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Its basis for historical fact is roughly equivalent to that of Spider-Man comics. Spider-Man comics is set in New York City, which is a real place, and features real landmarks like the Empire State Building and George Washington Bridge. It sometimes features cameos of real people like Barack Obama. But none of that validates the claim that there's a superhero with spider-like powers swinging around the city fighting crime in a tight-fitting costume.

The Bible is best treated as an example of historical fiction, with its authors writing to serve their political and religious agendas rather than to record the truth.

This atheist thinks free will is a vague term that serves as a poor, outdated model of human behavior that is not only poorly defined (what is the will? how is it separated from non-will? from what exactly is it free?), but it defies certain known facts, such as the brain prepares for action before a person decides what action to take.

Biology explains explain behavior, even complex human behaviors. Dr. Robert Sapolsky provides a magnificent resource explaining this for the average non-scientist: Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

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

It saddens me that there are adults in this world that believe in demons.

Jerry DeWitt write a great book on this called Hope after Faith. You should check it out.

For me personally, I was never indoctrinated to believe that we'd live forever, or that meaning and purpose must come from an external locus. When bad things happen to me I deal with it like most people, I just don't do it with any supernatural beliefs.

Life doesn't have any inherent purpose, or meaning. We imbue our lives with our own meaning. Isn't that much better?

If you can handle some existential anxiety, I highly recommend The Worm at the Core. It explains terror management theory, a scientific explanation for the apparent need for humans to believe in not just god but any sort of supernatural powers that can grant them immortality.

You can still sing lullabies! I personally have no singing voice, and I'd hum tunelessly, rock my daughters, pat their back, put on music or one of their favorite shows. Reading is also another great approach; my middle daughter's favorite books were actually the children's science-oriented books like Bang! though my oldest preferred books about fish, and my youngest is nonverbal and prefers to be held or just to have me nearby. Occasionally nightmares are bad enough that it's quicker to wake up and go back down to sleep than it is to try to get them to feel better from the nightmare.

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Read this instead: https://www.amazon.com/God-Disappointed-You-Mark-Russell/dp/1603090983/ref=nodl_

It’s the cliff notes version of the Bible told in the modern vernacular and each book is a few pages long. It is SURPRISINGLY accurate to the historical and academic understandings of the text.

For example, the Book of Revelations is presented as what it really is: a tome of “fuck you, Rome!” writings written in code as to not get in trouble… not some grand prophecy of the 2nd coming of Christ.

I highly recommend the book Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting by Dan Dennet in which he talks about the various different definitions of free will, and what can be demonstrated as true.

Even if we did have true Libertarian free will (I have no idea how that would work) we have no way of knowing that right now.

All available evidence points to the universe being deterministic. But because our thought and decision making process arise from these deterministic functions, we have the illusion of free will, and really isn't that all we could really ask for?

I would just recommend using the term "will" to avoid any extra baggage.

I don't know how our current will would be any different from a "free will."

Well, the obvious choice would be Evolution For Dummies. The "for dummies" books are actually quite good, I have several on a variety of subjects.

There are also quite a few informative videos on YouTube.

> A lot of research suggests that elements of morality can be clearly seen in children under the age of 2 years old based on various experiments. This is before religious indoctrination, or societal indoctrination... Where do you all feel these early elements of morality come from?

Genetics. Of course I believe that a huge part of human behavior is because it is evolutionarily advantageous. There is some material on this topic, for example The Survival of the Friendliest or this playlist on evolution.

> Do you believe in the soul or spirit?

No.

If you can, I would recommend reading the book Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne. He looks at both the evidence for evolution, and the most common arguments against it, and shows why the various arguments against evolution fail.

It's extremely readable, and easy to understand. You don't need to have a deep understanding of biology to follow it. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I'm sure that "The God Delusion" is a popular attempt at explaining one scientist's reasons for atheism. If you want a more philosophically robust discussion, try reading a philosopher like Mackie and "The Miracle of Theism".

https://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Theism-Arguments-Against-Existence-ebook/dp/B004EWFZUK

But I get your basic point, I found it very difficult to read Craig's Reasonable Faith. Much easier for me to read books from Plantinga.

First off, let me commend you on keeping an open mind. I sincerely appreciate any theist that willingly makes attempts to understand the atheist point of view.

If you’re interested in philosophy and existential scientific theories, I would recommend The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. It was my first heavy read as an atheist, and I have to admit it made a lot of sense looking back on my previous theist perspective.

To get your feet wet, I invite you to read up on Terror Management Theory. It does an excellent job explaining why most people are religious and why it’s so difficult for people to lose their faith.

For Hell you should read Bart Ehrman's new book Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife

That might help show you that most of Hell mythology is not really Christianity.

For fearing of making the wrong 'bet', or Pascal's Wager, look at Betting On Infinity video to perhaps give you some context on how illogical it is.

I agree with you on the notion that the idea of ECT (eternal conscious torment) is ridiculous and quite sadistic.

For those who do believe in ECT, I cannot fathom why they would risk having a kid they believed even had a 1 in a trillion chance of ending up in Hell.

So yea we share the same sentiments on that one lol. Plenty of Christians completely agree with this also.

Here’s a great book on Christian Universalism and how the Bible itself probably never advocated for an eternal Hell:

https://www.amazon.com/That-All-Shall-Saved-Universal/dp/0300246226

Great book on the subject of how inevitable death affects life:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400067472/

>A transformative, fascinating theory—based on robust and groundbreaking experimental research—reveals how our unconscious fear of death powers almost everything we do, shining a light on the hidden motives that drive human behavior

Don't 'decide' whether to be a Christian or an atheist.

Just keep reading and studying. For biblical history, check out some books by Bart Erhman. For some content on critical thought, Sagan's 'The Demon Haunted World' is pretty good without, I think, shoving you toward a particular conclusion.

Keep reading, keep thinking, and decide for yourself.

And know that your faith, or lack thereof, is entirely your business and no one else's, and (in my opinion) should not be so central to your identity that you care very much who knows about it.

Try Donald Prothero's Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters

> Donald R. Prothero’s Evolution is an entertaining and rigorous history of the transitional forms and series found in the fossil record. Its engaging narrative of scientific discovery and well-grounded analysis has led to the book’s widespread adoption in courses that teach the nature and value of fossil evidence for evolution. Evolution tackles systematics and cladistics, rock dating, neo-Darwinism, and macroevolution. It includes extensive coverage of the primordial soup, invertebrate transitions, the development of the backbone, the reign of the dinosaurs, and the transformation from early hominid to modern human. The book also details the many alleged “missing links” in the fossil record, including some of the most recent discoveries that flesh out the fossil timeline and the evolutionary process.

I recently read a recent novel by John Grisham, the Guardians and it lead me to donating to a surprising cause for an atheist: A ministry. Centurion Ministries is a non-profit organization working to free falsely convicted people facing the death penalty or life in prison. Despite the name, they are a secular organization.

https://centurion.org/

You should read Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World.

In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion.

I don't know if it will lead you to not believe, but that book, along with Boyer's Religion Explained, and Dennett's Breaking The Spell and also Barrett's Why Would Anyone Believe In God, should make it clear as day that God and gods are psychological phenomena. It is possible that one or more of the innumerable gods people have believed in are real, of course, but there's absolutely no reason to think that they are.

> What determines this?

The real world, which includes no gods. Crack open a book other than the bible once in a while.

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True