Star Map: A Journey of Faith, Doubt, and Meaning

is a touching and deeply personal philosophical memoir about a young man's wrenching struggle with fanatical faith and his frantic search for truth and meaning. Lewis Vaughn's journey transforms him from a young Christian fundamentalist to a disillusioned agnostic to an atheist seeker of meaning in a godless world. Along the way he stumbles on the strongest empirical argument against the reliability of faith as a source of knowledge, and sees that life does indeed have meaning without religion. In the end, he never regains the faith he lost, but finds something better. "Vaughn captures the anguish of teens growing up under strict fundamentalism ... well-written ... the author has an impressive ability to make the reader feel the deep discomfort of losing certainty" -Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -Steven M. Cahn, City University of New York Graduate Center -Susan K. Perry, Creativity Blogger, PsychologyToday.com -Dan Barker, Freedom From Religion Foundation -Gerald J. Erion, professor of philosophy, Medaille College -Michael Shermer, author of -Tim Madigan, president of the Bertrand Russell Society -J. H. McKenna, University of California, Irvine