Who cares about Derek Zoolander anyway? The man has only one look for Christ's sake! Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigra? They're the same face! Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!To answer the question of why religion is such a part of humanity, I just finished Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained, an examination of religious beliefs through the lens of evolutionary psychology. I can't recommend it strongly enough. This is exactly the kind of work people need to be doing, and the kind of book you should be reading.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Religion Explained and the crazy pills
Most of the world is obsessed with superstitions about imaginary invisible friends and enemies. Watching people, friends and loved ones, contort their minds around inane delusions can sometimes be enough to make me feel like I'm on the same drug as Mugatu:
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2 comments:
i read end of faith on my trip. you're right that's it's like "preaching to the converted" except that most of the stuff in it i hadn't actually ever thought about concretely and it was only by reading the book that i realized i had all those same thoughts too. kind of spooky really. but really good!
I gave my father my copy of End of Faith to read. I haven't talked to him about it since I dropped it off a few weeks ago.
But now I think Religion Explained might have been a better choice for him. The tone is one of scholarly inquiry, and that tone might be more effective in unapologetically putting his religion in the context of a thousand other religions, all of which involve element of faith that Harris decries more vehemently. I worry that his vehemence might lose certain readers, regardless of the accuracy of his argument.
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