Consciencebound

Archive for the ‘Book Reviews’ Category

LOSING MY RELIGION: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America — and Found Unexpected Peace.

I heard about this book while listening to the Hugh Hewitt radio program. The author is a long time friend of Hewitt’s and so Hugh had him on the show for an hour to discuss his book and to take calls about it. Although my viewpoints have changed quite a bit over the years, Hugh Hewitt is still one of the conservative talk radio guys I really like and his interview with Lobdell is one reasons why. He did a two part interview with Lobdell which can be found here and here. This interview will give you a little glimpse into Lobdell’s story and personality. Hugh is an Evangelical Christian and he has callers on his radio show call in and talk to Lobdell about his book. Although the interview drags on a bit at times, I think it is good because it shows Lobdell’s sincerity and that he was a meaningful and true Christian who truly struggles with his loss of faith.

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The Conscience of a Liberal by Paul  Krugman

I will be blogging my way through this book as I read it. This is part 1.

A friend of mine who voted for Barack Obama ( I did not) gave me this book to read that espouses the economic policies of some of the current democratic party.  I try to be open to different opinions that I do not agree with and so i am happy to read this book.  This is also an exercise for me to practice what I preach.  I push people to question their beliefs on a regular basis on this blog.  Now I get to see how honest I am in questioning a long held belief of mine in smaller government and lower taxes.  My hope is that I can take a serious look at my reasons for thinking what I do about how government should operate and have a thoughtful discussion with the person who gave me the book.  

Chapter 1

The Way We Were

The biggest thing that hits me in this first chapter is that Krugman has a few premises that are clear he will be working from as he moves on in this book:

1. Economic inequality is a moral problem.

2. It is the responsibility of government to correct this problem.

3. Republican (conservative) policy causes economic inequality.

4. Democratic policies(the New Deal) decrease economic inequality.

My initial response is that economic inequality is not a morally bad thing at all.  Read the rest of this entry »

How do you parent your children if you are not religious? As a person who used to be religious, this is always a question that I think about. How do I teach my kids to think for themselves and to learn to understand what other people believe? When it comes down to it, I don’t want to indoctrinate my children in my (current) beliefs necessarily, I just want to give them the tools that they need to be able to enter the world and make a decision for themselves about how the world works and what worldview they should adopt.

The book parenting beyond belief deals with these questions and more. I actually have not read this book yet but I just ordered it here after hearing much about it. I have also been watching some of the videos that the author puts out on youtube on his youtube channel here. You can also find his web site which has lots of helpful information here.

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The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.  by Francis Collins.

Francis Collins is a geneticist and the former director of the Human Genome project and every Christian should read his book.  But why would I suggest every Christian read a book about a man explaining his reasons for belief?  Christians already believe don’t they? Allow me to explain…

There are two aspects of this book that I one might find interesting and helpful.  Collins’ reasons for faith, and Collins’ explanation of genetics and evolution.  The reason that I recommend this book is because of the latter.  I didn’t find the arguments presented  by Collins to be particularly well reasoned and convincing for why one should believe in God or why they should become a Christian.  What i did find fascinating though was his very good explanation of how genetics work and what the genetic evidence is for common ancestry (evolution).  I hesitate to even state this for fear that many Christians will automatically rule Collins out as a “liberal” evolutionist who is opposed to the faith.  But Collins is not that.  He is an Evangelical Christian who believes that the Bible is the word of God, that Jesus is the second person of the holy Trinity, and that salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  But even though he believes these things, he is convinced because of his work that there is no doubt that all life on earth has a common ancestor.

I believe that he presents some very compelling reasons for why the belief in evolution is so wide spread among scientists today.  It is not as though there is a big conspiracy or that they are so committed in their stance against God that they try to force the facts to fit the evolutionary hypothesis.   Collins, like more and more believers, feels compelled by the evidence and believes that nature is a revelation from God that we are to understand to the best of our God given abilities. Read the rest of this entry »

Leaving The Fold: Testimonies Of Former Fundamentalists

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Mostly because I could identify with so much of the personal experiences of the people who wrote in it. Ed Babinksi has collected various people’s “testimonies” of their experience with fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity. From a review on Amazon, “33 former Christian fundamentalists explain how and why they first embraced, and later abandoned, that belief system. Of these, eight have become atheists, eight (including Babinski) agnostics, one a wiccan, and one a Zen Buddhist; the remainder have remained Christian” Read the rest of this entry »

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris

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Misquoting Jesus:The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart Ehrman

The title of this book is quite provocative but in many respects it is not any different then anyone who studies the Bible should be familiar with already. The Bible did not just fall out of the sky one day fully intact with the 66 books that we western protestants have. There are some pretty major variances between manuscripts and some very popular passages that are not found in any early manuscripts of the New Testament yet we still act like there are no problems with the text and that we possess the amazing collection of infallible copies. The position of the conservatives on scripture is that it is the original manuscripts that are inspired and not the copies but here we are still talking about the Bible that is in our hands as if IT is in fallible and it is clearly not. Read the rest of this entry »