Here are 12 books that Theism and Humanism fans have personally recommended if you like
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I have been intrigued by science since childhood, especially astronomy, and I became a university academic, teaching physics to students and researching in experiments with elementary particles. I was raised in a Christian family and have maintained my faith. I don’t find any real issues with science–it shows how clever God was in creating the universe! At the same time, I know many people have difficulties in this area. My book was written to help them, and I think the recommended books will help them, too.
I see this as an outstanding explanation of why the theory of evolution and the Biblical story of creation are compatible, contrary to what many believe. No, we don’t have to choose, we should have both!
Dr Alexander is an expert biologist and a committed Christian, and he presents the theory of evolution and the story of life on Earth well from a scientific point of view. He then shows how the Biblical account can very reasonably be read in a faithful way that fits in with modern knowledge.
Many people have problems in this area, and I think they can get much help from this book, even though it is a bit technical in places.
Creation or Evolution helps you make sense of the complex common ground between the biblical doctrine of creation and the scientific evidence behind the theory of evolutionary.
With the guidance of neuroscientist Denis Alexander - a passionate believer in both the Bible and science, you can build a fully integrated understanding of the tricky questions that have divided so many for too long.
This book combines the latest genetic research with an exploration of what we mean by creation and evolution to overcome the common scientific and religious objections to each. He addresses the argument that evolution is atheistic and…
I have been intrigued by science since childhood, especially astronomy, and I became a university academic, teaching physics to students and researching in experiments with elementary particles. I was raised in a Christian family and have maintained my faith. I don’t find any real issues with science–it shows how clever God was in creating the universe! At the same time, I know many people have difficulties in this area. My book was written to help them, and I think the recommended books will help them, too.
I always feel that personal stories are the best recommendation for what people believe. Dan Graves gives us many prominent scientists who were at the same time sincere Christian believers.
They lived over many centuries and worked in various scientific fields, making some of the most important discoveries. Some were Catholics; some were protestants. I think this is a very readable book, and if anyone ever tries to say that a good scientist can’t be a Christian or the other way around, it provides complete proof that this is untrue.
I have been intrigued by science since childhood, especially astronomy, and I became a university academic, teaching physics to students and researching in experiments with elementary particles. I was raised in a Christian family and have maintained my faith. I don’t find any real issues with science–it shows how clever God was in creating the universe! At the same time, I know many people have difficulties in this area. My book was written to help them, and I think the recommended books will help them, too.
We are still living in the aftermath of the myth that before the age of modern science, people believed that the Earth was flat. I was taken by surprise to find how utterly mistaken this is and that nineteenth-century writers were the ones who propagated this false idea. It is usually coupled with the notion that in former times, folk believed both in a flat earth and in religion, but that nowadays, people believe in neither.
This is all nonsense, and I was delighted to read the proper historical story in this excellently written book. Christopher Columbus and his associates never believed that the Earth was flat!
Neither Christopher Columbus nor his contemporaries thought the earth was flat. Yet this curious illusion persists today, firmly established with the help of the media, textbooks, teachers-even noted historians. Inventing the Flat Earth is Russell's attempt to set the record straight. He begins with a discussion of geographical knowledge in the Middle Ages, examining what Columbus and his contemporaries actually did believe, and then moves to a look at how the error was first propagated in the 1820s and 1830s and then snowballed to outrageous proportions by the late 19th century. But perhaps the most intriguing focus of the book…
I have been intrigued by science since childhood, especially astronomy, and I became a university academic, teaching physics to students and researching in experiments with elementary particles. I was raised in a Christian family and have maintained my faith. I don’t find any real issues with science–it shows how clever God was in creating the universe! At the same time, I know many people have difficulties in this area. My book was written to help them, and I think the recommended books will help them, too.
Alister McGrath is one of the most readable authors on difficult areas. Here, he deals with some very general issues of religious faith in a scientific age and addresses the personal side of the equation.
Religion won’t go away, and McGrath tells us how and why this is so, bringing in some important philosophical questions that he explains in a very down-to-earth way. Whether we realize it or not, we all have a personal philosophy, and science and faith can help each other. I found it hard to put this book down.
We just can't stop talking about the big questions around science and faith. They haven't gone away, as some predicted they might; in fact, we seem to talk about them more than ever. Far from being a spent force, religion continues to grow around the world. Meanwhile, Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists argue that religion is at war with science - and that we have to choose between them.
It's time to consider a different way of looking at these two great cultural forces. What if science and faith might enrich each other? What if they can together give…
Scotland’s greatest poet since Burns, Hugh MacDiarmid, said that there were no traditions in writing, only precedents. He was thinking that, were traditions followed, adhered to, applauded, and praised, and prized too highly, then the danger of slavish repetition rather than creative divergence was too high. We need the mad moments, when all bets are off and something truly unpredictable will happen. I write with Scots modernist, postmodernist, and experimental precedents in mind. I want there to be Scots literature that reflects a divergent, creative nation, willing to experiment with words and life, and, in Alasdair Gray’s formulation, “work as though in the early days of a better nation.”
The most “please don’t do it” I have felt in response to a story is as Gray’s protagonist Thaw empties his pockets and throws his life documents and identifying possessions from a moving train on his way to his moment of madness. This will transpose or transform or, I suppose we must, translate Thaw into Lanark.
Critics have noted the many madcap imaginative moments in Gray’s large (in every sense) debut novel. The sequencing of the parts alone (Part 3, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4) is enough to signal we are in no realist story of a boy and man’s life in Glasgow – more, think surrealist – and yet the book is also just that, and Glasgow is a hell called Unthank in the imagination of an artist who lived all his life in Glasgow.
'Probably the greatest novel of the century' Observer 'Remarkable' William Boyd
Lanark, a modern vision of hell, is set in the disintegrating cities of Unthank and Glasgow, and tells the interwoven stories of Lanark and Duncan Thaw. A work of extraordinary imagination and wide range, its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, both personal and political, about humankind's inability to love, and yet our compulsion to go on trying.
First published in 1981, Lanark immediately established Gray as one of Britain's leading writers.
Scotland has a proud tradition of philosophical enquiry and I studied closely the work of most of these authors and benefited from almost all of them for my own Ph.D. work. Pirsig uses the old Scots word “gumption” for know-how and initiative and, in his honour, I use his related term “gumptionology” as my handle on social media. I also write my own mystery books series set in Scotland (the Bruno Benedetti mysteries) and they are often inspired by musing on philosophical and metaphysical matters but even my books on ethics contain some philosophical fiction. Our shared stories are fundamental to our humanity—and to our philosophy!
This was a book I bought and loved and lost (my fault for leaving it in the University of Glasgow library) but not just because I loved the TV series. Ok, mostly. But also because it gave me a whole new insight into the forceful philosophy of Nietzsche as embodied by Buddy’s friend, rival and nemesis, Faith, and this was really useful for me trying to put generational conflict into words for my Ph.D. The 25 authors obviously love the series and, as this is one that I know well and have rewatched with audio/subtitles in various languages as an easy way to learn, their insights have added interest by providing another layer of meaning in this already multi-dimensional enthralling—and hilarious—narrative. I want this book back!
Designed by writer Joss Whedon as a multilevel story with most of its meanings deeply buried in heaps of heavy irony, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" has replaced the "X-Files" as the show that explains to Americans the nature of the powerful forces of evil continually threatening to surge into a world of everyday decency. This collection features 23 essays by young professional philosophers that examine crucial ethical and metaphysical aspects of the "Buffyverse" (the world of Buffy). In the tradition of the classic horror films, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" addresses ethical issues that have long fascinated audiences. This book finds…
I believe that the most important questions one can possibly ask are, ‘Is there a God?’ and ‘Is Jesus God in human flesh?’ Since becoming a Christian at University in Cambridge the answers I have found to these questions have been the bedrock of my life. They have been confirmed by experience and I have wanted to share them. My academic work has been devoted to them. I am an astrophysicist as well as a priest and find, contrary to popular conceptions, that these vocations fit wonderfully neatly together. I am persuaded that there is a wealth of evidence for the truth of Christian beliefs, including from science itself.
Swinburne is a world-leading philosopher of religion and in this book he mounts a powerful case for the existence of God. Each piece of evidence he adduces is more likely to be found if God exists than if he does not so this enhances the probability that God does in fact exist. The evidence includes the cosmological and design arguments, arguments from consciousness and morality, arguments from history and miracles and from religious experience. Making reasonable assumptions and bringing all this evidence together gives us a high probability that God exists.
Richard Swinburne presents a substantially rewritten and updated edition of his most celebrated book. No other work has made a more powerful case for the probability of the existence of God. Swinburne gives a rigorous and penetrating analysis of the most important arguments for theism: the cosmological argument; arguments from the existence of laws of nature and the 'fine-tuning' of the universe; from the occurrence of consciousness and moral awareness; and from miracles and religious experience. He claims that while none of these arguments are deductively valid, they do give inductive support to theism and that, even when the argument…
I started studying Judaism as an adult in 1982, and in the 40 or so years that have passed since then I’ve read voraciously on the subject and have discussed it at length with Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis from Boston to Tampa. I’ve come to see over that time that Judaism’s objective is to shape conscientious, caring human beings who will bring light and compassion to the earth in spite of all the forces that want to keep trouble and insensitivity there. The books that I’ve listed are among the best in communicating the Jewish vision for the planet. I think you’ll learn much from them.
Anyone wishing to understand the history of modern Israel will find all questions answered in this beautifully written account beginning in the 19th century and continuing to the end of the 20th.
Sachar’s eloquence is stunning, and his attention to detail means that nothing is left undefined or ambiguous. There are quite a few histories of Israel on bookshelves, but none of them comes near Sachar’s work in perceptiveness or reach.
First published in 1976, Howard M. Sachar’s A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time was regarded one of the most valuable works available detailing the history of this still relatively young country. Decades later, readers can again be immersed in this monumental work.
The second edition of this volume covers topics such as the first of the Aliyahs in the 1880s; the rise of Jewish nationalism; the beginning of the political Zionist movement and, later, how the movement changed after Theodor Herzl; the Balfour Declaration; the factors that led to the Arab-Jewish confrontation; Palestine and…
Professor Tessler attended university in Israel and an Arab country, Tunisia, and he has lived for extended periods both in Israel and in several Arab countries. He has written extensively not only on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but also on politics in Israel and a number of Arab countries. With respect to the latter, he has gained distinction for his groundbreaking research on public opinion in the Arab world; he co-founded the Arab Barometer survey project in 2006 and has been its co-director since that time. The first edition of his book, A History of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict, was named a notable book of the year by The New York Times.
Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory.
Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age.
He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process.
This is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces…
'Riveting and original ... a work enriched by solid scholarship, vivid personal experience, and acute appreciation of the concerns and aspirations of the contending parties in this deeply unequal conflict ' Noam Chomsky
The twentieth century for Palestine and the Palestinians has been a century of denial: denial of statehood, denial of nationhood and denial of history. The Hundred Years War on Palestine is Rashid Khalidi's powerful response. Drawing on his family archives, he reclaims the fundamental right of any people: to narrate their history on their own…
My first love was architecture. But while I was working as an architectural drafter in my early twenties, I began taking college courses in philosophy and religious studies. During that time, I also acquired a set of the Great Books of the Western World by Encyclopædia Britannica. I was hooked. I quit my job and became a full-time student of philosophy, religion, and history. Since then, I have seen Pascal’s maxim demonstrated in all my research. Namely, that humanity is a living oxymoron: he is like a “reed,” easily blown over. Nevertheless, the human is also a “thinking reed,” concerned with meaning, purpose, and transcendence.
Lightman explores the intellectual landscape of Victorian unbelief. He sheds light on the complexities of doubt and skepticism in an era marked by scientific and religious upheaval. His research and compelling analysis offer profound insights into the minds of Victorian thinkers grappling with questions of faith and reason.
As someone drawn to the intersections of philosophy and history, this book left me contemplating the nature of belief and the pursuit of truth. Whether you're an academic seeking a deeper understanding of Victorian thought or simply intrigued by the intersection of religion and philosophy, this book provides a valuable and thought-provoking exploration of a pivotal moment in intellectual history.
Originally published in 1987. The Origins of Agnosticism provides a reinterpretation of agnosticism and its relationship to science. Professor Lightman examines the epistemological basis of agnostics' learned ignorance, studying their core claim that "God is unknowable." To address this question, he reconstructs the theory of knowledge posited by Thomas Henry Huxley and his network of agnostics. In doing so, Lightman argues that agnosticism was constructed on an epistemological foundation laid by Christian thought. In addition to undermining the continuity in the intellectual history of religious thought, Lightman exposes the religious origins of agnosticism.
