KingKloskowski Posted:

Taught mankind the first morals, represents the begininngs of the common era

Every “moral” found in the Bible was a feature of earlier codes of law. The gold standard of biblical morality (the 10 commandments) are primarily a series of prohibitions against following other gods, the only 2 now found in law are against murder and stealing, which have been in just about every set of laws ever devised.

The impact of religious texts is, as far as I can see, primarily to further the spread of the religion in question. That in turn has had a fairly long-standing effect on our society, but let’s just say I wouldn’t cast that in an entirely positive light. They’ve had their role in shaping our culture, certainly, if that’s what you’re looking for then go ahead, but the lessons therein aren’t going to illuminate much of the world (unless you become a believer, at that point it is of course the most important book ever written)

Morality itself pre-dates the Bible by thousands if not millions of years – hunter-gatherer and early agricultural societies weren’t devoid of morals, apes have been shown to act altruistically, even dogs have a sense of fairness. I’m aware I’ve gone on quite a while here about a simple comment, but the idea that religion is the basis of all morality is really very wrong.

KingKloskowski Posted:

You have heard of them, as so it has impacted you

You’ve heard of Twilight and Harry Potter, therefore they’ve “impacted” on you, but they don’t fall under the clbum of book you’re looking for.

As for actual important books…

As scientific works go, The Origin of Species, Newton’s Principia Mathematica, anything written by Einstein. The problem with trying to list them being that a lot of important science was published in some variety of journal rather than a book that would still be around…

I’ll add support to The Republic, although you appear to have crossed it out. Also Descartes’ Meditations. Aristotle’s ideas were taken as read for thousands of years, not sure if there’s a specific book you can read there though.