Book Reviews & Suggestions

Below you will find book reviews published by the Spiritual Naturalist Society. We often cover books that may be of interest to Spiritual Naturalists. You can get and see a list of more recommended books in our SNS Amazon Store. Below the book reviews, we also list some excerpts, podcasts, and a suggested reading list.

We would like to have many more reviews! If you are interested in writing a book review for the Society, please contact us with your proposed choice of book and we will let you know if we are interested. Many thanks!

 

Agnosticism: A Very Short Introduction
by Robin Le Poidevin

Black Lives and Sacred Humanity
by Carol Wayne White

Buddhist Life Buddhist Path
by Bhikkhu Cintita

The Christian Middle Way
by Robert M. Ellis

Christianity Without God
by Lloyd Geering

How to Think Like A Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius
by Donald Robertson

Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self
by Kabir Helminski

The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times
by Pema Chödrön

Religion is Not About God
by Loyal Rue

Restoring the Soul of the World
by David Fideler

Secular Meditation
by Rick Heller

The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human-World
by David Abram

Waking Up
by Sam Harris

Exerpt: Zen and the Art of Consciousness
by Susan Blackmore

Podcast: After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age
by Stephen Batchelor

 

Suggested Reading

Please note that the following is meant to show a variety of voices within naturalistic spirituality. Other than official SNS publications, presence on this list does not necessarily constitute agreement or endorsement with any and all things stated by these authors or reflect any official stances of the Society…

 

Exploring Spiritual Naturalism, Year 1: An Anthology of Articles from the Spiritual Naturalist Society
by DT Strain (Editor)

Exploring Spiritual Naturalism, Year 2: An Anthology of Articles from the Spiritual Naturalist Society
by Jeremy Mattocks (Editor)

Exploring Spiritual Naturalism, Year 3: An Anthology of Articles from the Spiritual Naturalist Society
by Julie Strain (Editor)

Secular Meditation: 32 Practices for Cultivating Inner Peace, Compassion, and Joy
by Rick Heller

Buddhism Without Beliefs
by Stephen Batchelor

Confession of a Buddhist Atheist
by Stephen Batchelor

Zen and the Art of Consciousness
by Susan Blackmore

The Routledge Handbook of Religious Naturalism (Routledge Handbooks in Religion)
by Donald A. Crosby (Editor)

A Religion of Nature
by Donald A. Crosby

Living with Ambiguity: Religious Naturalism and the Menace of Evil
by Donald A. Crosby

More Than Discourse
by Donald A. Crosby

Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative
by Jerome A. Stone

The Minimalist Vision of Transcendence: A Naturalist Philosophy of Religion
by Jerome A. Stone

The Problem Of The Soul Two Visions Of Mind And How To Reconcile Them
by Owen J. Flanagan

Encountering Naturalism: A Worldview And Its Uses
by Thomas W. Clark

Thank God for Evolution
by Michael Dowd

Green Space, Green Time: The Way of Science
by Connie Barlow

Spiritual Naturalism: Spirituality Within the Bounds of Science
by Jay N. Forrest

The Humanist Approach to Happiness: Practical Wisdom
by Jennifer Hancock

Black Lives and Sacred Humanity: Toward an African American Religious Naturalism
by Carol Wayne White

Women Without Superstition: No Gods–No Masters: The Collected Writings of Women Freethinkers of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
by Annie L. Gaylor

Spirit of the Earth: Indian Voices on Nature
by Michael Oren Fitzgerald

Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans
by John Halstead (Editor)

Elements of Pantheism
by Paul A. Harrison

Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist
by Sharman Apt Russell

Stoicism
by John Sellars

How to Think Like A Roman Emperor
by Donald Robertson

A Guide to the Good Life : The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
by William B. Irvine

The Art of Living
by Epictetus

Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
by Penguin Classics

Meditations
by Marcus Aurelius

Buddhist Life/Buddhist Path
by Bhikkhu Cintita

A New Buddhist Path: Enlightenment, Evolution and Ethics in a Modern World
by David R. Loy

Tao Te Ching
by Lao Tzu

Meditations for the Humanist
by A.C. Grayling

The Philosophy of Humanism
by Corliss Lamont

The Next Step In Religion
by Roy Wood Sellars

Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe
by Greg M. Epstein

The Middle Way: Finding Happiness in a World of Extremes
by Lou Marinoff

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
by Carl Sagan

Cosmos
by Carl Sagan

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
by Carl Sagan

For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World
by Sasha Sagan

The Sacred Depths of Nature
by Ursula Goodenough

Nature is Enough: Religious Naturalism and the Meaning of Life
by Loyal Rue

Religion is Not about God: How Spiritual Traditions Nurture our Biological Nature and What to Expect When They Fail
by Loyal Rue

When God Is Gone, Everything Is Holy: The Making of a Religious Naturalist
by Chet Raymo

Faitheist: How An Atheist Found Common Ground With The Religious
by Chris Stedman

Natural Spirituality
by Joyce Rockwood Hudson

The Absence of God: Dwelling in the Presence of the Sacred
by Sam Keen

Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason and Religion
by Stuart A. Kauffman

The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality
by André Comte-Sponville

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
by Sam Harris

Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society
by David Sloan Wilson

We Are That We Are: Theism, Spiritualism, Naturalism, and a Path to Spiritual Existentialism
by Charles H. Troe

The Promise of Religious Naturalism
by Michael Hogue

Hume’s Religious Naturalism
by Lou Reich

Becoming More Fully Human: Religious Humanism as a Way of Life
by William R. Murry

Dancing with the Sacred: Evolution, Ecology, and God
by Karl E. Peters

Biotheology: A New Synthesis of Science and Religion
by Michael Cavanaugh

A Philosophy of Sacred Nature: Prospects for Ecstatic Naturalism
by Leon Niemoczynski

The Lost Gospel of the Earth: A Call for Renewing Nature, Spirit and Politics
by Tom Hayden

Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future
by Bron Taylor

Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to A More Meaningful Life
by Massimo Pigliucci

Ethica
by Baruch Spinoza

A Common Faith
by John Dewey

Walden
by Henry David Thoreau

Plato: Collected Dialogues
by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Editors)

The Hellenistic Philosophers, volume 1
by A.A. Long & D.N. Sedley

Star Wars and Philosophy
by Kevin S. Decker and Jason T. Eberl