Book Review - Five Stars
Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam by Michel Onfray
An old friend said about organized religion: “They are all right or they are all wrong.”
Atheist Manifesto cuts this issue to the bone, giving numerous explicit examples of mass self-hypnotism using the age old tried and true methods of fasting, sleep depredation, and chanting.
Recently cult leader Jimmy Jones took nearly a thousand of his dedicated disciples to their suicidal deaths at Jonestown in South America.
The Islamic state duped a group of their zealot followers into a kamikaze suicidal mission September 11, 2001. The heavenly reward was a promise of 40 young virgins. Evangelicals, Orthodox, and other science deniers decree to kill all those who do not believe in their particular sect. This “go for the juggler approach” does away with any type of world harmony.
I found the book a timely and thought provoking eye opener.
EXCERPTS:
A man can certainly avoid facing tragic reality by imagining himself as somehow different from the being he truly is, but only at the cost of turning himself into something unrecognizable. I do not despise believers. I find them neither ridiculous nor pathetic, but I lose all hope when I see that they prefer the comforting fairy tales of children to the cruel hard facts of adults. Better the faith that brings peace of mind than the rationality that brings worry, even at the price of perpetual mental infantilism. What a demonstration of metaphysical sleight of hand and what a monstrous price! Having realized all this, I experience the feeling that always arises deep within me when I am confronted with the symptoms of indoctrination and deception: compassion for the sufferer, coupled with burning anger toward those who perpetuate the deception.
No hatred for the man on his knees, but a fierce resolve never to collude with those who urge him to adopt this humiliating posture and keep him there. Who would not sympathize with the victims of fraud? And who would not approve of battling the perpetrators?
The Catholic who eats fish on Friday derides the Muslim who refuses pork, who in turn scoffs at the Jew for refusing shellfish.
