By Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow Perhaps you are one of the lucky few who is naturally gifted with mathematical genius or at least has advanced training in the field. No? Me either. I think I understand that our reliance on energies such as light to observe the universe around us places limits on what we can know about the sub-atomic realm, yet it often seems to me that physicists take a little too much pleasure in emphasizing the mysteriousness of the quantum. Nevertheless, I cannot help but be curious. After all, physicists seem to be investigating the very nature of reality and knowledge, pressing the boundaries between philosophy and…

by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins Are We Living in the End Times? by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins is a comparatively light and readable introduction to “typical” End Times exegesis, if by “typical” one understands the Protestant, fundamentalist, and pre-millennial approach. At 370 pages it might appear lengthy, but the material is not at all dense, and is vastly more condensed than the thousands of pages these same authors have produced in their fictionalized version of the same theme, the (in)famous Left Behind series of novels and movies. While differing in emphasis and detail from other writers on this topic, the general content runs along similar lines….

by Henry M. Morris Henry M. Morris (d. 2006) is well known to creationists and creationist-debaters as a founding member of the Institute for Creation Research and as an author and co-author of books that are still heavily cited by creationists, most notably The Genesis Flood (1961) and the Troubled Waters of Evolution (1982). I was recently prompted to read one of his more obscure books, The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth (1972), which Morris styled as “a brief summary of both Biblical and scientific reasons for believing in creation instead of evolution” (p. 4). In about 100 pages of light reading, Morris outlines much of the biblical-creationist platform as…

by Barbara Ehrenreich “Optimism is the opium of the people.” Milan Kundera, “The Joke” These words, written in an atmosphere of repression in Kundera’s 1960s Yugoslavia, illustrate the central point of Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2010 book Bright Sided: that positivity can be just as, if not more dangerous, than negativity. Specifically, she takes the reader on a journey into the positive thinking movement, from its beginnings in the 19th century in response to the dour “you’re evil and gonna burn” stance of Calvinism to its role in U.S. political and economic affairs. Ehrenreich’s inspiration for the book was her experience as a breast cancer patient, in which informational literature, support groups,…

by Jack Huberman This book is awesome, and you will be highly enlightened by what thinkers of today and in the past have said regarding religion/God/science, etc. WARNING: This book is only for the open-minded! Here is one of many of the gems I found in this book of 333 pages and over 1,200 quotes! You don’t think religion is dangerous? Consider this: “Every fatih has its share of literalists … But only within Islam is literalism fast becoming mainstream. We Muslims, even here in the West, are routinely raised to believe that the Koran is the final and therefore perfect manifesto of God’s will … This is dangerous, because…

by Gore Vidal There are so many things to say about this book. One must keep in mind that it was written in 1968, and some of the views of sexuality are interesting. It’s hard to write a complete review of the book without giving away the entire premise. However, I would like to comment on one passage I found quite fascinating and relevant to today’s arguments about sexuality. In one chapter Myra and Rusty are disucssing sexuality: heterosexuality, bisexuality, and homosexuality. Myra asks Rusty why he thinks that the latter two are wrong. He responds with some of the same tired arguments you hear today from the religious right:…