A wide-ranging study that too often relies on sweeping, partisan declarations.
Johnson (Intuitive/Counter Intuitive, 2014, etc.) makes a confident prediction that religious belief will soon vanish from the earth, supplanted by scientific reason.
Bombastic prognostications of the triumph of reason over superstition have a long historical pedigree. Research chemist Johnson offers his own version, couched within a history of the progressive march of empirical science. According to the author, the history of human thought generally bifurcates into two periods—one dominated by the “intuitive mind-set,” followed by the emergence, during the Enlightenment in the 17th century, by the “mind-set of reason.” In the former, he says, the attempt to understand human identity and the world at large was mainly an exercise in imaginative storytelling, completely detached from evidentiary substantiation. It was out of this age of poetical contrivance that religion was born, he says, but the advent of science subjected human belief to rational questioning. Since then, Johnson says, religion has been repeatedly exposed as indefensible. He sees numerous signs that religious belief is withering under the attack of reason, and he asserts that faith is on the wane and its institutions are losing their political clout. The author foresees a future in which religion essentially disappears and becomes a historical curiosity, like other roundly defeated schools of thought, such as alchemy. This study is basically two books bound into one: the first book describes the nature of the transition from irrationality to scientific rectitude, and the second is an assemblage of essays about the irrationality of religious faith. Throughout both, Johnson’s prose is transparent and self-assured, and the historical breadth of his argument is impressive. Along the way, he astutely raises serious questions about the epistemological reliability of intuition. However, his entire argument rests upon a sweeping caricature of all religion as benighted folklore, ignoring a rich history of theologically minded philosophy, as well as the many famous advocates of science who believed in God.
A wide-ranging study that too often relies on sweeping, partisan declarations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5455-3143-3
Page Count: 274
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
