Essays

If you're someone who feels a bit on the fringe during the yuletide season because of your secular views, "The Atheist's Guide to Christmas" could be a refreshing companion. It's witty and irreverent, offering perspectives on a traditionally religious holiday from successful atheists who've managed to find joy and meaning in the festive period without the religious undertones. The diverse approaches to celebrating, from comedy to earnest reflection, might just help you craft your own unique, enjoyable Christmas tradition. Plus, your purchase helps a great cause.

For nearly four decades, Christopher Hitchens has been telling us, in pitch-perfect prose, what we confront when we grapple with first principles -- the principles of reason and tolerance and skepticism that define and inform the foundations of our civilization -- principles that, to endure, must be defended anew by every generation. Here, in "Arguably," he invites readers to take a seat at a democratic conversation, to be engaged, and to be reasoned with. Astute, vivid, and uninhibited, Hitchens sets a standard for the essayist that has rarely been matched in our time. What emerges in this indispensible volume is an intellectual self-portrait of a writer with an exemplary steadiness of purpose and a love affair with the delights and seductions of the English language, a man anchored in a profound and humane vision of the human longing for reason and justice.

If you're someone who's not shy about questioning the status quo, especially regarding religion, Bertrand Russell's essays will resonate with you. His fearless dissection of religious constructs using unapologetic logic has a way of stripping down complexities into clear-cut arguments. Whether it challenges or reaffirms your beliefs, it's an intellectually stimulating read that might just shift your perspective on the power and place of religion in society.

A work of Nietzsche's later years, The Antichrist was written after Thus Spoke Zarathustra and shortly before the mental collapse that incapacitated him for the rest of his life. The work is both an unrestrained attack on Christianity and a further exposition of Nietzsche's will-to-power philosophy so dramatically presented in Zarathustra.Christianity, says Nietzsche, represents "everything weak, low, and botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism towards all the self-preservative instincts of strong life." By contrast, Nietzsche defines good "All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and power itself in man. What is bad? -- All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? -- The feeling that power is increasing, that resistance has been overcome."In attempting to redefine the basis of Western values by demolishing the formative influence of the Judeo-Christian tradition, The Antichrist has proved to be highly controversial and continuously stimulating to later generations of philosophers.

If you're keen on examining the perplexities of religious belief and its impact on society, "Letter to a Christian Nation" is an eye-opener. Sam Harris delivers a provocative and concise argument that questions the moral and rational foundations of Christianity. His style is unflinchingly direct, and the book serves as a compact but powerful catalyst for debate and reflection. Whether you're a believer or a skeptic, this read is designed to provoke thought and encourage critical examination of deeply held convictions.

One is the beloved author of The Name of the Rose , a celebrated scholar, philosopher, and self-declared secularist; the other is a preeminent clergyman and a respected expert on the New Testament. In this intellectually stimulating dialogue, often adversarial but always amicable, these two great men, who stand on opposite sides of the church door, discuss some of the most controversial issues of our day, including the apocalypse, abortion, women in the clergy, and ethics. As we voyage onward into the new millennium, they frame a debate about matters that have already begun to rage, always aware of the gulf between belief and nonbelief that separates them, constantly probing and challenging, but also respectful of the other’s viewpoint. For believers and nonbelievers alike, the result is both edifying and illuminating. “Their correspondence,” writes Professor Harvey Cox in his introduction, “lifts the possibility of intelligent conversation on religion to a new level.”

RELIGION FOR ATHEISTS