by Thomas Richard Harry ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A philosophically ambitious but unfocused and shopworn discussion of religious faith.
A personal reflection about the relevance of the concept of God.
Harry (The Delicate Illusion, 1999, etc.) was raised as a Christian Scientist and now attends a Presbyterian church with his wife, but he has long wrestled with a nagging skepticism that precluded either simple belief or a leap of faith. However, he distinguishes between the literal belief in the God of the Christian Church and the profound utility of that idea for mankind. From a strictly rational perspective, he asserts, the conception of God is simply beyond demonstration, and it’s not based on philosophical deliberation, as the church’s authority simply rests on the revealed word of Scripture. However, whether the idea of God is objectively tenable or not, he asserts, it still collectively promises things of considerable value: it provides people with a sense of security amid chaos, perfection in a world that screams for correction, and the hope of immortality as a consolation for our eventual death. That idea, though, must be presented in a way that’s personal enough that mankind can forge a connection with it. The author explores the ways in which the figure of Jesus Christ fulfills this function, as a bridge between the human and the divine. He also explores the difficulty that the church has in remaining relevant in a world that, through breakneck progress and evolution, struggles to believe in supernatural myth. Harry intrepidly confronts the deepest and most historically recalcitrant questions and impressively attempts to balance a skeptical epistemology with a profound respect for the significance of religion. In focusing on the subjective prominence of the idea of God, as opposed to metaphysical confirmation of God’s existence, the author even manages to make this study germane to atheists: “The idea of God does not mean one necessarily automatically believes in the god of the idea, only that one is aware of it. Even atheists are, by necessity, aware of the god of the idea.” The downside of this maneuver is that he simply dismisses attempts to make such an idea more rationally acceptable, and he largely abandons any serious discussion of the relation between faith and reason. Furthermore, the work as a whole is frustratingly incondite, and much of is so meandering that it reads like a succession of footnotes without a primary text. There is a great display of broad erudition—the author mentions Plato, Voltaire, and St. Augustine, to name a very small sample—but he eschews a serious, sustained discussion of any of them, using them as little more than name-dropping fodder. Harry raises all the right questions, but the answers he provides are neither unfamiliar nor particularly provocative. Finally, he never adequately addresses a fundamental problem with his overall approach: how does the idea of God, if accepted only as myth, provide any of the comforts that he claims? In other words, what reassurances can be delivered by a fictional contrivance that’s acknowledged as such?
A philosophically ambitious but unfocused and shopworn discussion of religious faith.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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