Rebekah Kohlhepp, Author at She Seeks Nonfiction

15 Nonfiction Books I Can’t Wait to Read

March 21, 2021October 20, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

I love books so much, but the ones I have actually gotten around to reading and reviewing in the past five years are so few compared to my ever-growing to-be-read list! I usually wait until I’ve finished a book to talk about it, but I am just so excited to read these books (some of which I already own and some I do not).

I wrote years ago that I was disappointed that so few of my books were by women, and especially by any authors of color. I’m so happy to finally be rounding out my book collection with more diverse voices across race and gender, as well as across genres! My book collection started off as mostly centering on atheism and religion, but it has since expanded onto topics related to science, society, and history. Without further ado, here is just a fraction of the books on my to-be-enthusiastically-read list, as well as some insights on how exactly I come across all these books in the first place.

Book Review: Kindred by Rebecca Wragg Sykes

March 14, 2021October 20, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

If a book can be “hot” in the world of paleoanthropology, then Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art is that book. Published in the fall of 2020, Kindred is the latest in a long line of books about Neanderthals, but anyone who has read Kindred knows that it is not like the others.

Ken Ham vs. NASA

March 7, 2021October 20, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

I know I said I would not write posts responding to creationist nonsense without good reason, but when I stumbled upon the fact that Ken Ham thought that Perseverance, NASA’s latest Mars rover, was a “waste of money,” what was I to do? I got to researching, and even after knowing the ways of Answers in Genesis as well as I do, I was still shocked that they would say this.

Why I Buy Physical Books

February 28, 2021October 20, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

Every time I have written a post dedicated to my bookshelf over the years, I have gotten at least one comment politely suggesting that I get an e-reader. E-readers can save you money and shelf space, as well as the work of packing up boxes of books when it comes time to move. An e-reader also would have come in handy for me when I was covertly reading all those atheist books back in my closeted days. But for how difficult it was to disguise my God Delusion book, and how heavy all the boxes were when I moved, I wouldn’t trade my books for anything.

Which Personality Test Is Best?

February 21, 2021October 20, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

When writing my first post about why astrology is pseudoscience, I had the intention of ending it by suggesting the Myers-Briggs Personality Test as a more accurate way to identify people’s traits. I was surprised to find that while personality types are more valid than zodiac signs (or their popular equivalent in Asian countries of categorizing personalities based on blood type), they are still far from perfect. For example, I once took my own Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test and found that I was an INTJ, but when my husband took the same test about me, we found that in his eyes I was an ISFJ. (I’ve also gotten INFJ and INTP.) This was my first hint that personality tests might not be all they’re cracked up to be. Knowing that, and having seen how ubiquitously popular the Enneagram test has become, I decided it was time for me to put personality types to the test. They’re not as bad as astrology, but they’re by no means an exact science. Where do they land?

Book Review: Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi

February 14, 2021October 20, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

I’ll be honest with you: Stamped from the Beginning is a very intimidating book in more ways than one. It’s a 511-page tome, which makes sense considering that it is, as the subtitle tells us, The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. It’s won several awards, and for good reason.

Answers in Genesis is Threatened by Human Fossil Discoveries

February 7, 2021October 20, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

Happy Sunday and welcome to the latest installment in my series Creationists Don’t Understand Human Evolution! This week I will be responding to the three Answers in Genesis articles under their category “Hominids” in which the AiG authors contend with “the news” each time it “eagerly reports the discovery of another link in the supposed chain of hominid evolution.” In my opinion, this whole category seems pretty incomplete, as it only covers two fossil discoveries as well as an ongoing debate between paleoanthropologists. I don’t normally respond to each article separately, but the first of these three has virtually nothing in common with the other two, so I’ll have to tackle that one on its own. The articles are:

Intentionality in Reading and Writing

January 31, 2021September 4, 2023Rebekah Kohlhepp

When I was brainstorming on what to write about this week, I had the idea of doing a series responding to one of the short Christian apologetics books on my shelves. I landed on Josh McDowell’s More Than a Carpenter, which seemed like a shorter version of the famed The Case for Christ, surely featuring the same arguments that, after having educated myself some on the historicity of Jesus and the development of the gospels, should be easy to refute.

Why Atheists Can’t Defeat Christian Nationalism

January 24, 2021August 25, 2022Rebekah Kohlhepp

As someone who is hoping for a brighter and fairer future for my country, I found hope and reassurance in watching the inauguration of our new President and Vice President, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. But as someone who is not religious, and who knows all too well the harms of Christian Nationalism, I also found division and exclusionary language.

3 Myths That Answers in Genesis Wants You to Believe About Neanderthals

January 17, 2021February 11, 2022Rebekah Kohlhepp

After a four-month-long break, I am happy to finally be returning to my series critiquing the claims of creationists—specifically, Answers in Genesis—about human evolution! Anyone who has created critiques to AiG’s content knows how frustrating and exasperating it can be. For those who do this for a living, I applaud you. AiG has so much content, with so many twists and turns and overlaps, that it is almost too easy to get lost on their website and in their…unique ideas. They seem to have a great fascination with Neanderthals, which in their eyes are just an archaic group of Homo sapiens. (They can’t seem to agree on whether Neanderthals were an ethnic group, a race, or a subspecies.) In the world of paleoanthropology, Neanderthals have always been a hot topic, as we know more about them than any other hominid species but our own. There is a lot of fluctuation in our understanding of Neanderthals, because scientists are discovering more about them by the day.