If you think most aspects of organized religion miss what’s important, you’ll enjoy this book. With humor and irony, it aims to cut through the clutter of divisive theological dross and get to the heart of what we human beings need for happiness, and for our very survival as a species.
This book isn’t a scholarly work, but a set of commentaries in the style of the American author Mark Twain, a favorite of mine.
“No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good”. Plato
“Do You Fear Death?” is the question Davy Jones puts to a captured sailor in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Dead Man’s Chest. Jones offers to extend the hapless sailor’s life by a hundred years if the sailor agrees to serve on the Flying Dutchman; otherwise Jones has the sailor killed on the spot to face God’s Judgment. The answer to Jones’s question may depend on one’s beliefs or suspicions about the ultimate fate of human beings, and the book looks at a few significant choices with a measure of skepticism and humor.
This book touches on several topics in religion, philosophy, and science, one of which is death and our attitudes about death. Many would see this as a serious subject, but the book treats it less than seriously. The book avoids judging religious and philosophical positions (claims or beliefs) about death and other topics in terms of the truth or untruth of those positions. Instead, Chapter 9, for example, makes comparisons among conflicting positions, along with atheism, with regard to their potential effects on a person’s attitude, not only about death, but also about life itself.
“It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it”. Gilbert Keith Chesterton
“Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it”. Henry Louis Mencken
“Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating ten more”. George Bernard Shaw
The style and tone of the book might offend anyone who doesn’t like taking matters of faith or religion lightly, especially their own. Maybe subjects like religion, philosophy, and science should usually be taken seriously, but they do have their humorous and ridiculous aspects.
The author also addresses the Golden Rule as a hypothetical common feature among differing views on the ultimate fate of human beings. In childhood we were taught the importance of behaving well, but for many people these lessons get hidden in the fog of dogma and ritual and forgotten in the struggle to survive in everyday life. For many others, “feeling good” replaces good behavior as the de facto aim of religious affiliation.
This book isn’t a scholarly work, but a set of commentaries in the style of the American author Mark Twain, a favorite of mine.
“No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good”. Plato
“Do You Fear Death?” is the question Davy Jones puts to a captured sailor in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Dead Man’s Chest. Jones offers to extend the hapless sailor’s life by a hundred years if the sailor agrees to serve on the Flying Dutchman; otherwise Jones has the sailor killed on the spot to face God’s Judgment. The answer to Jones’s question may depend on one’s beliefs or suspicions about the ultimate fate of human beings, and the book looks at a few significant choices with a measure of skepticism and humor.
This book touches on several topics in religion, philosophy, and science, one of which is death and our attitudes about death. Many would see this as a serious subject, but the book treats it less than seriously. The book avoids judging religious and philosophical positions (claims or beliefs) about death and other topics in terms of the truth or untruth of those positions. Instead, Chapter 9, for example, makes comparisons among conflicting positions, along with atheism, with regard to their potential effects on a person’s attitude, not only about death, but also about life itself.
“It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it”. Gilbert Keith Chesterton
“Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it”. Henry Louis Mencken
“Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating ten more”. George Bernard Shaw
The style and tone of the book might offend anyone who doesn’t like taking matters of faith or religion lightly, especially their own. Maybe subjects like religion, philosophy, and science should usually be taken seriously, but they do have their humorous and ridiculous aspects.
The author also addresses the Golden Rule as a hypothetical common feature among differing views on the ultimate fate of human beings. In childhood we were taught the importance of behaving well, but for many people these lessons get hidden in the fog of dogma and ritual and forgotten in the struggle to survive in everyday life. For many others, “feeling good” replaces good behavior as the de facto aim of religious affiliation.
