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iggymcmuffin's review against another edition
1.0
Silverman's definition of Religion is a terrible one. Reminiscent of E.B. Tylor, you have to believe in God to have religion, but that leaves out countless religious groups that don't believe in God like the majority of Confucians, Daoists, Buddhists, and countless smaller materialistic religious groups (that don't/didn't believe in the supernatural at all) including Heaven's Gate and the Raelians. Silverman would do well to take a course from his local university in Religious Studies or Sociology of Religion in order to understand the problems inherent in defining religion and get some ideas about how to repair his definition.
Silverman also repeatedly says all religious people bring their morals to their religion, rather than getting them from religion. All religions are cafeteria religions. People pick and choose which and how they follow various scriptures and commandments. The problem is that he also says Islam the worst religion of all because of it's scriptures. Which is it? Either Muslims infuse their religion with their personal beliefs (like everyone else) or religion does provide moral teachings. The cognitive dissonance is plain to see.
He also claims the religious 'nones' as atheists, because anyone who doesn't believe in organized religion is practically an atheist. This is an incredibly misleading and problematic statement, as anyone with a passing familiarity with sociology of religion will know. After he says it I had trouble paying attention to the rest of the chapter, which is full of sketchy math, because that fundamental assumption is so wrong. Never mind the the math itself assumes a number of things it shouldn't.
There are some editing problems too. At one point theirs a cartoon of Silverman peeing on a Christian cross with no explanation of why it's present. It doesn't seem to make sense in context, and could be taken in multiple different ways. Did he like the cartoon? Or is it an example of something he thought was an unfair response to his lawsuits? I have no idea, and the book doesn't say. At another part there's a grey-scale line graph with at least five different shades of grey and no other way to distinguish the lines, making the graph impossible to read. Clearly just a poorly converted colour graph.
His best chapters are about building an atheist movement, boundary work, and on atheist activism, but everything he's written I've already heard from presentations he's given. There's no new content here if you're at all familiar with his arguments for why we should identify as "atheists".
Silverman also repeatedly says all religious people bring their morals to their religion, rather than getting them from religion. All religions are cafeteria religions. People pick and choose which and how they follow various scriptures and commandments. The problem is that he also says Islam the worst religion of all because of it's scriptures. Which is it? Either Muslims infuse their religion with their personal beliefs (like everyone else) or religion does provide moral teachings. The cognitive dissonance is plain to see.
He also claims the religious 'nones' as atheists, because anyone who doesn't believe in organized religion is practically an atheist. This is an incredibly misleading and problematic statement, as anyone with a passing familiarity with sociology of religion will know. After he says it I had trouble paying attention to the rest of the chapter, which is full of sketchy math, because that fundamental assumption is so wrong. Never mind the the math itself assumes a number of things it shouldn't.
There are some editing problems too. At one point theirs a cartoon of Silverman peeing on a Christian cross with no explanation of why it's present. It doesn't seem to make sense in context, and could be taken in multiple different ways. Did he like the cartoon? Or is it an example of something he thought was an unfair response to his lawsuits? I have no idea, and the book doesn't say. At another part there's a grey-scale line graph with at least five different shades of grey and no other way to distinguish the lines, making the graph impossible to read. Clearly just a poorly converted colour graph.
His best chapters are about building an atheist movement, boundary work, and on atheist activism, but everything he's written I've already heard from presentations he's given. There's no new content here if you're at all familiar with his arguments for why we should identify as "atheists".
waynewaynus's review against another edition
4.0
A solid work that gives insight into the author and his active role.
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