Great journeys often start with a single question. For D. K. Evans, a newly married professional in the Christian-dominated South, that question was, "Why Do I Believe in God?" That simple query led him on a years-long search to better understand the nature of religion and faith, particularly as it applies to the Black community. While many taking such a journey today might immerse themselves in the writing of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, Evans took inspiration not only from John Henrik Clarke, Yosef-Ben Jochannan, Hubert Harrison, and John G. Jackson, champions of a rich Black tradition of challenging religious orthodoxy, but also from many others in his own community who had similarly come to question their core religious beliefs. While this journey eventually led him to discount the notion of God, he calls on all to ask their own questions, particularly those within the Black community who act on blind faith. While their own journey might not lead to his truth, he acknowledges, that is the only way they will ever emancipate themselves from the truths thrust on them by others and arrive at their most important truth—their own.

"The Black Atheist in America" is a powerful and thought provoking wake up call for the Black Community. Author Jason Winn delivers a rock solid combination of facts and flavor that will transform the aimless believer into a well informed doer.Religion has maintained a very violent and sordid history throught mankinds' life on the planet. Religion was very instrumental in The Crusades, the Trans-Atlantic/Trans-Sahara slave trade, the Arab/Israeli War, and the Spanish Inquisition just to name a few. These ultra destructive events have caused vast numbers of people to lose their lives all in the name of one mans' god being greater than the other mans' god.In the Black Community. The pastors and preists of today are keeping their congregations ill informed. Much is swept under the rug by these religious leaders who continue to make lack luster headlines involving sex, drugs, and betrayal. In the end, everybody suffers. People, both young and old, will lose their time, money, and (if no action is taken) their lives.From start to finish "The Black Atheist in America" is excellent. It examines the harmful effects that religion has on the African American from a historical and factual stand point. It reveals the very retrogressive mindset of religion and the progressive mindset of critical thinking. And lastly, this book reveals workable solutions to the limited horizons and dismal expectations so "characteristic" in the Black Community. These solutions are extremely viable only if a critically thinking mind is brought to the table and not religion."

Islam has become an increasingly attractive option for many African-Americans. This book offers an ethnographic study of this phenomenon & asks what attraction the Qur'an has for them & how the Islamic lifestyle accommodates mainstream US values.

From the provocative author of Straw Dogs comes an incisive, surprising intervention in the political and scientific debate over religion and atheism When you explore older atheisms, you will find that some of your firmest convictions—secular or religious—are highly questionable. If this prospect disturbs you, what you are looking for may be freedom from thought. For a generation now, public debate has been corroded by a shrill, narrow derision of religion in the name of an often vaguely understood “science.” John Gray’s stimulating and enjoyable new book, Seven Types of Atheism, describes the complex, dynamic world of older atheisms, a tradition that is, he writes, in many ways intertwined with and as rich as religion itself. Along a spectrum that ranges from the convictions of “God-haters” like the Marquis de Sade to the mysticism of Arthur Schopenhauer, from Bertrand Russell’s search for truth in mathematics to secular political religions like Jacobinism and Nazism, Gray explores the various ways great minds have attempted to understand the questions of salvation, purpose, progress, and evil. The result is a book that sheds an extraordinary light on what it is to be human.

Black women are the single most religious demographic in the United States, yet they are among the poorest, least educated, and least healthy groups in the nation. Drawing on the author's own past experience as an evangelical minister and her present work as a secular counselor and researcher, The Ebony Exodus Project makes a direct connection between the church and the plight of black women. Through interviews with African American women who have left the church, the author reveals the shame and suffering often caused by the church—and the resulting happiness, freedom, and sense of purpose these women have felt upon walking away from it. This book calls on other black women to honestly reflect on their relationship with religion and challenges them to consider that perhaps the answers to their problems rest not inside a church, but in themselves.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.