Customer Reviews

Bytes of Faith

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There is so much wrong with this book, I don't even know where to begin.

I bought this book based on the description on Amazon.com, which says it's an examination of the world's religions and truths and historical facts about them. The computer aspect sounded interesting. I have a graduate degree in religion and culture and did my thesis on religion and the Internet. So I was intrigued. I like the idea of a man questioning his faith and coming to terms with his beliefs.

However, the book is so horribly written, it's amazing I could even understand what he was trying to say. It's supposed to be funny but I'm not sure why the petty banter is humorous. I certainly didn't find them remotely interesting let alone amusing.

The book spends most of its time ripping apart Catholicism, and almost all the rest talking about hypocrisy (of protestants mainly) and spouting "facts" that are unsupported by any footnotes. Some of their facts are skewed, some are outright wrong. And that's only the ones I have heard before. Buddhism is given one short paragraph and discarded as ridiculous. No other non-judeo-christian faiths are even mentioned. Only two paragraphs are on Islam which is taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica they admit. There's a lot more about Judaism, but nothing of substance. Mostly Jews are brought up when he theorizes that the Vatican was not only complicit in the Holocaust but actually directed much of it. (The absurd connections he makes by removing the vowels from one form of the name Jesus and leaving "S.S." are just bizarre.)

You never really find out what he believes (although it's clear he still believes in God), just what he finds to be stupid. This latter includes understandable things like slavery, killing in the name of God, and anti-abortion activists killing people who perform abortions. But then he also condemns the bible belt, lenient judges and supports the death penalty (isn't that what anti-abortion activists believe they are doing?). He says "women's lib" is just a preference that women want to make as much money as men but aren't willing to do the hard jobs (like the men even tolerate them doing those jobs) and that gays want to have equal rights but don't want to pay for anything like schools and birthing centers because they don't use them. (HUNH?? All the gay people I know are really liberal and support Democratic candidates who want to raise taxes for social services. Most of the gay people I know have kids.)

In summary: This poorly written book is so all over the place that it's hard to figure out his point. When you do, it certainly appears to be full of as much intolerance as he accuses the Catholic church as having.