Customer Reviews

Religion is Not about God: How Spiritual Traditions Nurture Our Biological Nature and What to Expect When They Fail

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Almost half the book, a good part of Part 2, is devoted to explaining the gist of 5 major religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. For anyone interested in getting a good grasp of what any or all of these religions is about, I'd recommend this book for this benefit alone. Much of the chapter on Buddhism was superb: the difficult teaching of "no self" is explained as well as I've seen it presented anywhere. Similarly the heart of Islam seems well explained (in just a 27 page chapter): for anyone who doesn't appreciate the power of Islam, I'd strongly recommend this chapter. The other 3 religions are also presented with care and apparent respect.

I had, however, a number of problems with the book:

1. The presentation seems Pollyanna-ish, despite Rue's concerns at the end of book of the future of religion. For example, the chapter on Christianity doesn't mention early Christianity's persecution of Gnostic Christians and destruction of their literature, nor the Inquisition, nor the European wars between Protestants and Catholics, nor recent problems such as those in Northern Ireland. Rue's claim of "social coherence" as a key benefit of religions seems questionable, yet he seems not disposed to questioning it.

Rue claims the goals of "personal wholeness and social coherence" with only a brief warning that religious institutions might abuse their regulatory activity. B.F. Skinner devoted a chapter of "Science and Human Behavior" to the issues of religous control. Do Rue's appeals to human nature establish that a regard for "personal wholeness" is a key factor in religions? If it is a key factor, does he establish that the meaning of "personal wholeness" isn't often inappropriately manipulated by religious authorities, beyond what might be needed for adequate "social coherence"? Is Rue's depiction of religion realistic and has he demonstrated that by any comparison with other plausible depictions? Some people might stay with a religion for other reasons than "personal wholeness". Is "personal wholeness" well-defined enough : Rue says it is "maximizing satisfaction of motives" which seems rather vague and hard to measure. Is it clearly critical to religious participation? Just mostly it and social coherence?

2. Rue appears to have a favortism of theism. He calls his book "Religion Is Not About God" even though one of his major religions, Buddhism, isn't about God to begin with. Sure, some Buddhists treat Buddha as a god and some Buddhist branches acknowledge gods, but that's not the gist of Buddhism. Worse, Rue speaks of the extremes of "nihilsim and theism" when one opposite of theism, atheism, need not be nihilistic at all, and another opposite of theism, Buddhism, is one of the very major religions that Rue praises for providing meaningfulness.

3. In his chapter on Christianity, for example, Rue, focusing on capturing the myth, ignores historical concerns. There is no mention of other religons of the time (excepting Judaism) such as the mystery religons or philosophies such as Stoicism. There seems no consideration at all that a philosophy might provide personal wholeness and social coherence. Rue takes for granted the historicity of Jesus, even though that isn't necessary to establish the myth and even though the historicity of Jesus has long been open to serious question (e.g. "The Jesus Puzzle"). Rue seems to have oversimplified in his effort to demonstrate that a religion, such as Christianity, leads to personal wholeness and social coherence.

4. Rue seems to ignore whether there are non-religious ways to achieve personal wholeness and social coherence. By doing so, he seems in no position to assert that the contribution of religions to these goals exceeds that of other ways.

5. While it is intruiging to consider Consumerism as a religion, as Rue does, it's hard to see how Consumerism can offer "personal wholeness", at least when one considers our American society, which seems to have many lonely, alienated affluent individuals. In fact, Consumerism arguably makes "personal wholeness" harder to attain, perhaps by leaving individuals with too much time on their hands and often too little meaningful contact with others.

6. Here's Rue on human nature: "Human beings are star-born, earth-formed creatures endowed by evolutionary processes to seek reproductive fitness...Humans maximize their chances for reproductive fitness by managing the complexity of these systems in ways that are conducive to the simultaneous achievement of personal wholeness and social coherence." Star-born?

So where does Rue establish that we need a sense of personal wholeness in order to reproduce? When Rue says personal wholeness is "maximizing satisfaction of motives", why must it be "maximizing"? Can't I just get by, and be whole enough and reproductively fit enough? Won't it be stressful to have to maximize my personal wholeness and reproductive fitness? If I have a sex a lot, will that maximize my "satisfaction of motives" and, by itself, make me feel personally whole? Will satisfying my partner qualify as "maximizing conformity to shared standards of behavior".

7. Rue states that "Pinker is delivering the final, if not posthumous, deathblow to behaviorism". Perhaps Rue is unaware of a March 2004 article by Roddy Roediger, president of the American Psychological Society and himself a cognitive psychologist, in the APS's Observer entitled "What Happened to Behaviorism", in which Roediger emphasizes the debt the psychology owes to Skinner and Radical Behaviorism and the ongoing benefits of (Radical) Behaviorism. Perhaps Rue doesn't read "The Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis" or 'The Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior" or recognize the compassionate, helpful work of Applied Behavior Analysts. Rue associates with Behaviorism (during its hegemony) a "dogmatic prohibition against all theories of the mind." He characterizes Behaviorism's position as "science should not traffic in concepts about unobservable events...". But Skinner and Radical Behaviorists acknowledge private events as natural events and hence addressable by the science of Behavior Analysis because science is concerned with natural events whether they are observable or not. What Skinner and Radical Behaviorists object to is the practice of populating mind with fictitious entities (mentalisms) inferred from our behavior.

8. Rue not only believes Pinker delivered a deathblow to Behaviorism, he also state the Pinker's "How the Mind Works" makes "a good stab at the subject". Rue should read William Baum's "Understanding Behaviorism", which should give him a strong appreciation of why no one should wish that Behaviorism be dead, but also teach him about the dubiousness of the kind of mentalisms that Pinker's book is drenched in. Rue's analyses of religion doesn't seem to depend on Pinker anyway.

9. Rue states that that there be sufficient realism in a religion's root metaphor for it to be accepted. For Christianity, he then notes that the return of Christ to earth at the appointed time for the final judgment would have to have such realism in order for the myth to be effective.

But for Islam, it isn't the root metaphor but the nature of who claimed it that he questions the realism of. He writes: "If you are a realist about Muhammed's epilepsy, then you are not likely to be a realist about his claims to be a messenger from God". Is it realism or ignorant discrimination that would reject Muhammed's claims on that basis? One of the most powerful depictions of God in human history and someone would discount it because it's believed to have been produced by someone suffering from epilepsy? To me it seems all the more marvelous if in fact someone could endure such an affliction and still produce a great work. William James even argued against dismissing the visions of epileptics. Rue seems to define what he means by realism very loosely and then use expand on it abitrarily.

10. There seems to be little or no reference to experimental support for Rue's claims: social psychology rather than cognitive science may be more apt for grounding his speculations experimentally.

"Religion Is Not About God" was a mixed blessing. The religous studies was helpful, much of the psychology of religion was unhelpful and the cognitive science seemed a liability. If you want to learn about the religions he covers, consider reading the less speculative parts of Part 2, which were well worth the value of book for me.

I finished this book over a month ago, and it will not leave my mind. In fact I have decided to use it as the subject of my upcoming series of Sunday School lessons, and explaining my planned presentation will be the best way to convey the book to you. First I will make a HUGE spreadsheet filling one wall of the room. At the top I will put the title and Rue's opening question about whether there can even be such a thing as a "theory of religion" (in his persuasive opinion there can, largely because we humans are similar enough for many commonalities to find their way into our religions even despite the profound diversity our various cultures produce).

Then I will make 8 columns.

In the left column I will list the various characteristics of all Religions which Rue discusses (I won't list them all here because some explanation and subdivision is required for each, but to give a flavor of this column I will say here that Rue discusses 1) the education of the emotions; 2) the various strategies used by religion - intellectual, experiential, ritualistic, and aesthetic, both at the individual and institutional levels; and 3) two overriding religious functions, namely increasing personal wholeness and enhancing social cohesiveness.

The next 5 columns (2-6) will be for the classical traditions which Rue discusses (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism). In each case I will fill in how each tradition fulfills the theory as presented in Column One.

The next column (#7) will be for Consumerism as a Religion, and the last column (#8) will be for Religious Naturalism. Note that Rue is ambivalent about whether Consumerism actually qualifies as a Religion, but I found it a fascinating example to use in testing the rest of his theory, and I think it will make an awesome discussion for my class (made up of a nice cross-section of Americans, one Hindu, and one other person who grew up abroad).

Each week we will discuss a new column, showing how Rue's theory of religion plays out in a specific cultural and historical context. Although I am officially allotted 4 weeks (which would not be enough), the class is usually very willing to extend a unit, and I anticipate that this discussion will be especially lively. Nonetheless, I will try to save some time by only mentioning and not discussing the "doomsday scenario" with which Rue introduces his treatment of Religious Naturalism. That is because I do not entirely agree with his implication that the only way Religious Naturalism will ever get a foothold is if some sort of collapse occurs. And besides, while I agree with Rue that such a scenario could play out, our class has already been down that road. For most readers I think it is important to consider Rue's ideas on this point, especially since he uses it to think through how the all-important Religious Naturalism could arise. But the reader should not, in my opinion, let that part of the book distract him or her from the overall point, which is to explore the common wellsprings of all religions.

It is a book everyone interested in religion should read. In fact I think it is perhaps the only modern full-blown "theory of religion" which adequately accounts for what science has taught us about evolution, about the biological roots of our human nature, the psychology that grows out of those roots, and about the ways cultures intersect with that nature to produce local variants on the invariable tendency toward religious experience and practice.

This is a fabulous book that deserves a wide readership. In a world torn by inter-religious strife and the seeming never-ending battle between faith and reason, few things are more important than helping religious and nonreligious people alike celebrate the mythic/religious impulse of humanity from a science-based, naturalistic perspective. I simply cannot recommend this book too highly. Also see his earlier masterpiece, "Everybody's Story".

By the Grace of Guile: The Role of Deception in Natural History and Human Affairs

First, do not let my "one-star" rating dismay you or retard your interest in reading any of Dr. Rue's books. He is an interesting writer and no-doubt a beguiling lecturer. My review is more of an example of Dr. Rue's life-paradigm/belief system, to put context into "Religion Is Not About God." The reader then can be informed (truthfully) as to the perspective from which Dr. Rue writes. Once that perspective becomes clear (which is best understood by reading his ESSENTIAL MASTERWORK "By the Grace of Guile", 1994, $60 on Amazon!), a discerning reader then understands the template from which all utterances from Dr. Rue must be translated. As such my review serves (using his version of reality) as truly a "five-star" rating, except for the modifier "truly", which for him contaminates the point almost (but not quite) completely.

Yet that is a good thing, since mere mortals (such as myself) need the grace of greater intellects (such as himself) to tell us "just-so" stories we need to hear (and believe, like global warming, or "Religion Is Not About God") so that world peace and human commerce can chug along unabated, allowing his tenure at Luther College to lazily continue into the cold sunset of the Iowa plains. And that is an end that truly is worthy of being called truth, even though he believes ardently there is no such thing (well, almost).

Since the above two reviewers have ably discussed the content of Dr. Rue's latest excursion into post-modern truth-teasing, I am lead to shine the light of reality on Dr. Rue's motivations for his latest book on "religion" so-as others may not become quite so beguiled as might otherwise result. Indeed, the title of his new volume alone ("Religion Is Not About God") is one a non-religious, born-again child of the Lord Jesus Christ can embrace and love.

And playing both sides of the coin, he speaks much near-truth appealing to atheists, naturalists and evolutionists, as the first reviewer coos and qualifies. Yet the dissonance of that reviewer is again a result of his not understanding Dr. Rue's real premise which he spelled out so clearly in his seminal treatise ("By the Grace of Guile"). There he explains that deception is integral to the 'nature' of things. In the Introduction (of "Guile") Dr. Rue cites Friedrich Nietzsche's "insight" that "untruth" is a condition of life. As my teenagers often exclaim at my frequent cluelessness, "Duh!"

Rue failed to credit the original reporter of this story, Moses, who wrote the first full account of untruth entering the world (empowered, of course, via the Holy Spirit). In Genesis 3 he blew the cover off that headline story 3500 years before Nietzsche's come-lately, National Enquirer-style analysis. Of course Nietzsche is credited for his genius as he expanded the concept to "...beyond good and evil", as the best Deceivers (see again Genesis 3) always do.

Rue's current "Religion" book is ably written by a man who happily proclaims the only truth is nihilism. Yet in so-proclaiming he borrows Bertrand Russell's famous qualifier "almost certainly" and modifies it via post-modern double-speak; aka "Adaptivism." (see page 274 and following of "Guile").

Dr. Rue goes on (in "Guile") to allow that Joe and Betty Sixpack recoil in contorted horror when they are presented (by penultimate truthsayers such as himself) with the ultimate, certain reality of nihilism equating to the absolute truth of existence. And since nihilism is seen as such a monstrous horror to most of us common folk (and not just theists, but also the new-school atheists of the Richard Dawkins, "God-delusion" variety), then the enlightened Illuminati such as himself and the New York Times must feed those masses with sweet lies that lead us to a peaceful life of indentured servitude gladly acquiescing to the "almost-certain" truths they gracefully posit.

But if we dare to throw back Oz's curtain, "Guile" is in essence Rue's prosaic effort at recanting by analysis John Lennon's nihilist anthem "Imagine." Yes, "By the Grace of Guile" is indeed dressed up in scholarly navy blue hard covers, and carries with it a prohibitive $60 price-tag (that being the price of admission for other would-be Illuminati, such as this reviewer). But I must confess that even for non-illuminated dullards such as myself, "Guile" is well-worth the price of admission, unlike John's sad song. However, it's value lies only in learning that there are influential, powerful people and establishments that really believe such first-tier, psychotic psychobabble and gobbledygook, and they desire to craft a new world order via feeding lies to the masses while masking the hard-truths only they can assimilate and manage. And therein lies (and I do mean "lies") the great rationalization (nee intellectualization) which is the paradigm in which the Illuminati are straight-jacketed, permitting them in their own self-certain "enlightenment" to rule the world of us pathetic morons. And that really means no K-Y for the home team, folks.

And if you think I'm exaggerating, read the The New York Times Book Review of "By the Grace of Guile." The reviewer proclaims it is one of the 100 most important books ever printed! In there with "Love and Will," "Walden 2" and the "NY Times Crossword Puzzles." You do the math.

And therefore "Religion Is Not About God..." is part of the Illuminati-Jihad product-line designed to gracefully guide (via guile) those of us entrenched in the huddled-masses to assimilate Dr. Rue's truth-through-guile-telling with molasses in the Castor oil (or should you prefer reality, it's a piece of dog-poop mixed into the pan of yummy chocolate brownie mix: First question: How much is too much?).

So the next question/problem remains for the Jihadis: "How do you dress up nihilism so the new-school Atheists, who are convinced in their own life-purpose (THAT's a laugh, way to go Dr. Dawkins!), will buy this book and are only disappointed over Rue's failure to dismiss the historicity of Jesus?" (like our top 1000 reviewer above, "calmly").

Answer: Write a book like "Religion Is Not About God." Our intrepid reviewer above joyfully and calmly read (though with nervous dissonance dripping though the cracks) every word of Master Rue. Our second reviewer Michael Cavanaugh, apparently a born-again evolutionist/Christian, is going to use "Religion" as a reference in teaching his Sunday School class, for God's sake! Hosanna, Messiah Rue!!! By the grace of guile!!!

So the final question/problem hangs pregnantly, and it represents the greatest challenge and potential penultimate victory for the deception-Jihad (and it will be a penultimate victory at best; see Revelation 20:7-15 for the ultimate reality). The final question is: "How do you hook orthodox Christians (like myself) into embracing (and better yet buying) Dr. Rue's graceful guile?

Answer: They need some help from good old-fashioned retail marketing. The title alone is what caught my eye. "Religion" is a bad word for me and my many fellow-followers of our precious Savior, the LORD Jesus Christ. In fact, the first 4 Commandments (see Exodus 20) forbid man to make YHWH (The LORD, The Lord God Almighty, I AM WHO CAUSE EVERYTHING TO EXIST) into a religion. Religion is almost always about man making God in man's own horribly deluded and sinful image (aka "nihilism" for Dr. Rue, which is his personal religion, with himself as Messiah, so-anointed by the Times).

In reality God approves NO Religion except the kind that takes care of widows and orphans in their distress all the while keeping oneself from becoming polluted by the filthy thinking and behavior of the world (James 1:27). God is a Person, THE Ultimate Person and THE Source of life for all people and all stuff; and knowing God personally is His command to all people, His purpose for creation, so He would be known and glorified.

Knowing God is all about relationship with Him, walking with Him and being taught by Him by His word, the only Good Book in existence. Knowing Him personally (like a Friend, a Father, our One God) is the definition of true, eternal life in koinonia (authentic fellowship) with God, not ever "religion." So Dr. Rue's title appeals to my fellow Christians who understand the destruction religion brings to authentic, personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Religion puts God in a box with a name on it that has nothing to do with Him (but more looks like the deceiver who informs Dr. Rue and the Times editorial board). I wonder how many born-again believers have bought this book because Amazon listed it as something they might find interesting?

Count me in. As Rodney Dangerfield once said: "the last time I saw a mouth like that it had a hook in it."

Ah, the grace of guile. 5-stars for marketing alone for "Religion Is Not About God..."