EVIDENCE AND EVOLUTION-The Logic Behind The Science

                                      How should the concept of evidence be understood? And how does

the concept of evidence apply to the controversy about creationism
as well as to work in evolutionary biology about natural selection and
common ancestry? In this rich and wide-ranging book, Elliott Sober
investigates general questions about probability and evidence and
shows how the answers he develops to those questions apply to the
specifics of evolutionary biology. Drawing on a set of fascinating
examples, he analyzes whether claims about intelligent design are
untestable; whether they are discredited by the fact that many
adaptations are imperfect; how evidence bears on whether present
species trace back to common ancestors; how hypotheses about
natural selection can be tested, and many other issues. His book will
interest all readers who want to understand philosophical questions
about evidence and evolution, as they arise both in Darwin’s work
and in contemporary biological research.

God's Problem-How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question— Why We Suffer

 This book deals with a matter that is very important to me, not just professionally but also personally. I have written it for a broad audience of regular readers, not for a narrow audience of specialists
(who might, I suppose, be considered irregular readers). In view of the intended audience, I have kept endnotes and references to a sparse minimum. Anyone interested in further, in-depth scholarship
can easily find it by looking around a bit. Two excellent places to start are James L. Crenshaw’s Defending God: Biblical Responses to the Problem of Evil (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005),
and Antti Laato and Johannes C. de Moor’s Theodicy in the World of the Bible (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003). Both books are fully documented, and the former provides an extensive bibliography. I have focused on the biblical “solutions” to the problem of suffering that strike me as the most important. Since the so-called classical view dominates the Hebrew Bible and the apocalyptic view dominates the New Testament,

Arguing about Gods

 In this book, Graham Oppy examines contemporary arguments for
and against the existence of God. He shows that none of these arguments
is powerful enough to change the minds of reasonable participants
in debates on the question of the existence of God. His
conclusion is supported by detailed analyses of the contemporary
arguments, as well as by the development of a theory about the purpose
of arguments, and the criteria that should be used in judging
whether or not arguments are successful. Oppy discusses the work of
a wide array of philosophers, including Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes,
Locke, Leibniz, Kant, Hume, and, more recently, Plantinga, Dembski,
White, Dawkins, Bergman, Gale, and Pruss.

A devil's chaplain by Richard Dawkins

 Reading such intelligent thoughts, put so simply and clearly, and with profound originality, this book can't help but to elevate the reader to some inspired mental plane, unless the reader happens to possess that viral disease called Faith. Anyone who harbors that ugly mental disorder will find themselves vomiting objections to the very thing that just might cure them. Richard Dawkins serves as the doctor who has a cure; a treatment that the infected mind, by its very nature, will at first want to reject. However, if the brave believers can get past their infirmity's power of denial, they will have the inoculative tools to help rid themselves of unnecessary (and dangerous) beliefs.
A Devil's Chaplain, written by one of the most renowned evolutionary biologists, comes from his personal selections from past articles, lectures, book reviews, forewords, tributes and eulogies that he had published over 25 years. A few of you may notice that many of the chapters from Dawkins book had previously appeared on John Catalano's wonderful web site, The World of Richard Dawkins.

Unweaving the Rainbow

The title comes from a Keats poem and refers to Newton's resolving the colors of light through a prism, thereby diminishing the beauty and mystery of light and rainbows. At least Keats and others have contended this through their historic memes.
Dawkins disagrees and presents his reasons in a wonderful and instructive way. Dawkins thinks that an orderly universe, one indifferent to human preoccupations, in which everything has a explanation, forms a more beautiful, more wonderful place than a universe tricked out with ad hoc magic. I think after reading this book, most readers will agree. His thesis aims to show that "the spirit of wonder which led Blake to Christian mysticism, Keats to Arcadian myth and Yeats to Fenians and fairies, is the very same spirit that moves great scientists; a spirit which, if fed back to poets in scientific guise, might inspire still greater poetry."
Dawkins goes through several basic science lessons explaining the fingerprints of light, sound and DNA, and provides a scale against the vast history of life and how humans just barely got in. If only my high school science books read like this!