Customer Reviews

Everything You Know About God Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion (Disinformation Guides)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Everything You Know About God Is Wrong is a crushing indictment of popular misconceptions about religious belief. Composed of a wide variety of articles, each by a different author and attacking a different "sacred cow", Everything You Know About Religion denounces hypocrisies, outright criminal behavior perpetrated in the name of religion, horrific statements from the Bible and more. While some articles are written by freethinkers or nonbelievers and reveal a decidedly atheistic perspective, others are by believers seeking reform, justice, or a better understanding of various negative aspects of different religions. Indeed, the introduction remarks that "no contributor necessarily agrees with the other contributors... inclusion is not an indication of collusion." The articles range from "Sandman" author Neil Gaiman's graphically illustrated, adults-only comic of the soul-destroying Biblical story of Judges chapter 19 (in which a host turns over his daughter and his guest's concubine to be gang raped and murdered, in order to protect the guest); to the under reported tale of Magdalene Asylums run by the Irish Catholic Church that used women for profitable slave labor, for alleged prostitution or adultery, being victims of rape, or simply looking too pretty; to the merciless feudal virtual slavery inflicted by the temple theocracy upon the serfs of Buddhist Tibet prior to the Chinese occupation (runaway serfs would often be blinded, have their noses or tongues cut off, or be amputated); the story of a man who believes in Judaism and his struggle to engage in a public dialogue about Judaism and Israel, only to be shut out by Institutional Judaism; and much more. Highly recommended

Dawkins begins by informing readers the shocking news that reliable polls report 35% of Americans say they are "born again." No wonder we have such a fixation on topics such as homosexuality, helping Israel, school prayer, (non)-separation of church and state, gay marriage, abortion, and intelligent design!

Interesting contradictions were then pointed out. For example, if the U.S. is a free country, it cannot also be a Christian nation. Similarly, the doctrine of the Trinity contradicts the idea that there is only one God. Still another - Iran has the largest Jewish community in the mid-East, outside of Israel, despite it's anti-Israel rhetoric.

The bulk of "Everything You Know About God is Wrong" is taken up with pointing out conflicting material within the Bible, referencing material left out, and the innumerable past and present perversions of religion - especially all the persecution and killing of "infidels."

Bottom-Line: The book has some good information, but is far too long. I prefer "God is Not Great," "Terror in the Name of God," "Why the Christian Right is Wrong," "Misquoting Jesus," "The End of Faith," "Jesus is Not a Republican," and "The God Delusion."

This is one of the best books I have read that discusses the problems within multiple religions, from the perspective of outsiders and insiders. Most of the "faithful" have no idea what is actually in the cherished book they worship, and Russ K. provides an inside look into the facts and resulting cultural and societal implications of religion as a whole. As noted by othe reviewers, this book is a collection of works by different authors, but those that said it was a random collection clearly weren't able to connect the dots themselves and were upset the book doesn't spell it out. I personally found this a better and different read than Dawkins' God Delusion, with less philosophizing and more facts from current events and a better analysis of the bible itself. A great read!!! Recommended highly.

Good book. Only the first article is written by Richard Dawkins. The anthology doesn't tell you what you know about God is wrong, but rather how the concept of God and religion has been used and abused over the ages. Might make you think a little more critically.Everything You Know About God Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion

This is a random grab bag of articles, many amateurishly written, with no common thread except that they attack some aspect of some form of religion. Much better to get Hitchen's The Portable Atheist and read the coherent thoughts of some of history's great minds about man, god, and religion.

I have to admit that I feel a bit deceived by this book, though it's my fault for not researching it enough before buying it. I bought this book after I saw Dawkins' name in the byline, and was very disappointed to find out that this anthology has no more than a few pages by the man. In fact, I didn't even realize that this was an anthology at all (I guess I'm not familiar enough with the 'Disinformation' series of books). Fine, that is my fault. But as one commenter noted, the articles are random, which is true, and unfortunately there is no continuity between them other than their portrayal of theism. Ultimately, after reading Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Dennett, all extremely poignant authors with fantastic books, this read leaves a lot to be desired.

Written somewhat like an "exploratory documentary" this book contains many of the points various authors, critics, and experts have concluded concerning those questions many have been curious about but didn't want to ask. The superstitions of religions have wreaked havoc for millenia on humanity and here many of them are exposed for anyone to peruse and evaluate accordingly. Many of the ideologies contained are non-the-less reduced and condensed to permit an overview of the aspects in regards to space limitations. After all; There's only so much you can get into one book. Many of these subjects have volumes dedicated to investigations but this book does a good job of "touching" on quite a few of them.

I actually read a few articles from this book before leaving the bookstore; Dawkins' Gerin Oil article, which opens the book, was amusing enough, and I expected similar content throughout. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the articles are poorly written and only vaguely on topic. I could almost speculate that the editors Google searched religion and copy-pasted the first few articles that came up. It has some vaguely interesting bits of trivia and whatnot, but its really the type of content you might find in a junk email. Also, inexplicably, the editors decided to include an article which was basically a rap sheet for all the priests involved in the child molestation charges which used more lurid descriptions than were entirely warranted and filled an entire 30 pages of the book!
Save yourself the money and do the Google search yourself.

This book is a one-way ticket to hell. Just kidding. It is however a mind-blowing read that will force you to ask a lot of questions. To me that is great reading. I love it when I have to step back and suddenly see something totally different.

Although a semi-scholarly treatment, (like others in this series) there is not a lot new here that we "non-believers" did not already know of, or have not seen elsewhere. That said this volume does have the added benefit of having the unorthodox views and research about the other side of organized religious dogma reported on all in one (not so) tidy package. That alone makes it infinitely more useful and easier to bring forth counterviews as a reference compendium that can be used to challenge biblical contradictions, misinterpretations, and religious ideological nonsense, of which there seems to be a lot circulating around the world these days.

In this sense, it offers a smorgasbord of trenchant revelations and exposes that point to the widely known as well to the not so well-known myths, fallacies, misconceptions, misquotations, down right untruths, and plain religious ignorance -- much of which has become an ossified and accepted part of religious dogma over the last two millennia.

Since it is a collection of individually researched articles and essays that are disconnected from each other, it should not be misunderstood for being more than what it is: an edited volume, which is to say, a rather disconnected, if not at times not completely incoherent set of disparate treatments of a subject that, as other reviewers have noted, has been much better reported on in several other books on the topic. I agree with them that, Hitchens' and Dawkins' books, for example, are clear standouts and present well-researched critiques that are both clear and just short of devastating of the normal weak religious apologia. But also Richard Harris' two entries are not to be discounted either. For my needs, I was satisfied, but not overwhelmed.

Three stars