The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture - Darrel W. Ray
What makes religion so powerful? How does it weave its way into our political
system? Why do people believe and follow obvious religious charlatans? What
makes people profess deep faith even as they act in ways that betray that
faith? What makes people blind to the irrationalities of their religion yet
clearly see those of others? If these questions interest you, this book will
give you the tools to understand religion and its power in you, your family
and your culture. For thousands of years, religion has woven its way through
societies and people as if it were part and parcel to that society or person.
In large measure it was left unexplained and unchallenged, it simply existed.
Those who attempted to challenge and expose religion were often persecuted,
excommunicated, shunned, or even executed. It could be fatal to explain that
which the church, priest or imam said was unexplainable. Before the germ,
viral and parasite theory of disease, physicians had no tools to understand
disease and its propagation. Priests told people disease was a result of sin,
Satan, evil spirits, etc. With the discovery of microbial actors, scientists
gained new tools to study how it spreads. They could study infection
strategies, immunity, epidemiology and much more. Suddenly the terrible
diseases of the past were understandable. The plagues of Europe, yellow fever,
small pox, pneumonia, tuberculosis, syphilis, etc. were now removed from
the divine and placed squarely in the natural world. This book owes a great
deal to Richard Dawkins concept of viruses of the mind, but it seeks to go
a step further to personalize the concept of religion as a virus and show how
these revolutionary ideas work in everyday life. The paradigm can explain the
fundamentalism of your Uncle Ned, the sexual behavior of a fallen mega church
minister, the child rearing practices of a Pentecostal neighbor, why 19 men
flew planes into the World Trade Center or what motivates a woman to blow
herself up in the crowded markets of Baghdad. Learn how religion influences
sexuality for its own purposes, how and why it protects pedophile priests and
wayward ministers and how it uses survivor guilt to propagate and influence
and how it might influence a person's IQ.
Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided
What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 years - John Philip Jenkins
The fifth-century Christian church faced a doctrinal issue, now largely
forgotten, that precipitated intramural Christian savagery unparalleled until
the 11-centuries-later Thirty Years. War. The bone of contention was the
nature of Jesus Christ. That he wasn.t a mere man was indisputable. But was
he a human-divine cross-breed, so to speak, or was he purely divine and his
human body an illusion? Neither was accepted, but the conclusion of the
council of Chalcedon in 451 that he was fully divine and fully human.that is,
said dissidents, of two natures.incensed those who held he was of one nature,
entirely divine. The fight broke out well before Chalcedon, entailing the
death-from-assault of the patriarch of Constantinople during the 449 council
of Ephesus, thereafter disowned as the .Gangster Synod.. Chalcedon eventually
triumphed, but not until well after 250 years of intermittent violence in
which monks behaved like the Waffen SS. Jenkins condenses centuries of church
and imperial strife with admirable clarity despite the continuous blizzard of
historical names and ecclesiastical terms the narrative entails. He suggests
that this era, not the later Dark and Middle Ages, is the most violent
(un-Christian?) in Christian history and that it may have lessons for the
present and future conflict between Christians and Muslims over the nature
of God.
Your Religion Is False - Joel Grus
The most important book ever written! Whether you.re a Christian or a Jew,
a Muslim or a Hindu, a Rasta or a Jain, an Environmentalist or a Cheondoist,
a Scientologist or a Giant Stone Head Worshipper, your religion is false.
In this long-awaited book, Joel Grus reveals the details of not only how your
religion is false but also how every other religion is false. When you want
to know what not to believe, this is the only book you need. In addition,
you.ll learn * Why .god. doesn.t exist * Why there.s no such thing as
a .soul. * How to find .meaning. in a religion-less world * Which of your
religious heroes are pedophiles * Why .religious tolerance. is a terrible
idea And, as a bonus, the greatest religious joke ever told. You can.t afford
not to read this book!
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