Bøger udgivet af Pitchstone Publishing

For thousands of years, the faithful have honed proselytizing strategies and talked people into believing the truth of one holy book or another. Indeed, the faithful often view converting others as an obligation of their faith--and are trained from an early age to spread their unique brand of religion. The result is a world broken in large part by unquestioned faith. As an urgently needed counter to this tried-and-true tradition of religious evangelism, A Manual for Creating Atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith--but for talking them out of it. Peter Boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than 20 years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.

"Atheism has been on the rise in the West for several decades, but its roots, including those belonging to secularism, agnosticism, and freethought, run deep in Western history, philosophy, and thought. Drawing on a multitude of sources from a number of disciplines, S. T. Joshi outlines the natural origins of religious belief in primitive times and charts the slow development of secular accounts of natural phenomena in the Greco-Roman world. Adopting the " Christ myth" theory, he surveys the emergence of a new faith- Christianity- that grew out of Judaism and explores its evolution through the medieval period. He then examines the increasing schisms within the church and conflicts between religious and political entities that caused a fracturing of the monolith of Christianity and the birth of the Renaissance, which not only brought to light the literary glories of the Greco-Roman world but also led to a scientific resurgence and the development of a secular view of the cosmos. By the end of the sixteenth century, as he concludes, the stage was set for the emergence of a worldview free of religion"--

When we're in the Certainty Trap, we tend to view people who disagree with us as hateful, ignorant, or just plain stupid. When it comes to heated social and political issues in particular, many of us know this feeling well--a consuming state of righteous indignation and moral outrage. And this response makes sense because our very certainty tells us that there are simple and obvious causes and solutions to the hot-button issues we care about most. But the things we care about the most are--far more often than not--morally and ethically complex. If the problems that divide us are inherently complicated, then a sense that the answers are obvious--and that anyone who disagrees must be deficient in some way--is misplaced. It's an oversimplification that both leads to and reflects faulty thinking. When we're certain, we not only fail to recognize the possibility that we're wrong but also fail to be clear about the principles and values that drive our disagreement in the first place. By committing to challenging and clarifying our thinking--by avoiding the trap certainty sets for us--we can increase social trust, reduce political polarization, and better address the world's pressing challenges.

"In No Apologies, Katherine Brodsky argues that it's time for principled individuals to hit the unmute button and resist the authoritarians among us who name, shame, and punish. Recognizing that speaking authentically is easier said than done, she spent two years researching and interviewing those who have been subjected to public harassment and abuse for daring to transgress the new orthodoxy or criticize a new taboo. While she found that some of these individuals navigated the outrage mob better than others, and some suffered worse personal and professional effects than others, all of the individuals with whom she spoke remain unapologetic over their choice to express themselves authentically. In sharing their stories, which span the arts, education, journalism, and science, Brodsky uncovers lessons for all of us in the silenced majority to push back against the dangerous illiberalism of the vocal minority that tolerates no dissent- and to find and free our own voices"--

"Parents of trans-identified children share their real-life experiences, describing how their children were introduced to gender ideology, how they navigated a medical and mental health system that preaches affirmation-only care, and what, if any, strategies successfully led to the desistance of their children"--

"Philosopher Ronald A. Lindsay offers a sustained criticism of the far-reaching cultural transformation occurring across much of the West by which individuals are defined primarily by their group identity, such as race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation"--

"What if we have been missing a whole stage of how the canonical gospels came to be? What if there were a whole raft of prior Jesus narratives, the fragmentary vestiges of which now appear in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? This would explain why these gospels seem over-crowded with incompatible understandings of Jesus ("Christologies")? In The Gospels Behind the Gospels, biblical scholar Robert M. Price attempts to reassemble the puzzle pieces, disclosing several earlier gospels of communities who imagined Jesus as the predicted return of the prophet Elijah, the Samaritan Taheb (a second Moses), a resurrected John the Baptist, a theophany of Yahweh, a Gnostic Revealer, a Zealot revolutionary, etc. As these various sects shrank and collapsed, their remaining followers would have come together, just as modern churches and denominations seek to survive by merging and consolidating. Our canonical gospels might be the result. Similarly, Price explores the possibility that Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and Christ were originally figureheads of rival sects who eventually merged in much the same way. You will never read the gospels the same way again!"--

"Unsatisfied with the relentless pace and narrow constraints of social media, two Americans, Winkfield Twyman, Jr. and Jennifer Richmond - a black man and a white woman - rediscovered the art of letter writing and maintained a years-long correspondence about race in the United States. In Letters in Black and White, they share their exchanges in full for the first time, charting their journey from wary strangers to trusted confidants. At a time when many Americans are dazed, confused, and angered by the country's current state of race relations, they offer a model not only for having those needed but difficult conversations but also for a better way forward. Marked by well-crafted turns of phrase, sharp wit, and sober reflection, they intentionally avoid those fashionable words and phrases that have been drained of real meaning or hopelessly saddled with excessive baggage, such as antiracism, white fragility, allyship, and wokeness. Rather, on topics ranging from the murder of George Floyd to the launch of the 1619 Project to the debate over reparations, they tell the truth as they see it in their own uncorrupted language, speaking for no one but themselves. Particularly critical of the ideological battles that fuel media programming and entrench political rivalries and the noble-sounding social and cultural projects that fail time and again to offer any meaningful solutions, they identify productive ways to unify across our differences, to find our common humanity, and to mend America's divided soul. Ultimately, they offer an inspirational message of hope and optimism for all - one that does not allow the past to define our present or determine our future"--

"Christopher Hitchens was for many years considered one of the fiercest and most eloquent left-wing polemicists in the world. But on much of today's left, he's remembered as a defector, a warmonger, and a sellout-a supporter of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who traded his left-wing principles for neoconservatism after the September 11 attacks. In How Hitchens Can Save the Left, Matt Johnson argues that this easy narrative gets Hitchens exactly wrong. Hitchens was a lifelong champion of free inquiry, humanism, and universal liberal values. He was an internationalist who believed all people should have the liberty to speak and write openly, to be free of authoritarian domination, and to escape the arbitrary constraints of tribe, faith, and nation. He was a figure of the Enlightenment and a man of the left until the very end, and his example has never been more important. Over the past several years, the liberal foundations of democratic societies have been showing signs of structural decay. On the right, nationalism and authoritarianism have been revived on both sides of the Atlantic. On the left, many activists and intellectuals have become obsessed with a reductive and censorious brand of identity politics, as well as the conviction that their own liberal democratic societies are institutionally racist, exploitative, and imperialistic. Across the democratic world, free speech, individual rights, and other basic liberal values are losing their power to inspire. Hitchens's case for universal Enlightenment principles won't just help genuine liberals mount a resistance to the emerging illiberal orthodoxies on the left and the right. It will also remind us how to think and speak fearlessly in defense of those principles"--

In today's modern world, we are largely isolated from the kind of savagery our ancestors faced on a daily basis. Although violence was as natural to our evolutionary development as sex and food, it has become foreign to most of us: at once demonized and glamorized, but almost always deeply misunderstood. Our hard-earned and hard-wired instincts-our evolved and trained ability to survive and overcome violent encounters-have been compromised. The Gift of Violence tells the story of this vulnerability and provides the average person with all the knowledge they need to reduce the likelihood of becoming a victim of violence-and to survive a violent encounter. Based both on the author's decades of experience teaching everyday people how to defend themselves and on a rational approach to the scientific data, The Gift of Violence offers clear, easy-to-remember lessons for people of all ages and abilities. It is designed to empower those who've been affected by violence, or are concerned that they or their loved ones could be-in short, to help good people become more dangerous to bad people.

Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly Bestseller! Times, Sunday Times, and Financial Times Book-of-the-Year Selection! Have you heard that language is violence and that science is sexist? Have you read that certain people shouldn't practice yoga or cook Chinese food? Or been told that being obese is healthy, that there is no such thing as biological sex, or that only white people can be racist? Are you confused by these ideas, and do you wonder how they have managed so quickly to challenge the very logic of Western society? In this probing and intrepid volume, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay document the evolution of the dogma that informs these ideas, from its coarse origins in French postmodernism to its refinement within activist academic fields. Today this dogma is recognizable as much by its effects, such as cancel culture and social-media dogpiles, as by its tenets, which are all too often embraced as axiomatic in mainstream media: knowledge is a social construct; science and reason are tools of oppression; all human interactions are sites of oppressive power play; and language is dangerous. As Pluckrose and Lindsay warn, the unchecked proliferation of these anti-Enlightenment beliefs present a threat not only to liberal democracy but also to modernity itself. While acknowledging the need to challenge the complacency of those who think a just society has been fully achieved, Pluckrose and Lindsay break down how this often-radical activist scholarship does far more harm than good, not least to those marginalized communities it claims to champion. They also detail its alarmingly inconsistent and illiberal ethics. Only through a proper understanding of the evolution of these ideas, they conclude, can those who value science, reason, and consistently liberal ethics successfully challenge this harmful and authoritarian orthodoxy--in the academy, in culture, and beyond.

"This book is based on Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity--and Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, first published by Pitchstone Publishing in 2020"--Verso.

"I MAKE A LOT OF MONEY AS A CALL GIRL" wasn''t the answer author Steve Cuno expected when he asked a new acquaintance how she planned to capitalize her start-up business. Wait, hold on, he thought. In Salt Lake City? Home to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormon Church, where all it takes to become the object of steamy gossip is for a neighbor to see you take a sip of coffee? In a religion where nonmarital sex is second in seriousness to murder? "You''ve no idea the people I could get in trouble," she told him. She''d entertained politicians, police officers, judges, defense lawyers, prosecutors, doctors--all of them married, almost all of them practicing Mormons. Many were highly visible, highly regarded leaders in the faith. So began Cuno''s behind-the-scenes investigation into Salt Lake City''s prostitution industry. Over the course of three years, he interviewed prostitutes, johns, police officers, social workers, and massage-parlor owners--and uncovered a surprising underside to the Mormon Church''s carefully cultivated image of wholesomeness and family values. He found that Salt Lake''s prostitutes--"sex workers" or "providers," as they prefer to be known--don''t live in the illusory experience they create for their clients. Many are multilingual and hold college degrees. They fix meals, drive kids to school, help with homework, handle household chores, socialize with others in the community, have love lives of their own--and, yes, go to church, sometimes with the very people who sneak out to meet them. With wit and sensitivity, Behind the Mormon Curtain takes a deep dive into the quintessential American religion and the world''s oldest profession, as Cuno tells the story of what he discovered, how he discovered it, and what it reveals not just about Mormons, but about us all.

Everyone grieves in their own way and according to their own timeframe, the accepted wisdom tells us. But those in mourning rarely find comfort in knowing this. Further, those attempting to support someone in mourning can do little with this advice, leaving them with a sense of helplessness. As a mental health professional and someone who has dealt with her own share of personal grief, Candace R. M. Gorham understands well the quest for relief. The truth of the matter, she says, is there is no one way to grieve, but there are things that are important to pay attention to while mourning. While much of the advice she shares is universal, she pays particular attention to the struggle those who do not believe in a god or afterlife face with the loss of a loved one-and offers practical, life-affirming steps for them to remember and heal.

Was Jesus a mainstream or sectarian Jew, as the scholarly consensus tells us? This view-that we must automatically adopt Second Temple Judaism as the paradigm in which to interpret or reconstruct the historical Jesus-is often presented as self-evident, unquestionable, and beyond dispute. However, the promotion of the Jewish Jesus raises serious questions-specifically, whether this consensus is the product of theological and ecumenical agendas. In Judaizing Jesus , noted scholar Robert M. Price challenges this trend and offers a menu of alternative ways of seeing Jesus: Sacred King, Cynic Philosopher, Gnostic Redeemer, and... the Buddha! He concludes by proposing a new theory of Christian origins to explain how and why the first Christians themselves Judaized Jesus.

In a world full of weird claims and a social media environment awash with wild conspiracy theories, it is no longer enough for scientists, pundits, and activists to simply ask the public to trust science. Rather, with increasing public distrust of science, all must better understand how science works, and why science is essential. By exploring many of the odd beliefs embraced by large sections of the public that are rejected by the scientific mainstream, Weirdness! makes the case for science in a way that pro-science memes and slogans simply can''t. Drawing a picture of science that does not rely on checklists or a predetermined scientific method, it takes seriously claims that paranormal phenomena, such as psychic abilities and mythical creatures, might be real, but demonstrates how such phenomena would extend beyond the laws of nature. It rejects a sharp boundary between science and religion, while explaining how to negotiate their real differences. Denials of science cause no end of trouble, but so too does placing blind trust in science. As Weirdness! reminds readers, science should not be seen as a mechanism that takes in data and spits out truth. While science and reason are crucial in uncertain times, it concludes, we must not adopt an unrealistically heroic picture of science and turn rationality into yet another empty slogan.

"Argues for a humanism that centers social and environmental justice as a core principle and calls on humanists to pursue public policy based on this principle"--

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. Seeking to bring some much-needed clarity to the subject, journalist David G. McAfee documents the myriad definitions of "fake news" and its various incarnations throughout history, from ideologically motivated disinformation operations to commercially motivated misinformation campaigns. Demonstrating that we are all culpable in the creation of the current pandemic, he presents a number of practical and actionable suggestions for combating it. In the end, however, he argues that each of us, no matter our political bent, have an important role to play in curbing the insidious spread and most dangerous effects of fake news.

Robert M. Price, a former Evangelical Christian, examines the confusing intersection of Christianity and superstition by asking questions. Is "practicing the presence of God" actually a variety of paranoia? Is having a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" really akin to a child playing with an imaginary friend? At what point does a religious belief become an obsessive neurosis? Price finds that the source of superstition in Christianity is the objectification of the transcendent. As a result, he argues, many of the most destructive superstitions within Christianity are inessential accretions to the faith, interfering with life-transforming piety to the glad benefit of many of Christianity's adherents. Christians who believe that an unexamined faith is not worth having will profit from struggling with Jesus Christ Superstition.

Cover title has Critical crossed out and corrected to Cynical.

"A humorous take on the life of Siddhartha Gautama, imagined as an autobiography written by him, spanning from his birth to his eventual so-called extinction"--

"Summarizes for a popular audience the scholarly research on the earliest Christian beliefs about Jesus and argues that modern attempts to conceal, misrepresent, or avoid the actual evidence about these original Christian beliefs call into question the entire field of Jesus studies"--

Is there enough evidence to believe Jesus rose from the dead, or must such a judgment be based only on faith? Can the resurrection story be considered a fact of history, or should it be viewed as an ahistorical account? Two renowned professors, atheist Carl Stecher and Christian Craig Blomberg, engage in a groundbreaking new debate on these very questions. Other experts on the resurrection, atheist Richard Carrier and Christian Peter S. Williams, comment on the outcome. Presenting new approaches to these centuries-old questions and taking into account the latest scholarly research, Resurrection: Faith or Fact? is a must-have not only for all those following the resurrection question‿but also for those skeptics and Christians alike who are interested in determining for themselves the truth behind this foundational doctrine of the Christian faith.

"The future of the United States rests in many ways on how the ongoing challenge of racial injustice in the country is addressed. Yet, humanists remain divided over what if any agenda should guide humanist thought and action toward questions of race. In this volume, Anthony B. Pinn makes a clear case for why humanism should embrace racial justice as part of its commitment to the well-being of life in general and human flourishing in particular. As a first step, humanists should stop asking why so many racial minorities remain committed to religious traditions that have destroyed lives, perverted justice, and justified racial discrimination. Rather, Pinn argues, humanists must first confront a more pertinent and pressing question: why has humanism failed to provide a more compelling alternative to theism for so many minority groups? For only with a bit of humility and perspective-and a recognition of the various ways in which we each contribute to racial injustice-can we truly fight for justice"--

In this extensive sequel to Science Education in the Early Roman Empire , Dr. Richard Carrier explores the social history of scientists in the Roman era. Was science in decline or experiencing a revival under the Romans? What was an ancient scientist thought to be and do? Who were they, and who funded their research? And how did pagans differ from their Christian peers in their views toward science and scientists? Some have claimed Christianity valued them more than their pagan forebears. In fact the reverse is the case. And this difference in values had a catastrophic effect on the future of humanity. The Romans may have been just a century or two away from experiencing a scientific revolution. But once in power, Christianity kept that progress on hold for a thousand years—while forgetting most of what the pagans had achieved and discovered, from an empirical anatomy, physiology, and brain science to an experimental physics of water, gravity, and air. Thoroughly referenced and painstakingly researched, this volume is a must for anyone who wants to learn how far we once got, and why we took so long to get to where we are today.