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بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحِيمِ

I had to put down A History of God for a couple reasons:

1. It was from the library

2. It’s filled with LOTS of details and must be read relatively slowly to retain everything (the highlights).

Thus I returned it to the library (I now have a late fee that will force me to not check out books anymore) and will return to it once I buy the book (which I intend to do).

I picked up a books based on some input from my brother in law Chris. The book is Truth: A Guide by Simon Blackburn. Just started reading is a couple days ago and I must say I’m enjoying it.

One problem I’ve found today is it’s difficult to align oneself to either mainstream, or any of the less popular political ideologies. The reason is they buy too much in lambasting the others and always pointing the finger, all while accomplishing nothing (given the potential). Furthermore, they find it necessary to justify even the most obscure relationships if it means furthering their causes. Books like this give me solace because it allows me to believe that distancing myself from all parties who act like this is a viable solution.

First excerpt worth mentioning:

Introduction

“There are real standards. We must fight soggy nihilism, scepticism and cynicism. We must not believe that anything goes. We must not believe that all opinion is ideology, that reason is only power, that there is no truth to prevail. Without defenses against postmoden irony and cynicism, multiculturalism, and relativism, we will all go to hell in a hand-basket.”

If you listen to today’s talk radio, most of the things you hear are utter garbage. They take simple concessions to appease locals in certain areas as signs of imminent disaster to social and government structure and we are leading ourselves to a shameless doom. What’s worse is that there is a need to insult, belittle, and ostracize anyone who doesn’t agree. Granted most people who call in and have strong opinions and false pretenses for those opinions, but those callers seem to be selected to bring more strength to the host’s point. That and I just can’t buy into liberalism, but that’s for another time.

In any case, throughout this book (thus far – 20 or so pages into it) the author always makes it clear that there is no need to attack people, but the need to understand the method to which conclusions are found. The above quote simply puts forth a problem of today, namely relativism and positivism. We’ve gone from allowing everyone to have an opinion to making all opinions equal, which doesn’t really make sense. One big issue is these new self help books, namely The Secret. It takes the whole concept of thinking positively in a completely wrong direction. When Oprah endorsed this book, she did so without any sign of regret – until she got this comment. Then all of a sudden there is this recant to say it’s just a “tool” – while anyone who has read the book, even excerpts, or heard interviews about it knows that it sells itself as a catch all. Yet, since it seems to appeal to succes, health and happiness, people will try it.

More to come on the book as it is being read. Still working on the layout of this place.