MAAF Recommended Book List

The following recommended books provide a basic foundation for reading for a philosophy grounded in scientific naturalism and human-centered, rational ethics. Whatever we label ourselves, atheist, freethinker, Humanist, etc, ethical naturalism provides a common thread of what we do believe. In gathering this list, MAAF collaborated with several PhDs and leaders in the movement and tried to follow the guidelines below. There are many scholars MAAF has yet to contact and many books MAAF excluded from the list, but I hope the guidelines below explain how the list was put together.

Books are tagged in categories of [I] Inspiration, self-help; [E] Ethics; [Comm] Community, politics, family; [Psych] Psychology; [Phys] Physics, Cosmology; [R&P] Religion, History, Philosophy; [F] Fiction
And 15 books are currently [**] Featured: Infernova, Climbing Mount Improbable, Breaking The Spell, Good Without God, The Moral Landscape, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Portable Atheist, The Black Cloud, The Atheist's Way, Parenting Beyond Belief, Common Sense, The Varieties of Scientific Experience, Why People Believe Weird Things, The Humanist Bible, and The New Atheism

The list has been prepared according to the following guidelines:

  • The Infernova, S. A. Alenthony, [**][E][Comm][R&P][F]
  • Asimov's Guide to the Bible, Isaac Asimov, [R&P]
  • Meditations by/ed, Marcus Aurelius, [I][E][Comm]
  • Sense and Goodness Without God, Richard Carrier, [E][Comm][Psych][R&P]
  • Climbing Mount Improbable, Richard Dawkins, [**][E][R&P]
  • Breaking The Spell, Daniel C. Dennett, [**][E][Psych][R&P]
  • Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond, [Comm][R&P]
  • The World As I See It, Albert Einstein, [I][R&P]
  • Atheism Advanced, David Eller, [I][E][Comm][R&P]
  • Humanist Bible, AC Grayling, [**][I][E][Psych][Phys][R&P]
  • Good Without God, Greg Epstein, [**][I][E][Comm][R&P]
  • Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics, Richard P. Feynman, [Phys]
  • Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, Michelle Goldberg, [Comm][R&P]
  • Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould, [E][Comm]
  • The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris, [**][E][R&P]
  • The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking, [Phys]
  • Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein, [**][I][E][Comm][Psych][R&P][F]
  • The Portable Atheist, Christopher Hitchens, [**][I][E][Comm][Psych][Phys][R&P]
  • The Oxford Companion to Philosophy New Edition, Ted Honderich, [I][E][Comm]
  • The Black Cloud, Fred Hoyle, [**][Phys][F]
  • Principal Writings on Religion, David Hume, [E][Comm][F]
  • Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, [I][E][Comm][R&P]
  • Best of Robert Ingersoll: Selections from His Writings and Speeches, Robert G. Ingersoll, [I][E][Comm][R&P]
  • Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, Susan Jacoby, [Comm][R&P]
  • The Will to Believe, Human Immortality, William James, [Psych][R&P]
  • The Jeffersonian Bible, Thomas Jefferson, [E][R&P]
  • The Atheist Debater's Handbook, B. C. Johnson, [R&P]
  • Affirmations, Paul Kurtz, [I][E][Comm]
  • The Atheist's Way, Eric Maisel, [**][I][E][Comm]
  • Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion, Dale McGowan, [**][Comm]
  • Paradise Lost, John Milton, [R&P][F]
  • Humanism as the Next Step, Lloyd Morain, [I][E][Comm]
  • The Holy Bible: King James Version, Thomas Nelson, [R&P]
  • How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter, Sherwin B. Nuland, [E][Comm]
  • The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine, [E][Comm][R&P]
  • Common Sense, Thomas Paine, [**][I][E][Comm]
  • The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper, [Phys][R&P]
  • The Pre-Nicene New Testament: Fifty-four Formative Texts, Robert M. Price, [R&P]
  • His Dark Materials, 3 books, Philip Pullman, [R&P][F]
  • Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, [E][R&P][F]
  • Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions, James Randi, [I][Psych]
  • The God Virus, Darrel Ray, [Psych][R&P]
  • The Qur'an Translation, Sayed A. A. Razwy, [R&P]
  • Why I am not a Christian, Bertrand Russell, [I][E][R&P]
  • The Satanic Verses: A Novel, Salman Rushdie, [R&P][F]
  • The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan, [Psych][Phys]
  • The Varieties Of Scientific Experience, Carl Sagan, [**][I][Phys][R&P]
  • The Mystery of Consciousness, John R. Searle, [Psych]
  • Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer, [**][Psych][R&P]
  • The Life You Can Save, Peter Singer, [I][E]
  • Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible, Karel van der Toorn, [R&P]
  • Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries, Neil deGrasse Tyson, [Phys]
  • Zen at War (2nd Edition), Brian Daizen Victoria, [E][R&P]
  • Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire, [E][R&P]
  • Why I Am Not a Muslim, Ibn Warraq, [E][R&P]
  • On Certainty, Ludwig Wittgenstein, [Psych][R&P]
  • The Moral Animal, Robert Wright, [E][Psych]
  • God Is Not One, Stephen Prothero, [R&P]
  • C Street, Jeff Sharlet, [Comm][R&P]
  • The New Atheism, Victor Stenger, [**][I][E][Comm]
  • Walden, Henry David Thoreau, [I][Comm][F]
  • Society Without God, Phil Zuckerman, [Comm][R&P]

Also consider these suggestions by Neil DeGrasse Tyson in response to a Reddit question about what books every intelligent person should read:

  1. The Bible (eBook) - "to learn that it's easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself."
  2. The System of the World by Isaac Newton (eBook) - "to learn that the universe is a knowable place."
  3. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (eBook - Audio Book) - "to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth."
  4. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (eBook - Audio Book) - "to learn, among other satirical lessons, that most of the time humans are Yahoos."
  5. The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine (eBook - Audio Book) - "to learn how the power of rational thought is the primary source of freedom in the world."
  6. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (eBook - Audio Book) - "to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself."
  7. The Art of War by Sun Tsu (eBook - Audio Book) - "to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art."
  8. The Prince by Machiavelli (eBook - Audio Book) - "to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it."

Tyson concludes by saying: "If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world."