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The Pitfall Of Truth: Holy War, Its Rationale And Folly

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I agree with N.J. Finkelsteyn's comments. The Pitfall of Truth is a first essay and is short and somewhat incomplete. Even so, it is a good start on an important subject. Vel Nirtist asks the right questions about the truth value of revelation taken from various relgious books like the Bible and Koran.

First, how do we know that God spoke directly to Moses and the prophets? Did Moses himself write down his conversations with God? Biblical scholars continue to puzzle over this important question. Who translated Moses' words into the various languages available to us today? How accurate are these translations?

We know that Jesus wrote no books and Mark is the first Gospel writer to record Jesus's words and actions. Were the various translators of Mark's original testimony accurate or did they modify this Gospel? A fair assessment is that these scribes added and deleted material as they felt it was appropriate for their purpose. We ought not to be surprised when these authors and scribes contradict one another.

Where does this leave us? As Nirtist points out, we may not depend on books like the Bible and Koran as an absolute source of truth for the word of God. Instead, we must use reason to determine what is sensible and what is absurd in all such books. When fundamentalists of all stripes promise martyrdom and heaven as a reward for terrorism, we must reject such teaching as insane and we must censure those who promote terrorism in the name of God, or anyone else, for that matter.

How likely is it that this voice of reason will be heard by religious fundamentalists who ask their followers to substitute faith for rational thought? Not likely. Tradition substitutes for intelligent inquiry. The faith of our fathers takes the place of modern scholarship. Suicide bombers are told that paradise awaits them as a reward for their murderous behavior and every day we read reports that the madness of absolute belief in questionable sources appears to be winning the hearts and minds of true believers in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Anyone who reads Vel Nirtist's brief observations will, at least, begin to question the authority and veracity of relgious teaching in sacred books. For this reason, it is worth the small time and effort it takes to study carefully what Nirtist has to say. It is not the end of the story, but it is Vel Nirtist's thoughtful inquiry.

The basic theme of this book is to show that the various incidents of fanatic religious violence and persecution including today's terrorism are not "perversions of religion" but plausible interpretations of the source religions.

The book is very thoughtful and thought provoking.
While it is critical of religion, it lacks the usual dismissiveness found in atheist critiques of religion and pagan critiques of "Judeo-Christianity".
...Although, the writer does lack some details, making some of his proofs more "strawmanish" then they would be otherwise.
But even with that fault, I heartily recommend it (as a religious person myself) as a "different sort" of criticism of religion - one that encourages the religious to truly examine where he is with his religion.

The weakest segment for me was a sort of "summation" chapter that attempts to give a solution to the described problem.
In my opinion, that solution is a bit circular.

While I hope that the author goes deeper into his subject and puts out a reworked second edition, I definitely recommend this book as is - to anyone interested in any of the topics covered.