Reddit reviews Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe

For starters, I'd recommend the following to get a taste of the issues we have to wrestle with when thinking about resurrection:

Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes - here is an author who is almost immediately dismissed by the status quo of Christianity as being a crazy man. But in this book, he has been incredibly thorough in presenting evidence for his thesis. I know he writes other books where he speaks more generally, and I think that conservatives tend to seize this as an opportunity to attack without actually addressing the things he brings up in books like this one. Also by the same author, and related to this topic, you should check out:

The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic

Resurrection: Myth or Reality?

Related to Paul, you should read:

The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon

There are three books by this duo, and they are all fantastic - very thorough, meticulous, and yet easy to read and understand. Related to this topic, you'd want to read:

The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem

Another great book to understand where the debates lie in Jesus scholarship would be:

The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions

These are really "get your feet wet" books. But really, one of the biggest problems with theology these days, I feel, is that it is all too often done without even an attempt to connect with science. We think we can argue "the Bible says" and stop there - as if that implies "so therefore this is what we have to believe". This is generally how scholars like N.T. Wright operate - they spend all kinds of effort laying out what the language says, but never really get into the questions of whether these things are tenable with today's knowledge of science, whether or not Paul actually might not have been the author of such things, whether there are contradictions between the gospels (or some of the writings attributed to Paul), etc. With scholars like Wright, it's just assumed that everything which was said was reliable and came from the actual people we have long said it came from - we never have to think about problems like science and historical methodology.

But if you really want to understand the problems surrounding resurrection, I think you need to study what science has to say about consciousness. A few books that come to mind off the top of my head:

The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind

Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness

And if you're really up for some fun with science and the question of eternity:

Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe

The Self-Aware Universe

Please note: I don't think any of these books close the questions. They provide possibilities, for sure, and do so in a way that thoroughly wrestles with the evidence, logical problems, etc. But no one can prove or disprove afterlife, it seems. However, there are certainly many afterlife theories which simply do not work with modern science - literal bodily resurrection being one of them (if we're all going to be resurrected into physical bodies, how is our limited earth that is already stretched to the point of breaking going to support all those resurrected beings?).

Not sure if it's been posted here, but you might find Biocentrism by Robert Lanza interesting. There is a sequel to it as well but I have not had the chance to read it.

I never said God is a requirement. I do believe in a concept of God, and that's my choice. If you wish to find better arguments for the existence of some form of God than "these Scriptures say", I would suggest one of the following:

The Self-Aware Universe

Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe

From Science to God: A Physicist's Journey into the Mystery of Consciousness

By the way, none of those proselytize a particular form of religion. They simply argue from science to a panentheistic form of God.