Looking for a good book.

[Jagger]

Originally Posted by ResAlien

I've posted it before (I think), but The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett is an amazing read. Definitely worth the time.

Totally agree. It's a fantastic book worthy of anyone's time. The sequel "World Without End" is really good too.

[GreenLantern]

So I am looking for a book that explores religion.

I have always had some what of a smart ass attitude towards any type of religion... I wouldn't call myself an Athiest or an Agnostic... just kind of a floater I guess.

I think that Carl Sagan put it best in the Demon Haunted World when he talks about his number one beef with religion being its inability or unwillingness to ever try and prove itself wrong. Find me a book where someone explores the faults of religion but still exposes the good it can do.

Basically not looking for a book that will bash it, but not one that glorifies it, a neutral stand point. Specific religion doesn't matter, but the more included the better.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern

So I am looking for a book that explores religion.

I have always had some what of a smart ass attitude towards any type of religion... I wouldn't call myself an Athiest or an Agnostic... just kind of a floater I guess.

I think that Carl Sagan put it best in the Demon Haunted World when he talks about his number one beef with religion being its inability or unwillingness to ever try and prove itself wrong. Find me a book where someone explores the faults of religion but still exposes the good it can do.

Basically not looking for a book that will bash it, but not one that glorifies it, a neutral stand point. Specific religion doesn't matter, but the more included the better.

The Power Of Myth by Joseph Campbell?

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern

...Basically not looking for a book that will bash it, but not one that glorifies it, a neutral stand point. Specific religion doesn't matter, but the more included the better.

Well, sociologists and an increasing number of historians will argue that pure "neutrality" is a myth: humanity—by its very nature—is prone to organize information and construct history according to a narrative framework that will always prioritize a given perspective of meaning. I'm just saying...


Anyhow, I would suggest that you are probably best to consider something in the realm of sociological approaches to religion. I am not very well read in sociology generally, and I don't feel qualified to make any recommendations for general studies, but I can recommend some books that have made an important impact in my own discipline, which is Second-Temple Jewish history, religion and literature.

Most notably: Jan Assmann (yes, that is his real name...) Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2006)

In the realm of Jewish history and religion more specifically:

Philip R. Davies, Memories of Ancient Israel: An Introduction to Biblical History, Ancient and Modern (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008).

also, [URL="http://www.amazon.ca/Scribes-Schools-Canonization-Hebrew-Scriptures/dp/0281051879/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283371605&sr=1-6"]Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures[/URL (London: SPCK, 1998)

I would also recommend titles by Lester Grabbe, but they are sadly ridiculously expensive. A very good book on the topic of the development of Jewish religion is Lester L. Grabbe, Judaic Religion in the Second Temple Period: Belief and Practice from the Exile to the Yavneh (New York: Routledge, 2000).

Perhaps a more affordable option may be his Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?, although it is not exactly germane to your topic.

One of the reasons I think studies in Second Temple Jewish religion are helpful is because these were the roots for modern religion in the Western World. Understanding where Judaism emerged from, or how this contributed to the early development of Christianity helps in our understanding of how and why these religions practice as they do today.

I'm sure that others have some equally compelling recommendations.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern

So I am looking for a book that explores religion.

I have always had some what of a smart ass attitude towards any type of religion... I wouldn't call myself an Athiest or an Agnostic... just kind of a floater I guess.

I think that Carl Sagan put it best in the Demon Haunted World when he talks about his number one beef with religion being its inability or unwillingness to ever try and prove itself wrong. Find me a book where someone explores the faults of religion but still exposes the good it can do.

Basically not looking for a book that will bash it, but not one that glorifies it, a neutral stand point. Specific religion doesn't matter, but the more included the better.

The case for Faith by Lee Strobel

http://www.amazon.com/Case-Faith-Jou.../dp/0310234697

The Case Against Faith: A Critical Look at Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith (4th ed., 2006)

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...d/strobel.html

[Huntingwhale]

The Bible
The Koran
Book of Buddah

[Icon]

I have no idea why, nor do I know if I'd still say this if I went back and re-read them... but a decade or so ago I read the "Myst" books (based on the storyline from the game(s), prequels mostly), and thought they were some great Fantasy novels.

So take that for what its worth.

[Traditional_Ale]

Coma meets Blade Runner in this future noir thriller, a compulsively readable melding of hardboiled narrative and hardware invention. Smith forecasts a decadent future in which the rich clone themselves at birth and callously harvest replacement organs from their "spares" as they need them. Narrator Jack Randall, a debauched but conscientious ex-cop, flees to the megalopolis of New Richmond with seven clones he has liberated from a spare farm and is almost immediately relieved of them by a gang of thugs. Jack's efforts to find out who has abducted the spares and marked them for death plunge him into a mystery that ultimately links the two events that have shattered his life: the brutal unsolved murder of his wife and child, and his soul-searing tour of military duty in The Gap. A virtual world built from the flotsam and jetsam cluttering the Internet, The Gap is an awesome conception made to seem supernaturally eerie yet scientifically feasible. Smith elaborates this creation brilliantly, as a surreal battleground where Jack confronts the demons that have haunted him for a decade, and as a symbol of emptiness and waste that brings the novel's numerous depictions of personal and social devaluation into sharp focus. Both a disconcerting portrait of a future that might be, and a poignant study of one man's fight to resist it, this novel augurs a promising future of another sort for its author.

[Flamesguy_SJ]

It's not exactly a "book on religion", but I highly recommend Lamb by Christopher Moore. It's a fictional recounting of Christ's life between the ages of 6 and 30, through the eyes of his childhood friend, Biff bar Levi. It basically focuses on Jesus trying to locate, and then study with the three wise men, and how what he learns from each of them influences his own teachings and what eventually becomes Christianity. A very entertaining and actually well-researched (and well-intended, which is kind of surprising given the premise of the book) read.

Another book that people have been talking about and requesting (I work at an Indigo store), is Good Book by David Plotz. I honestly don't know much about it, but from what I've gathered it's a sort of criticism or literary study of the Bible. As I said, I'm not all that familiar about it, but it's getting lots of buzz from people.

[Antithesis]

Obviously not religion-type books, but great reads:

Y: The Last Man
Ex Machina

[ricosuave]

https://www.amazon.ca/Mans-Search-Me.../dp/0671023373

[wooohooo]

I don't read but my girlfriend is in love with 'The Hunger Games'. She explained what it's about and it sounded ######ed but apparently there's quite a following.

About three years ago I read The Firm by John Grisham. That was pretty good... and that's about the only book I've read

[HPLovecraft]

Read anything by Karen Armstrong if you want to explore religion. She is fantastic. An ex-nun.

A History of God is good. The Battle for God is good, too, as it explores the history of fundamentalism. She has a number of titles out.

[cDnStealth]

Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life by Neil Strauss

Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson (awesome fantasy series)

[missdpuck]

I liked Microserfs by Douglas Coupland , if you want something about 90s geeks .
Going to read it again.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Jagger

Totally agree. It's a fantastic book worthy of anyone's time. The sequel "World Without End" is really good too.

Those books are shoot me in the head awful. Man, Follett loves his sleazy sex scenes.

Philip Roth's "Plot Against America" is a great little novel on an alternate US 1940 election where FDR loses to a semi-Fascist Charles Lindburgh.

[Dion]

Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart, Thirty True Things You Need To Know Now

http://www.amazon.com/Too-Soon-Old-L.../dp/1569244197

[peter12]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern

So I am looking for a book that explores religion.

I have always had some what of a smart ass attitude towards any type of religion... I wouldn't call myself an Athiest or an Agnostic... just kind of a floater I guess.

I think that Carl Sagan put it best in the Demon Haunted World when he talks about his number one beef with religion being its inability or unwillingness to ever try and prove itself wrong. Find me a book where someone explores the faults of religion but still exposes the good it can do.

Basically not looking for a book that will bash it, but not one that glorifies it, a neutral stand point. Specific religion doesn't matter, but the more included the better.

Reason, Faith and Revolution and On Evil. Both by Terry Eagleton. He's a literary critic of a pretty high order, a Catholic, a Marxist and one mean polemic. He takes Hitchens and Dawkins or Ditchkins as he coins them and systematically destroys them. It's the best and most intellectually rigourous rebuttal to the new atheists that I've read. He's not a regular old faith apologist but a radical, fierce opponent of liberal secular humanism.

[Flames0910]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern

So I am looking for a book that explores religion.

I have always had some what of a smart ass attitude towards any type of religion... I wouldn't call myself an Athiest or an Agnostic... just kind of a floater I guess.

I think that Carl Sagan put it best in the Demon Haunted World when he talks about his number one beef with religion being its inability or unwillingness to ever try and prove itself wrong. Find me a book where someone explores the faults of religion but still exposes the good it can do.

Basically not looking for a book that will bash it, but not one that glorifies it, a neutral stand point. Specific religion doesn't matter, but the more included the better.

Have a little Faith by um..Mitch Album I think is his name. Same author who wrote Tuesday's with Morie.

Although by the end it leans more to the religious side it's written from the author's point of view of, well, I guess you would say non-practicing.

Real quick read too.

[Dion]

Man's search for meaning by Viktor Frankl

http://www.amazon.ca/Mans-Search-Mea.../dp/0671023373