Showing results by publisher "Pitchstone Publishing" in All Categories

God Bless America lifts the veil on strange and unusual religious beliefs and practices in the modern-day United States. Do Satanists really sacrifice babies? Do exorcisms involve swearing and spinning heads? Are the Amish allowed to drive cars and use computers? Offering a close look at snake handling, new age spirituality, Santeria spells, and satanic rituals, this book offers more than mere armchair research.

What drives us to be good? How do we even know how to be good? Philosophers and theologians have dealt with such questions for millennia, but Dan Barker thinks the answers are not so complicated. In Mere Morality, he argues there's no need to appeal to supernatural commandments or the fear of some higher power when considering morality. Stripping “good" and "evil” down to the basics, he offers a simple compass for navigating life's most difficult moral and ethical dilemmas.

Whether you’re a non-believer interested in activism or a religious fundamentalist who wants to learn about the “other side”, Atheist Answers is perfect for you. The book contains hundreds of questions frequently asked of atheists, as well as answers from an atheist author and seasoned heathen.

The Christian faith has been vigorously defended with a variety of philosophical, historical, and theological arguments, but many of the arguments that worked in an earlier age no longer resonate in today's educated West. Where has apologetics gone wrong? What is the best response to the growing challenge presented by scientific discovery and naturalistic thought?

Throughout the Roman Empire cities held public speeches and lectures, had libraries, and teachers and professors in the sciences and the humanities, some subsidized by the state. There even existed something equivalent to universities, and medical and engineering schools. What were they like? What did they teach? Who got to attend them? In the first treatment of this subject ever published, Dr. Richard Carrier answers all these questions and more.

What is a religion? Why are people religious? Are religious people more educated than nonreligious people? Are religious people more moral, more humble, or happier? Are religious people more or less prejudiced than nonreligious people? Is religion good for your health? Are people becoming more or less religious? Studying religion as a social phenomenon, Ryan T. Cragun follows the scientific data to provide answers to these and other questions.

With each passing day the potential reach of a single false news story — and its ability to negatively impact all of us — grows in both size and scope. Although politicians, activists, and ordinary citizens regularly complain about deceptive or biased news reports, they tend to define fake news as anything with which they happen to disagree, thus compounding the problem even further.

From the moment of his birth, Siddhartha Gautama never doubted his specialness. He arrived with magnificently webbed digits and could lick his own earlobes. His karma had been that good. Thus, the question was never whether he would become a king, but rather, what type of king he would become. Siddhartha's journey took a sudden spiritual turn when he came to the first of his many realizations: things die, and before they die, they suffer, a lot, for real.

Even for the most ardent skeptic, it's hard not to be curious about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Maybe you've seen the hit musical comedy The Book of Mormon. Maybe you've heard about Holocaust victims and deceased celebrities like Elvis being posthumously baptized in Mormon churches. Or maybe you've come across some other belief or facet of the Mormon faith and can't help but wonder whether the religion is actually as wild as it seems.

In this deeply revealing and engaging autobiography, Herb Silverman tells his iconoclastic life story. He takes the listener from his childhood as an Orthodox Jew in Philadelphia, where he stopped fasting on Yom Kippur to test God's existence, to his adult life in the heart of the Bible Belt, where he became a legendary figure within America's secular activist community and remains one of its most beloved leaders. Never one to shy from controversy, Silverman relates many of his high-profile battles with the Religious Right.

What does "real" faith look like and how do you know it when you have it? And what allows anyone to be so sure their beliefs are based in reality? The Rise and Fall of Faith touches on these and other questions. While the aim of the audiobook is to initiate a much-needed conversation between Christians and atheists, it will be up to each of us to carry the discussion forward.

Infinity and God have been close bedfellows over the recent millennia of human thought. But this is James A. Lindsay's point. These two ideas are thought, mere concepts. Lindsay shows in a concise and readable manner that infinity is an abstraction, and shows that, in all likelihood, so is God, particularly if he has infinite properties.

Ever thought you should know more about what's in the Bible, not because you believe in any religion, but because it's the most read book in history? Before you dust off the family Bible, or reach into the hotel bed stand, The Nonbeliever's Guide to Bible Stories will save you a lot of time and trouble. Coupling an editor's pen with a skeptic's commentary and humorist's wit, it offers the highlights of each book of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, and distills them into quick, entertaining, bite-sized chunks.

From Apostle to Apostate offers a comprehensive introduction to the Clergy Project, established in 2011 to provide a safe space where clergy who have lost their faith can connect with others facing the exact same questions - often alone and in isolation. Charting the origins, growth, and goals of the project, the book draws on the author's own experience as a founding project member and on interviews with its founders.

Just as intelligent design is not a legitimate branch of biology in public educational institutions, nor should the philosophy of religion be a legitimate branch of philosophy. So argues acclaimed author John W. Loftus in this forceful takedown of the very discipline in which he was trained. In his call for ending the philosophy of religion, he argues that, as it is presently being practiced, the main reason the discipline exists is to serve the faith claims of Christianity.

More citizen involvement is needed in our government processes to ensure the voices of the people are heard over the money of paid lobbyists, unions, and coalitions, both in Washington, DC, and in state capitals across the country. Too often our public officials seem removed from the people who hired them to be their representatives and fail to work on their behalf.

Writing in an engaging, accessible style, philosopher and lawyer Ronald A. Lindsay develops a tightly crafted argument for secularism - specifically, that in a religiously pluralistic society, a robust, thoroughgoing secularism is the only reliable means of preserving meaningful democracy and rights of conscience.

Richard A. Conn, Jr. demonstrates why all parents who value science and reason can help stop the centuries-old practice of religious indoctrination and offers advice on how to encourage children to discover the world and their place in it for themselves. Only by teaching them that we are in this world together and have a limited time to live can we truly enable them to flourish and build a peaceful world - not just for their generation but for the future.

People are constantly judged for their sexual choices, their frequency of sexual activity, their selection of partners, and their decisions regarding birth control, and much of this judgment stems from the element of culture perhaps most preoccupied with sex: religion. Focusing principally on Christianity, What the Bible Really Does (and Doesn't Say) about Sex examines the arguments religious moralizers and sanctimonious politicians make to condone or condemn certain sexual practices and lifestyles.

From Orthodox Jewish child in postwar America to mild-mannered mathematician in academia to legendary atheist activist in the heart of today's Republican South, Herb Silverman has always been outside the mainstream of American culture, politics, and religion. From this unique vantage point, he writes about the most pressing issues of our day, including those related to war, peace, patriotism, race, gender, and church-state separation.