So I’ve been on a “nonreligious studies” kick here lately. I actually read this brief book a few weeks ago, but as you can see my posting as of late has been a little spotty. Lots going on, and I hope to elaborate in future posts, soon.But anyway, back to “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris. This is a perfect little anti-manifesto about why it’s unwise to base one’s political actions on one’s religious beliefs. Furthermore, Harris points out how unwise it is to do so as a fundamentalist Christian.
His fight is not with those who quietly practice their religion and keep the rest of their lives separate from it, although he does call them enablers. His fight is with those who would impose their narrow-minded views on morality onto the rest of the world. I couldn’t agree more.
If you’ve ever considered exploring the idea of atheism, or feel that a religious worldview has just never been your style, I would recommend picking up this book. It’s well-intentioned, eloquent and won’t cost you but a few hours reading if you happen to completely disagree with Harris perspective.
This book is part of the Open Books project I’m working on.
So I needed something light after “The Children of Hurin.” I guess I shouldn’t have picked up “The Damned.” Actually, it is pulp fiction in the strictest sense. So there weren’t a lot of tough themes to dig through and process. It’s heavy only in its subject matter. It’s something good little Christian parents probably wouldn’t want their children reading. The only reason I’ve even heard of it is because my local comics shop ordered too many copies and was selling them at half price.
Basically it’s a story about a man who was cursed/sold his soul, so he keeps coming back from the dead. He can be killed for sure, and is several times through the book, but the next person to touch his dead body dies instantly and Eddie comes back. And of course Eddie works for one of the local mob families that inhabit his ’30s era world. Except these aren’t your every-day, run-of-the mill mobs. These “families” are made up mostly of demons who wear snappy suits.
I won’t give away too much of the story. It’s a case of sabotage and finding out who’s behind it. It unfolds fairly predictably, but that’s not to say it’s not enjoyable.
The black and white art jumps off a few pages, but often it just as often falls flat, looking like an amateur interpretation of a Dick Tracy strip. And the demon characters are too often unintentionally funny.
There’s some excellent banter between characters, and they read quite comfortably. The language is dated enough to set the tone, but not so forced that it causes one’s brow to furrow.
It’s fun book to spend a Saturday afternoon on. I’d probably even read another volume in the series if the price were right.
This entry is part of the Open Books project I’m doing.
I’m no Tolkien completist. I haven’t cracked any of the Unfinished Tales tomes or read any of the Histories of Middle-Earth series. But I have read the LOTR trilogy, “The Hobbit,” and “The Silmarillion.” And now I can add “The Children of Hurin,” an extended version of a tale that appears in “The Silmarillion,” to the list.
Having read now all of the “canon” Tolkien writings, it is interesting to note the differences in tone between, say, “The Hobbit” and “The Children of Húrin;” The former being without a doubt a children’s book with children’s themes (akin the the first Harry Potter book), the latter being anything but appropriate for a child. Not that this books should be rated R or anything. It’s just that the themes are quite dark, the violence more meaningful and the evil curses more fulfilled. No one escapes their doom in this book. There is no last-minute rescue courtesy of the eagles.
Continue reading ‘“The Children of Hurin” by J.R.R. Tolkien’
In “The God Delusion,” Richard Dawkins does not merely present arguments against the existence of god, he also provides evidence that humans have no need of one. In addition, he spends several chapters analyzing why humans are religious at all from a Darwinian standpoint. These chapters will probably have the most lasting impact on me.
In one of my favorite passages, Dawkins supposes that religion is the by-product of another function that is useful from a Darwinian standpoint. He compares us to moths who fly into open flames, street lamps and bug zappers. A moth’s built-in navigation system is based on the only real lights available up until the recent evolutionary past; the moon and the sun. The moth’s internal system tells it to fly in a straight line while keeping the moon (or sun) at a certain angle. Since the moon and sun are at optical infinity (meaning they pretty much stay put in the moth’s field of vision), this works very well. However, when the moth uses an artificial source of light, such as an open flame or bug zapper, which are not at optical infinity, they pretty much spiral into the light source while obeying a navigation system that has otherwise served them well.
Continue reading ‘“The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins’
Gosh, has it really been a month since I’ve posted? Have I really only read 4 books so far this year? I guess I’ve been a rather bad blogger as of late, and a rather bad communicator in general. I’ve been working a lot. Couple of 50+ hour weeks. Nothing too dramatic. We’re in the middle of a system upgrade which I’m heavily involved in implementing, so I’m being pulled in a lot of directions at once. Anyway, boring, right? On to the book:
I’m not sure why it took me so long to read this book. It’s frustrating on a couple of levels. Mainly, I’m interested in the subject of emergent behavior and bottom-up methods of problem solving. And Johnson isn’t a boring writer. On the contrary, he keeps his points simple and transitions from one thought to another with relative ease. I suppose maybe my brain was easily saturated by all the technobabble, most of which I understood but was still bored by. I suppose my one criticism of the book would be Johnson’s practically evangelistic support of emergent programming. I mean, I can see where using swarm logic to solve the problem of the shortest distance between two points makes sense. But one point that Johnson failed to mention is that self-organizing systems are massively inefficient. They require enormous amounts of computing power and memory, not to mention the prep work involved in setting up the rules of the systems. Plus, once you’ve established the rules and pushed all the agents into action, there is no predicting when — or if — the system will ever produce a viable result. Instead of spending that much time and energy creating and executing a program that will solve a problem, why not just solve the problem yourself?
Also, since the book was originally published in 2001, many of the cutting-edge references and short-term predictions are a tad dated. I mean, “The Sims Online” was moderately successful, but it has fallen short of redefining gaming as we know it. In addition, Will Wright has moved on to developing “Spore” anyway.
Johnson’s interpretation of the 21st century Web culture is spot on. Few people have such a grasp on the Internet’s influence on culture and society as he does. That being said, I sometimes found myself wishing that his book would read more like an anthropological study and less like a press release trying to sell me a piece of software.
Also, I’ve already had several conversations with people on how the queen ant isn’t really a monarch at all. That tidbit alone (albeit not exactly an original Johnson idea) was worth the price of the book.
Latest Comments
RSS