Over half a century of interest in these topics has left me with a skewed view of what things are commonly known. This became clear when I asked several intelligent, well-read people I know to read the first draft of the book. I’ve used their comments and critiques to hopefully firm up some holes in the book.
You may, however, be interested in looking into some details of the various aspects of what I’ve written about. So, I’m including what I consider to be a good representative sample to get you started.
If everything of import could be said in 130 characters or less, we could burn all the books ever written. While I like a good aphorism as much as the next guy, sometimes understanding something requires digging in and learning something complex. This is certainly true with many of the following topics. Some of these books are out of print, but most are available used through Amazon. If you click a title, it will link you to a page to purchase it on Amazon.
History of Christianity
Christian Theology: An Introduction by Alister E. McGrath
How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee by Bart D. Ehrman
The Complete Gospels: Annotated Scholar’s Version by Robert J. Miller
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew by Bart D. Ehrman
The Acts of Jesus: What Did Jesus Really Do? by Robert Walter Funk and The Jesus Seminar
From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus by Paula Fredriksen
Mysticism / Christian Mysticism
Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion by Alan W. Watts
The Cloud of Unknowing: With the Book of Privy Counsel (any legitimate version)
New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton and Sue Monk Kidd
The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (get several translations to get a full flavor of this work)
Psychology
The Farther Reaches of Human Nature by Abraham H. Maslow , Bertha G. Maslow, et al.
Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences by Abraham H. Maslow
The web of belief by W. V. Quine and J. S. Ullian
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature by William James
Science & The Philosophy of Science
The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions by David Berlinski
The Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl R. Popper
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn
Logic and language
Logic and Philosophy: A Modern Introduction by Howard Kahane
Metalogic: An Introduction to the Metatheory of Standard First Order Logic by Geoffrey Hunter
Philosophy of Logics by Susan Haack
Gödel’s Proof by Ernest Nagel , James Newman, et al.
The Search for the Perfect Language by Umberto Eco
Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein , C. K. Ogden, et al.
Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein
An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion by Brian Clack
Spiritual Writings: A New Translation and Selection by Soren Kierkegaard and George Pattison
