It really would depend on the thiest, their background and their level of intelligence.
For a Christian of a reasonable level of understanding I might turn to something like Some Mistakes of Moses by Robert Ingersoll, as for a Mormon I might recommend any one of several biography's of Joseph Smiths life not penned by a Mormon.
There isn't one be all and end all, it has to be tailored to fit the target. If I had to pick one though? Fields of Blood by Karen Armstrong, it's not an explicitly Atheistic work, in fact it tries to defend religion against the idea that it alone is the cause of violence. What it does though very gently is detail the theory that they all draw from much older non-religious events and traditions with a wide range of evidence.
An openly atheist work tends to make the barriers rise up in defense, but a rather more ambiguous Pantheistic one makes for creating a starting point.
For a Christian of a reasonable level of understanding I might turn to something like Some Mistakes of Moses by Robert Ingersoll, as for a Mormon I might recommend any one of several biography's of Joseph Smiths life not penned by a Mormon.
There isn't one be all and end all, it has to be tailored to fit the target. If I had to pick one though? Fields of Blood by Karen Armstrong, it's not an explicitly Atheistic work, in fact it tries to defend religion against the idea that it alone is the cause of violence. What it does though very gently is detail the theory that they all draw from much older non-religious events and traditions with a wide range of evidence.
An openly atheist work tends to make the barriers rise up in defense, but a rather more ambiguous Pantheistic one makes for creating a starting point.
