These books are listed to be as updated as possible with current studies, and present a one-stop shop launchpad to current research, and will be listed in order of accessibility, meaning higher up -> easier to read.
(Subject/Issue | Book)
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General Readable One-stop-shop style Overviews
(I have not read this book yet) | Taking Religion Seriously - Charles Murray (2025)
A great explanatory overview and candid persuasive account by a converted former-athiest and biologist, consisting of examinations from general cosmology, biology, geology and other sciences; philosophies in general; internal and external historical evidences of the Bible and theories/counter-arguments revolving those evidences; and subjective reasons for faith. On the Creation-evolution debate, this author leans towards the Guided/Planned Evolution stance | The Shortest Leap - Ally Van Der Herik (2022) (my Chinese translations of this book can be found here: Traditional Chinese Vol. 1 and Vol. 2; Simplified Chinese Vol. 1 and Vol. 2)
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Philosophy (including Logic):
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History of Philosophy
An atheist's take on the history of (Western) philosophy (this one in particular is notorious for its bias) | A History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russel (1945)
A Jesuit's take on history of philosophy (A true classic that tries to show the philosophy in detail and with as little bias as possible) | A History of Western Philosophy - Frederick C. Copleston (completed in mid 1970s)
Succinct general history and critiques of Western philosophy with their crucial flaws from a Christian standpoint | A History of Western Philosophy and Theology - John Frame (2015)
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Self-Reference
An accessible take on the impossibility/trade-off of self-referentiality, and also includes an fun and interesting set-theoretical description of God that at least is a prima-facie answer facing the "Who designed the designer" objection (I would only use it for that negative purpose, but not use it to positively argue for the Christian God)| Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter (1979)
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Apologetics in Epistemology
A compilation of Van Til's covenantal/presupposition-exposing style apologetics (more deals with epistemological arguments, since philosophy underwent the epistemological turn in the 16th century) | Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis - Greg Bahnsen (1998)
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Math:
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Specified Complexity:
Classical Text on Kolmogorov complexity which will help you gain a rigorous understanding of complexity and randomness | An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications (1st edition in 1994)
Specified Complexity (as termed Specified Complexity; in statistics, it is equivalent to the concept of Randomness Deficiency) | The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities (1st edition in 1998)
Basic observation on the notion of Specified Complexity:
Specified Complexity (or if you want better terms to deal with semantic complaints from atheist circles: Randomness Deficiency or Complex Specified Design or Specified improbability (point 4. in Shallit's response; go read it to see how absurd it is)) is defined by SC(x) = Maximum Length of Description (x) - Length of Shortest Compressed Description (x). The Length of Shortest Compressed Description can be upper-bounded by any computed length of description/program, in which description includes both the interpreter/language and the content interpreted. Martin-Löf randomness allows for the highest possible value of the Length of Shortest Compressed Description (infinity) due to treating infinite sequences, and a string that is Martin-Löf random (passes all randomness tests) will not be compressible in its original string sequence, and therefore SC(x) = 0, since the Maximum Length of Description equals the Shortest Compressed Length of Description (it is not compressible, and therefore the shortest length equals the maximum length). If any infinite string is not Martin-Löf random, then the Maximum Length of Description will be bigger than the shortest length, and therefore we could have an easy test of whether something is designed by just finding a randomness test that the infinite sequence fails to pass (theoretically, if a program can be conceived as able to finish running for an infinite amount of time).
In reality, we are never dealing with infinite sequences when deciding whether something is designed. Therefore, we need the equivalent for finite length sequences, and that is Kolmogorov randomness.
If every single text in the world was considered as a holistic whole that describes the universe accurately (with all possible explanations of metaphors, translation between languages etc., so that any word and concept in that whole is maximally understandable as far as we know) and without data-loss, and the total amount of texts are estimated to be about at most 50-60 petabytes, with a petabyte being 10^15 bytes and a byte being 2^8 bits, then the total data would be 60*(10^15)* (2^8) bits, or 1.536*(10^19) bits. This is indeed an enormous amount. But consider the amount of bits in the universe can use to compute that physicists have calculated: 10^90 (or 10^120 if gravitational fields contribute). That is about 10^71 times more than all human texts combined.
There is an atheist's omniscience dilemma, or maybe the quantified rational-irrational synthesis (Rational-irrational synthesis is Van Til's important contribution to philosophy) dilemma: if human knowledge (a total of 1.536*(10^19) bits) is considered "omniscient," perfectly describing the universe without data loss, and those number of bits can be related to the "specified-ness" or, upon compression, the shortest program lenth of the universe by Kolmogorov complexity, then it will calculate a Randomness Deficiency of [(10^20)-1.536]*(10^70) = 10^90. The universe's number of bits will bulldoze over the length anyway, and you will need to say that the universe has a 10^(-90) probability of being undesigned. We can quantify the inconceivable ignorance of this: if an atheist can bet on those odds, he would most likely bet on every single lottery in the world, which give much, much, MUCH better odds than this.
The other horn is much simpler: if human knowledge is considered non-omniscient, then its description of the universe has data-loss. As far as it judges from the design or information of the universe, it cannot speak conclusively about the non-existence of God.
There is no third horn. Therefore atheism is not true. Not under physicalism.
The other implication of this argument is that, as Christians, we cannot hope to make our case of God in terms of positively portraying it as a conclusion of the quantified amount of information. The dilemma is only there to show that a worldview with materialist/physicalist foundations is self-defeating. Physicalism mathematically limits itself. We of course are not going to prove Christianity with physicalism, but we must consistently point to the seed of divine knowledge already implanted in man. There is a plus, a more-than, beyond physicalism. The arena is much more than just numbers and science, but is still the competing "revelations" against each other.
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A small preamble for Science (as a philosophical outgrowth):
For a fully Biblical approach in science (just like a fully Biblical approach to philosophy via Van Til), the entire witness of Genesis insomuch as it provides data-points and explanations for change in the earth's conditions and physical laws must be fully acknowledged. In particular, these points are relevant:
(1) The Instantaneous creation of the universe...
(2) with laws that let it operate steadily forever without decay for the first 6 days up to the Fall,
(3) the first violent change in the universe as a result of the curse (i.e. changes in conditions and the introduction of physical laws that cause decay of the universe and of man)
(4) other lesser destruction events, including wide, catastrophic ones as the flood, the gradual decrease of man's maximum earthly age, instant diversification in language and breakdown of society at Babel, destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, destruction of Pharoah, etc.
(5) possible extensions of initial conditions in a hypothetical eternal world to other purposes/features that could be considered "essential" or "beneficial" in future times and not just Eden.
You cannot maintain intellectually integrity by saying simply that Young Earth Creationists are "foolish" for considering these options; in fact, it is more likely that you have considered less scenarios than they have if they are already willing to stretch their interpretive limits on science to the max, and would themselves have to read quite a lot of papers to do so. So basic reading is always required on both sides (those who agree or disagree with YEC, or with any view). On another note, the spectrum of Creator-believing people (in America and not necessarily Christian) across the debate is still wide enough to dwarf the numbers of atheists. Therefore, if you feel that evolution is conclusive and is reason enough to doubt existence in God, all I can say is "get a reality check." Once you get to abiogenesis and physics, the hurdles are larger and more intractable.
Another note on science's relation to faith: Science closes the gap between the unknown principles and the known phenomena, but not the gap between non-existence and known phenomena. We don't explain why or how did something happen as opposed to not happening, but that something happened as opposed to not happening. When we explain how a spark happened between the ends of two metal rods separated at distance d from each other, we lay out the equations to explain that the spark happened, and it happened it a specific way. That is more information that needs an even bigger explanation: Why did the spark happen, and not only that, but why did it happen precisely in this specific way. If all scientific discoveries were worded this way to transfer the question of why as why, instead of putting up red herrings by saying that the other kind of 'why' question (why it happened in a specific way, which simply demands a more specific answer), it is easily pointed out to a child that questions of scientific nature (the specific way something happened) can never be ambitiously used to answer the possibility why question (why it happened at all). Atheists who understand this just go directly to saying that this question is meaningless, and it is at that point where we put the pressure on the Atheist: "why would you say that when obviously many people think it is meaningful?" The universe as a SU(5), SO(10) or whichever simplest variant of Quantum Field theories just gives an incredible load of information on top of that it has all the phenomena that it does. The question that cries out is: how is the universe so obscenely and incredibly rational and symmetric and consistent to this kind of degree? And where does the universe get its titanic energy source to force through a version of Quantum Field Theory to produce all the phenomena we have today?
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