Inspired living ...
RESOURCES
Rather than just offer links to similar groups — here are summaries of a few books that may interest you:
Understanding Life - Grant Dukeshire - The core topics used within these presentations — critical thinking, god stuff and basic life issues.
Life is much too short to only learn from your own mistakes.
CRITICAL THINKING
Critical Thinking - Jonathan Lavery & William Hughes - Essential skills to form strong arguments including traditional logic of deduction and induction as well as criterial forms of assessment.
The Demon-Haunted World - Carl Sagan - An overall view of good thinking, bad science and why god-thinking is as problematic as that of UFO’s.
The Folly of Fools - Robert Trivers - An evolutionary biologist details a number of interesting facts and theories about deceit and self-deception.
How the Mind Works - Stephen Pinker - An excellent analysis on behaviour that gives appropriate background to understanding how and why humans in society act.
Science Friction - Michael Shermer - Some great argumentation for evolution and life overall, including the Continuum of Creationism list.
The Self Illusion - Bruce Hood - An excellent and entertaining view of the self, and how we think and function, including issues of free will.
Shades of Gray - Barry Siegel - True stories ranging from medicine and risk analysis to matters in law, thereby demonstrating many ambiguity issues in the greyness of life.
Why People Believe Weird Things - Michael Shermer - A great text about why people have difficulty in understanding seemingly obvious facts.
REALITY PER EVOLUTION
The Greatest Show on Earth - Richard Dawkins - A well reasoned and readable overall view on evolution. A standard primer.
The Magic of Reality - Richard Dawkins – A youth book that can be easily read and enjoyed by an adult. Get the one illustrated by Dave McKean.
Why Evolution is True - Jerry Coyne - A concise and well-structured argument removing any doubts about evolution. One of the best.
A Devil’s Chaplain - Richard Dawkins - A series of entertaining essays about evolution and theism’s Intelligent Design that aid the reader to understand various concepts. The letter to his daughter is particularly poignant.
Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea - Carl Zimmer - An overall listing of explanations leading from Darwin to DNA.
The Fact of Evolution - Cameron Smith - A convincing argument detailing the progress in a unique manner of thinking. Well worth the read.
Origin by Design - Harold Coffin - An excellent example of an anti-evolutionary view. Well written with plenty of scientific narrative. Fairly impressive considering that it’s largely wrong in every conclusion.
Our Inner Ape - Frans de Waal - An excellent overall look at the lives of our closest cousins, the apes, in particular the chimpanzees and bonobos which exhibit very close connections to how we are now.
Your Inner Fish - Neil Shubin - A vertebrate palaeontologist who helped discover a “missing link” fossil fish, Tiktaalik roseae, in Northern Canada, illustrating many linkages between fish and humans.
The Human Instinct - Kenneth R. Miller - The Chromosome two Robertson Translocations - the best proof for evolution there is. Also see his videos.
REALITY PER GODS
Atheism Explained - David Ramsay Steele - A short but solid philosophical view of atheism including the positive values of religion in society.
Christianity is Not Great - John W. Loftus - Overall Christianity including the problem of binary gender identity and the Outsider Test of Faith.
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins - A well reasoned and readable overall view against theism. This has become a classic on the subject.
Other suggestions about gods:
2000 Years of Disbelief - James A. Haught - A compendium of valiant thinkers who through the ages were skeptics and freethinkers.
36 Arguments for the Existence of God - Rebecca N. Goldstein - A fictional atheist debater who is searching religion for truth and meaning in a balanced manner. It also includes a list of the for-and-against arguments.
50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God - Guy P. Harrison - Commonsense arguments that people use for believing.
The Christian Delusion - John W. Loftus - A wealth of depth and detail on the problems of Christianity in regard to theistic problems.
The Evolution of God - Robert Wright - Walking through all the steps from primitive beliefs to the finely tuned versions that we have today.
Gilgamesh - Stephen Mitchell - The well-known piece of ancient literature illustrating obvious similarities of where the Biblical legends originated.
God, the Failed Hypothesis - Victor Stenger - A physicist and philosopher utilizing the scientific method to prove that gods do not exist.
God and the Folly of Faith - Victor Stenger - A devastating view of religious concepts using the scientific method to examine theistic issues.
god is not Great - Christopher Hitchens - A polemic work against religion. A no-holds-bared approach against the many problems caused by theism.
The Language of God - Francis S. Collins - A prominent geneticist, evolutionist and previous atheist who became a theist while still maintaining respected scientific thinking per molecular biology.
Misquoting Jesus - Bart D. Ehrman - An excellent demonstration of how religious scriptures and legends get dramatically altered with each historical copying of texts through accidental and wilful error.
The Missionary Position - Christopher Hitchens - A scathing rebuke to Mother Theresa’s wrong thinking in the name of religion, particularly per her fundamentalist views on abortion and contraception.
Under the Banner of Heaven - Jon Krakauer -A exposition of fundamentalist thinking mixed with issues of mental illness and obedience.
With or Without God - Gretta Vosper - A call by a United Church minister for mainstream religions to recognize what is metaphorical and not, so to move toward having a more meaningful and reality-based community.
LIFE
Behave - Robert Sapolsky - Human behavior in a (big) nutshell. Well written, very entertaining, very informative — but sometimes rather technical. Put this on your list of reading if you really want to delve into this subject. Just be prepared to put effort into the learning experience. The author takes great pains to avoid tropes and simplifications.
The Better Angels of Our Nature - Stephen Pinker - An excellent analysis of how and why societies are getting more peaceful with time — from the caveman to modern day, including reasons and prescriptions.
Billions and Billions - Carl Sagan - Some thoughts on how the world needs to move toward, or else risk self-destruction. A very good presentation of the variants of the Golden Rule.
The Blank Slate - Stephen Pinker - An excellent analysis of nature vs. nurture and how they interact to provide motivation and the understanding of a myriad of aspects for living better.
Collapse - Jared Diamond - A very insightful analysis of the many problems in civilization that contribute to failures of societies via overpopulation, bad management and the overuse of land.
Enlightenment Now - Steven Pinker - A very reasoned and insightful call for science and humanism. Five stars. If you have time, put this on your reading list above everything else. A big read — but well worth it.
The Moral Landscape - Sam Harris - A theoretical comparison between various results of different cultures and ethics, so identifying “good and bad” in more objective and scientific / economic terms.
The Organized Mind - Daniel J. Levitin - How to stay sane with the myriad of life’s information. Also has instruction on applied Bayesian probability.
The Population Explosion - Paul and Anne Ehrlich - A somewhat Malthusian view as to what problems that over-population causes by the updating of their earlier book, The Population Bomb. Well done.
The Righteous Mind - Jonathan Haidt - An excellent window to the problems and solutions about the divide between per religion and politics.
The Science of Good and Evil - Michael Shermer - An easy to read, clear exposition of why we act ethically.
The Subtlety of Emotions - Aaron Ben-Ze’ev - A very comprehensive analysis on the elements of emotions and their relationships to appropriate living.
Why Have Children? - Christine Overall - A short but rather rigorous and balanced philosophical view of the ethics of having children including the obligations of people to do or not to do so.
Other suggestions about LIfe:
At Work in the Fields of the Bomb - Robert Del Tredici - Through vividly understated pictures, the author clearly demonstrates the insidious amount of nuclear weaponry that we are usually not aware of.
The Atheist’s Way - Eric Maisel - How to replace dangerous superstitions with natural beauty. A frank and inspiring discussion about meaning and purpose giving clear choices that we must make to become happier.
The Ayn Rand Cult - Jeff Walker - A revealing demonstration of how a movement of individualist thought can have many of the damaging features of a cult.
The Big Necessity - Rose George - An eye-opener as to that much of the world has to live without sanitation and fresh water compared to what the West takes for granted.
The Case for Animal Rights - Tom Regan - A discussion of animal rights that tends to be fairly balanced in comparison to many other writers.
The Confidence Game - Maria Konnikova - Dissecting the ploys and dangers of con artists when coupled with our innate behaviour that cause us to make bad decisions.
Deer Hunting with Jesus - Joe Bageant - An anecdotal analysis of why the American South is so conservative and religious. An easy read.
Four Fish - Paul Greenberg - A reasoned plea for a more rational use of our sea creatures that currently the world’s over-population is over-fishing.
The Game of Humour - Charles R. Gruner - An analysis of humour via a superiority theory with an identification of the prizes that winners and losers compete for.
Garbology - Edward Humes - A well written and huge eye-opener to the quantity and problems of our trash disposal habits that seemingly just “disappear” every Wednesday morning.
God, The Devil and the Perfect Pizza - Trudy Govier - Short essays for introductory philosophy including the graduated issues of trust and dilemmas. Also see her more recent books on trust considerations.
The Great Influenza - John M. Barry - A vivid wakeup call showing that disease on a massive scale is possible and even probable, given sufficient over-population during a world crisis.
The Happiness Hypothesis - Jonathan Haidt - Contains clear examples toward the psychology of happiness. Very well done.
The Ice Master - Jennifer Niven - The tragic yet inspiring story of polar explorers before the age of cell phones and helicopters. An understanding of the good and bad that humans are capable of.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell - A call from an expert on mythology to encourage a figurative use in society using myths in order to bring out the heroic within everyone.
Life With Pop - Janis Abrahms Spring - How to deal with understanding yourself while caring for the aged. An inwardly honest look at your personal emotions while surviving some difficult decisions.
Noble Savages - Napoleon A. Chagnon - A solid description of what life is like among some aboriginal peoples, so demonstrating the problems of insufficient governance and law enforcement.
Non-zero - Robert Wright - A convincing argument that symbiosis via commerce and similar, is a major factor in improving our lives via peace and prosperity.
The Really Hard Problem - Owen Flanagan - A philosopher investigates and tries to solve the Is-Ought problem of meaning in a material world indicating where ethics are derived from.
The Sea of Slaughter - Farley Mowat - Somewhat over the top, but clearly demonstrating that humanity is capable of rampant destruction of virtually any species.
The Sexual Paradox - Susan Pinker - A look at why there are gender differences whether innate, culturally derived or learned.
Shock of Grey - Ted Fishman - Demonstrates the problems of an ageing demographic in the world given that we are now able to live longer, and that we are having difficulties supplying adequate care facilities.
Stumbling on Happiness - Daniel Gilbert - An entertaining and thorough review of human behaviour and perceptions that can be quite surprising to those not used to thinking in this manner.
The Tent - Margaret Atwood - A number of thought-provoking short pieces. Go to page 143 for one in particular on purpose through adversity.
The Weather Makers - Tim Flannery - One of the original books on climate change containing a myriad of facts, figures and reasons per global warming being a serious pressing issue of the world.
The Underground Girls of Kabul - Jenny Nordberg - A fascinating look at the difficult lives of girls in Afghanistan who “became” boys.
Writings on an Ethical Life - Peter Singer - An outspoken overall review of utilitarian ethics varying from population control, animal rights and abortion, to that of assisted dying.
You Just Don’t Understand - Deborah Tannen - A linguist speaks on the communication styles commonly used within different platforms of gender as well as on cultural differences.