Tag Archives: religion
*** Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton
Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion is a delightful respite from the spiteful attacks of books like The God Delusion and focuses on the special talents of organized religion to create community, educate the young, … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
** The Annointed by Randall Stephens and Karl Giberson
The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age describes the world of US Evangelicals and opened my mind to the fact that there are many subgroups within the movement, only a small subset– albeit the most vocal — advocates such … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
** The Muslim Next Door by Sumbul Ali-Karamali
The Muslim Next Door: The Qur’an, the Media, and That Veil Thing is a valiant effort to explain the basics of Islam to the uninitiated, and to that extent it succeeds, aptly distinguishing the fanatics from the believers, cultural practices … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
** Inside Scientology by Janet Reitman
I greatly enjoyed Inside Scientology, a lively and opinionated history of the Church of Scientology starting with its business-minded founder (who, we learn along the way, was a bigamist for some time and uses his middle name rather than the … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
** God’s Lunatics by Michael Largo
Intriguingly packaged as an alphabetical encyclopedia, God’s Lunatics presents the weird stories of religions (and also a large dash of simply weird religions!) There are wonderful stories of Catholic saints, with all their bizarre mutilations and behaviors that reminded me … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
The Faith Instinct by Nicholas Wade
In The Faith Instinct, the author attempts to demonstrate that human beings are genetically programmed for religion and that we, as a species, evolved over time to become more religious. The problem is that he does not quite do that. … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose
The Unlikely Disciple tells the story of a college student who decides to attend Liberty University (founded by Jerry Falwell) for a semester’s break from Brown and as a reporting opportunity, a la Racing Odysseus but from a 20-something’s eyes. … Continue reading
Filed under New fiction
The Twighlight of Atheism by Alister McGrath
While I enjoyed The Dawkins Delusion, in which the same author offered a reasoned and, I thought, restrained critic of Christopher Dawkins’s vitriolic The God Delusion, I was greatly disappointed by The Twilight of Atheism, which claims to present a … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
The Dawkins Delusion by Alister McGrath
The Dawkins Delusion is a rebuttal to Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, which I found to be an intolerant and grating vituperation against religious people of all ilk that failed to distinguish between the lunatic fundamentalist fringe and the vast … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
The 19th Wife tells two stories: one is a historical novel about Ann Eliza Young, the 19th wife (probably more like the 50th++ wife) of the Mormon leader Brigham Young, who decided to leave him and speak against polygamy; the … Continue reading
Filed under New fiction
