Book Review — God is not great

I bought this book hoping to be get enlightened by historical accounts of how religion and god affected the people and the civilizations of the world.

In general, I found the book difficult to stay engaged with, save a few chapters.

I wonder who — the author thought — the target audience is. In some of the chapters, the author seems to directly address the reader. If the reader is a believer, they are likely to dismiss everything. If they are a non-believer, they will likely not find anything new — unless you are someone that rejects god and religion, but have not gained the grounding for why you think the way you do.

The author utilizes various prisms to challenge religion and challenge god — the bible, the Koran and even the older discourses such as Hinduism and Buddhism. I did however feel that his depth on Hinduism (using (sic) Osho as his example) was nowhere in insight and depth, compared to his laborious analysis of the Old and New Testaments, the Koran etc..

I highly recommend the chapter ‘Is religion child abuse’ to anyone, regardless which side of the aisle you are in.

My own thought is this — you can be a believer or not. But you dont begin the process of free enquiry, until you separate the paradigm of god, from that of religion.

Overall — with the exception of the chapter on children, this book is almost passable — unless you are in the cusp of belief, and you were raised in one of the Abrahamic reglions.

Trivia -

1) It is amazing to me how many (more) words in day to day English we use are Biblical. I could read this very blog post of mine and realize more than half of them come from the Bible

2) Voltaire once said, ‘if god did not exist, it would have been necessary to invent him’. I know very little about Voltaire and his overall body of work, but I always thought this quote was a jab on the believers and that, in fact, he was saying god was invented. Reading this book, it seems to be Voltaire was in fact a believer.

3) It is generally said that we should avoid discussing politics and religion with friends and at work. I thought this was said primarily to avoid conficts, but history shows that this may have been conjured by the believers themselves, to curtail discussions entertaining the contrary.