The blueprint for an energetic new religion—composed mostly of woo-woo and blather.
A book that presents a new cosmological theology.
God is the cosmos, writes Oraiah in his nonfiction debut, and all humans are parts of that totality. The word cosmos, he writes, refers to “the universal order and intelligence present in the world, as opposed to just chaos and disorder. It also implies the deep interconnectedness of all things in the universe.” As a stave against such chaos, the author proposes a new religion: Cosmism, which seeks to fuse religion and science into a kind of conceptual soup that’s equal parts dark energy and dark matter. “The field of cosmology is intricately connected to the field of theology,” Oraiah writes. “Researching and understanding the Cosmos and our place in It is the same as understanding the nature of God and our relationship with It.” According to Oraiah, this realization is one of the fundamental tenets of Cosmism. Oraiah writes all of this with a profusion of narrative energy and a generous amount of quotation and allusion; the book is immersive, providing readers with plenty of food for thought. The main drawback is that much of it is almost complete gibberish. “The spirit Supersoul houses the Ghost of the superior intelligence & supreme consciousness at the Cosmic scale,” goes one passage among innumerable passages of undiluted nonsense. “It is the power beyond our limited material data and comprehension ability.” Few to none of the author’s assertions about the nature of reality have any grounding in scientific fact. And Oraiah adds an element of blasphemy to his work by constantly invoking Carl Sagan in the context of Cosmism. Sagan’s book Cosmos (1980) is called “one of the sacred writings that is part of the Bible of the religion of Cosmism”—a statement that would have surely irked the rationalist atheist Sagan.
The blueprint for an energetic new religion—composed mostly of woo-woo and blather.Pub Date: June 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-03-912283-3
Page Count: 568
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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