The Life of Brian has to be on any list about poking fun at religion and gods. To this day, whenever I think of "Always look on the bright side...," I burst into giggles.
When The Life of Brian was first released in 1979 it was hailed by most as Monty Python's finest parody and denounced by a few as the most blasphemous film of all time. With its unforgettable song, 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life', and its infinitely quotable script The Life of Brian has since gone on to become an enduring cult classic.
That moment when you realize, whew, you’ve survived the catastrophe, but the greater challenge lies ahead? That intrigues me. Maybe that’s because my grandmother was struck by a Vespa in Italy when I was five years old, and we traveled home by ship through a hurricane that rocked much of the East Coast. Stories about “What’s next?” and “How do we push the rubble away?” are my go-to now, as they were during the years I worked as a journalist, first as a reporter, then for much longer as an editor. After my husband’s death in 2011, clearing the rubble yielded the first two installments of my vampire trilogy.
A little of me was dying every day from the stress of a job I excelled at. So I loved this book’s premise that immortality brings its own peculiar kind of stress.
I, too, have wanted to negotiate with God to save someone or something I believed in. I sometimes feel a bad bargain is better than none at all. Naturally, I found it so much more enjoyable to read about two people who actually make that deal with God to save a loved one, only to be fated to life everlasting, constantly veering toward and away from each other in an existence that’s always changing but never-ending.
With this book, I gained another perspective on being careful what you wish for.
Rachel's current troubles are only the latest in a litany spanning dozens of countries, scores of marriages, hundreds of children and 2,000 years. Only one person shares her immortality: an illicit lover who pursues her through the ages. But when her children develop technologies that could change her fate, Rachel must find a way out. From ancient religion to the scientific frontier, Dara Horn pits our efforts to make life last against the deeper challenge of making life worth living.
My interest in Islam was kindled when I lived in Eritrea, East Africa as a teenager, and in my youth fell in love with the mystical Sufi tradition. I went on to live in the Muslim world for over a decade, making many dear friends whose kindness overwhelmed me. I studied the Qur’an in Cairo and exploring various corners of Muslim civilization, including in India. I have taught Islam and Middle East History for nearly 40 years at the University of Michigan and devoted myself to writing several books and many essays on Islam. For geopolitical reasons, the subject often gets a bad rap these days, but it is an impressive religion that produced a beautiful, intricate civilization. I hope you enjoy these books about it.
Aslan writes engagingly and urgently about Islamic history from a contemporary Muslim-American perspective. He grounds his account in academic scholarship but does not let it overshadow the excitement of the rise of a new world civilization. Aslan attends to the potential within Islam for democracy and for greater rights for women and rejects the bigotted “clash of civilizations” model that sees Muslims as always outsiders in Western society.
Much of the Muslim faith remains largely unknown and misunderstood in the West. To many in the west, Islam means jihad, veiled women and suicide bombers. Yet these represent only fringe elements of the world's fastest growing religion. While there have been a number of successful books on the topic of Islamic history - from Karen Armstrong's Islam: A Brief History to Bernard Lewis's The Crises of Islam, there is surprisingly no book for a popular audience about Islam as a religion, let alone one by an author from an Islamic background. No God But God fills that gap, addressing…
I’ve always believed a story should be world changing and epic on some level. Perhaps on a personal level, perhaps in the actual sense of world changing. Whether it’s for my readers of a short story, the players in a tabletop role playing game I’m running, or the arc of a novel. Some of these books help form that idea, and others supported it later in my life. I love it when a tale shakes my world—in addition to the world of the characters—and makes me question what I believe. With a doctorate in metaphysics and a love of fantasy and sci-fi, I’m always looking for ways to shake up my worldview!
Another series, and this is because the series covers a single story. The 1980s didn’t like huge books very much, so a story was often split into the much more economical (space-wise and financially) trilogy. This story shows a future that regressed into old, sustainable technology because we learned how to get to the stars and had to conserve our resources. It also follows one man who is sent to a planet to find out which religions god has appeared on that world. It’s an incredible blend of science, society, and character that has become a book I’ve recommended my entire life.
I’m just an everyday person. I don’t have a fancy title or lots of degrees, but I do have experience being close to God and a never-ending quest to know Him more. His love is so good that it absolutely must be shared. So if I, in all of my ordinariness, can learn extraordinary sacred things, then I can bring others along the journey, too. His presence in my heartaches, struggles, joy, and adventures has sustained my life, and I don’t know any credential that could testify any clearer that a journey with God is worth taking.
I read this book with my journal nearby, and it was heart-changing.
It’s refreshing to have time solely focused on God without trying to figure out how to apply Scripture to my life as if He was a puzzle piece that I try to fit into place. None Like Him examines ten descriptions of God, and the more we get to know Him, the closer we feel.
This exploration of ten attributes that belong to God alone reminds us of why our limits are a good thing in light of God's limitlessness-celebrating the freedom that comes from letting God be God.
Religion and horror have long appeared to me like the double helix of some mysterious, transcendental strand of DNA. This relationship has been lived out in my own life. I am simultaneously an author of supernatural horror stories, a critic and scholar of the field, and a student of religion and philosophy with a master’s in religious studies, a Ph.D. in leadership studies, and a lifetime of involvement in various Christian churches. As both a writer and a human being, I hold a special focus on the mutual implications of religion, horror, and creativity, which all seem to arise from and lead back to the same ultimate mystery.
This book is a skeleton key for understanding the fundamental relationship between religion, horror, and the supernatural. Otto was a German theologian and scholar of religions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and in this, his most famous book, he set out to interrogate the nature of holiness, understood not primarily as supernatural moral goodness but as the feeling of numinous dread that accompanies the supernatural, and that “first begins to stir in the feeling of ‘something uncanny, ‘ ‘eerie,’ or ‘weird.’” He explicitly states that it was this emotion in the mind of early humans that gave rise not only to religion but to the cultural traditions of ghost stories and horror tales. If you read only one book on religion and horror, make it this one.
"It is essential to every theistic conception of God, and most of all to the Christian, that it designates and precisely characterizes Deity by the attributes Spirit, Reason, Purpose, Good Will, Supreme Power, Unity, Selfhood. The nature of God is thus thought of by analogy with our human nature of reason and personality; only, whereas in ourselves we are aware of this as qualified by restriction and limitation, as applied to God the attributes we use are 'completed', i.e. thought as absolute and unqualified. Now all these attributes constitute clear and definite concepts: they can be grasped by the intellect;…
I’m a seeker and fascinated by spirituality. Books were among some of my best friends growing up and I’ve been reading and writing for as long as I can remember. I started my business Write On Creative in 2003 and have helped mission-driven business owners, entrepreneurs, and corporate leaders craft their messages, create marketing messages with integrity, and develop strategies to get their work out into the world. I firmly believe that business is personal so it makes sense that my first book released via the Write On Creative Publishing imprint is my story of healing with love. I live in magical, Ashland, Oregon and love spending time in nature.
While I am a big fan of the entire body of work that Neale Donald Walsch has produced, I highly recommend What God Said.
This book encapsulates the 25 core messages from the Conversations With God series and anchors in the truth that God is not at all what many organizations claim. It was, quite honestly, difficult to pick just one book by Neale.
A couple of other favorites are God's Message to the World, You’ve Got Me All Wrong, and The God Solution: The Power of Pure Love. All of his books are must-reads for anyone who wants to deepen their relationship with God in a new way.
I’ve had the great honor of attending a spiritual retreat hosted by Neal and that was even more life-changing. I’m also incredibly grateful that Neale read my book Spiritual Sugar and provided a beautiful afterword that brought me to tears.
Inspired by his nine-book Conversations with God series, many people have asked Neale Donald Walsch to find a way to deliver the most essential pieces of God’s message to us in a more succinct way.
The result is a concise text detailing and expanding just what we need to know about life and how to live it. Bringing their many conversations over the years into sharper focus than ever before, Walsch in What God Said encourages readers to cast aside religious and cultural trappings.…
