Books about Skeptical from Amazon.com

Amazon.com Guest Reviewer: Michael Crichton
In his many science-themed bestsellers--including The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Prey, and most recently, Next--Michael Crichton has covered everything from genetically engineered dinosaurs to time travel to nantechnology run amok. Having cast his own views on the dangers and hysteria surrounding global warming with State of Fear, he turns his pen toward the often controversial Bjørn Lomborg and his latest book, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming.

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Bjørn Lomborg is the best-informed and most humane advocate for environmental change in the world today. In contrast to other figures that promote a single issue while ignoring others, Lomborg views the globe as a whole, studies all the problems we face, ranks them, and determines how best, and in what order, we should address them. His first book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, established the importance of a fact-based approach. With later books, Global Crises, Global Solutions and How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place, this mild-mannered Danish statistician has steadily gained new converts. Not surprisingly, Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming will further enhance Lomborg's reputation for global analysis and thoughtful response. For anyone who wants an overview of the global warming debate from an objective source, this brief text is a perfect place to start. Lomborg is only interested in real problems, and he has no patience with media fear-mongering; he begins by dispatching the myth of the endangered polar bears, showing that this Disneyesque cartoon has no relevance to the real world where polar bear populations are in fact increasing. Lomborg considers the issue in detail, citing sources from Al Gore to the World Wildlife Fund, then demonstrating that polar bear populations have actually increased five fold since the 1960s.

Lomborg then works his way through the concerns we hear so much about: higher temperatures, heat deaths, species extinctions, the cost of cutting carbon, the technology to do it. Lomborg believes firmly in climate change--despite his critics, he's no denier--but his fact-based approach, grounded in economic analyses, leads him again and again to a different view. He reviews published estimates of the cost of climate change, and the cost of addressing it, and concludes that "we actually end up paying more for a partial solution than the cost of the entire problem. That is a bad deal."

In some of the most disturbing chapters, Lomborg recounts what leading climate figures have said about anyone who questions the orthodoxy, thus demonstrating the illiberal, antidemocratic tone of the current debate. Lomborg himself takes the larger view, explaining in detail why the tone of hysteria is inappropriate to addressing the problems we face.

In the end, Lomborg's concerns embrace the planet. He contrasts our concern for climate with other concerns such as HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, and providing clean water to the world. In the end, his ability to put climate in a global perspective is perhaps the book's greatest value. Lomborg and Cool It are our best guides to our shared environmental future.

--Michael Crichton

(photo credit: Jonathan Exley)

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Price: $11.63 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Bjørn Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace, challenges widely held beliefs that the world environmental situation is getting worse and worse in his new book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. Using statistical information from internationally recognized research institutes, Lomborg systematically examines a range of major environmental issues that feature prominently in headline news around the world, including pollution, biodiversity, fear of chemicals, and the greenhouse effect, and documents that the world has actually improved. He supports his arguments with over 2500 footnotes, allowing readers to check his sources. Lomborg criticizes the way many environmental organizations make selective and misleading use of scientific evidence and argues that we are making decisions about the use of our limited resources based on inaccurate or incomplete information. Concluding that there are more reasons for optimism than pessimism, he stresses the need for clear-headed prioritization of resources to tackle real, not imagined, problems. The Skeptical Environmentalist offers readers a non-partisan evaluation that serves as a useful corrective to the more alarmist accounts favored by campaign groups and the media. Bjørn Lomborg is an associate professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus. When he started to investigate the statistics behind the current gloomy view of the environment, he was genuinely surprised. He published four lengthy articles in the leading Danish newspaper, including statistics documenting an ever-improving world, and unleashed the biggest post-war debate with more than 400 articles in all the major papers. Since then, Lomborg has been a frequent participant in the European debate on environmentalism on television, radio, and in newspapers..
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For about two decades John W. Loftus was a devout evangelical Christian, an ordained minister of the Church of Christ, and an ardent apologist for Christianity With three degrees--in philosophy, theology, and philosophy of religion--he was adept at using rational argumentation to defend the faith. But over the years, as he ministered to various congregations and taught at Christian colleges, doubts about the credibility of key Christian tenets began to creep into his thinking. By the late 1990s he experienced a full-blown crisis of faith, brought on by emotional upheavals in his personal life as well as the gathering weight of the doubts he had long entertained.

In this honest appraisal of his journey from believer to atheist, Loftus carefully explains the experiences and the reasoning process that led him to reject religious belief. The bulk of the book is his "cumulative case" against Christianity. Here he lays out the philosophical, scientific, and historical reasons that can be raised against Christian belief. From the implications of religious diversity, the authority of faith vs. reason, and the problem of evil, to the contradictions between the Bible and the scientific worldview, the conflicts between traditional dogma and historical evidence, and much more, Loftus covers a great deal of intellectual terrain. For every issue he succinctly summarizes the various points of view and provides references for further reading. In conclusion, he describes the implications of life without belief in God, some liberating, some sobering.

This frank critique of Christian belief from a former insider will interest freethinkers as well as anyone with doubts about the claims of religion..
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A Likewise book.Most folks think of Jesusas the man who started Christianity.But it turns outhe wasn't just a man,and he didn't just start Christianity Most folks think of Jesusas an other-worldly religious leader,a great moral teacher,or maybe they don't think of him at all.But he had dirty feet, partied,cooked breakfastand got himself killed.Who was this guy?Why did people hate him so much?And why should I care?Whether you've never looked closely at the Christian faith or you've dismissed it as irrelevant, you owe yourself a glance at a Jesus unencumbered by stereotypes. You might be surprised at what you see..
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"Most folks think of Jesus as the man who started Christianity. But it turns out he wasn't just a man, and he wasn't interested in religion He had dirty feet, partied, cooked breakfast and got himself killed. Who was this guy? Why did people hate him so much? And why should you care?"--Don Everts, from Jesus with Dirty Feet.Have you suffered through a bad experience with church?Have you encountered one--or several--insensitive Christians?Please, says Don Everts, don't let that stop you from finding out more about the most compelling, audacious, wild-eyed, radical, revolutionary person that ever lived--Jesus!In this discussion guide, Everts and Douglas Scott offer ten sessions of candid inquiries into who Jesus was, what he was like and whether or not it matters. Drawing on excerpts from his book Jesus with Dirty Feet as a jumping-off point, they also use each session to explore the big differences between institutional Christianity as you know it and the reality of following Jesus..
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Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) earned recognition as a renowned mathematician, physicist—and a man after God's heart. As he came to the forefront of geometry and physics, he turned his considerable analytical abilities to study religion or, as he said, to "contemplate the greatness and the misery of man." Pascal's classic defense of Christianity—Pensées—persuaded many a skeptic in his time.

Today, editor James Houston has organized Pascal's meditations into a logical progression of thought that contemporary readers can enjoy in Mind on Fire. Described as a "Masterpiece of theological scholarship," Mind on Fire also includes selections from Pascal's Letters to a Provincial, a description of his conversion in his own words..
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In her lively refutation of modern claims about America's religious origins, Brooke Allen looks back at the late eighteenth century and shows decisively that the United States was founded not on Christian principles at all but on Enlightenment ideas. Moral Minority presents a powerful case that the unique legal framework the Founding Fathers created was designed according to the humanist ideals of Enlightenment thinkers: God entered the picture only as a very minor player, and Jesus Christ was conspicuous by his absence. The guiding spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, Ms. Allen explains, was not Jesus Christ but John Locke. In direct and accessible prose, she provides fascinating chapters on the religious lives of the six men she considers the key Founding Fathers: Franklin, Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton..
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Visual studies is a rapidly expanding intellectual field, growing throughout colleges and universities around the world. But is it asking the most interesting questions? And is it just too easy to do?

In his latest book, James Elkins offers a road map through the field of visual studies, describing its major concerns and its principal theoretical sources. Then, with the skill and insight that have marked his successful books on art and visuality, Elkins takes the reader down a side road where visual studies can become a more interesting place. Why look only at the same handful of theorists? Why exclude from one's field of vision non-Western art or the wealth of scientific images?

The centerpiece of Visual Studies is Elkins's proposal for ten ways in which visual studies could be made more difficult -- theoretically, practically, and in terms of its interpretative and historical range. As Stories of Art offered an antidote to the authorized version of art history, Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction proposes a refreshingly open-minded introduction to a growing field.

This handsome volume is illustrated throughout..
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