Reviews tagging 'Antisemitism'
Dirk Quigby's Guide to the Afterlife: All You Need to Know to Choose the Right Heaven by E.E. King
1 review
vladdbad's review
funny
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
Graphic: Islamophobia, Religious bigotry, Xenophobia, Antisemitism, and Racism
If you want to read someone being snide and snarky about different religions, this might be for you. Don't look for wit or understanding or empathy or even basic knowledge of theology beyond what you might find in a risque cartoon... This is _Beavis and Butthead Do Religion_, basically. The author takes some surface level observations from an encyclopedia of religions and makes some snarky comments about implausibility, and that's pretty much it. If you remember the jokes made by that one kid in school who snuck bacon into the Turkish exchange student's lunch and bullied the Mormon kids, and they still make you chuckle... You'll probably enjoy this. If you are that kid, you'll probably read it for ideas. The author includes a section on references, because editors obviously saw how shallow the understanding was. Whatever she did to consult, in essence it ended up being something akin to reading an encyclopedia entry. As an example, she has one entry for all the different traditions of Islam, and makes a statement about prayer that completely ignores or invalidates all Shia traditions... This isn't someone who followed the hyperlinks, this is being content with skimming the bare surface. This quickly passes Mencken in meanness and leaps full bore into bigotry. There is a wrapper for the 'reviews' that reads like pat filler to try and justify a bigger page count. That whole additional layer is a poor graft onto the reviews that damages whatever credibility is left, and could easily be skipped with no loss. If you are starting to have doubts in your faith, give this a read... It acts as a quick antidote to whatever questions serious atheists have raised for you, and will help you feel like an embattled minority again. If you grew up watching Christian media and are starting to feel like _maybe_ the hateful atheists are a dubious stereotype... Here you go, at least one of them does actually exist, and her arguments are just as silly as in _God's Not Dead_. If you actually enjoy looking at the quirks of religion and faith and different traditions, if you can enjoy both Terry Pratchett and CS Lewis... This is going to leave you cold. But if you need a quick pick-me-up as an atheist yourself because you've run out of snarky comments to throw at your family and friends... This will help isolate you further. This is Richard Dawkins-level theological sophistication, without the science to justify it, but all of the bigotry.
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