Customer Reviews

Denial of the Soul: Spiritual & Medical Perspectives on Euthanasia and Morality

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Denial of the Soul is one of those books of rare insight about the human condition. The author shares the distillation of experience, concern about death, the nature of euthanasia, and life itself. Peck's book is not a diatribe against euthanasia but a subtle examination of how human nature shapes our deaths and how our choices about death ultimately strip bear our grip on life. The book is also a straw in the wind of the cultural war that flares all too often in the U.S. Peck characterizes himself as a Christian but does not then procede to pick up the cudgels of fundamentalism to batter the secular barbarians who may disagree with him. Peck's Christianity is tempered with more than a little humility and a keen awareness that he might be wrong from time to time. Peck does use this volume to speak against the notion that the whole of a human is immeasurably greater than the sum of the biochemical parts. He passionately argues that just as quantum mechanics limits what we can measure and describe with certainty, the nature of the human soul masks depths and purposes that also remain hidden. The decision to prematurely end a life, to short-cut a soul strikes Peck as a risky endeavour. Denial of the Soul is more than a discourse on euthanasia and sadly may be ignored because it is neither a strident attack on secular valuses nor a staunch defense of conservative Christianity. The book is far more than that, it is about life and the choices all of us make.