The God Virus How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (Audible Audio Edition) Darrel Ray LLC Dogma Debate Books
Download As PDF : The God Virus How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (Audible Audio Edition) Darrel Ray LLC Dogma Debate Books
What makes religion so powerful? How does it weave its way into our political system? Why do people believe and follow obvious religious charlatans? What makes people profess deep faith even as they act in ways that betray that faith? What makes people blind to the irrationalities of their religion yet clearly see those of others? If these questions interest you, this book will give you the tools to understand religion and its power in you, your family and your culture.
For thousands of years, religion has woven its way through societies and people as if it were part and parcel to that society or person. In large measure it was left unexplained and unchallenged, it simply existed. Those who attempted to challenge and expose religion were often persecuted, excommunicated, shunned, or even executed. It could be fatal to explain that which the church, priest, or imam said was unexplainable. Before the germ, viral, and parasite theory of disease, physicians had no tools to understand disease and its propagation. Priests told people disease was a result of sin, Satan, evil spirits, etc.
With the discovery of microbial actors, scientists gained new tools to study how it spreads. They could study infection strategies, immunity, epidemiology and much more. Suddenly the terrible diseases of the past were understandable. The plagues of Europe, yellow fever, small pox, pneumonia, tuberculosis, syphilis, etc. were now removed from the divine and placed squarely in the natural world.
This book owes a great deal to Richard Dawkins' concept of viruses of the mind, but it seeks to go a step further to personalize the concept of religion as a virus and show how these revolutionary ideas work in everyday life. The paradigm can explain the fundamentalism of your Uncle Ned, the sexual behavior of a fallen megachurch minister, the child rearing practices of a Pentecostal neighbor, why 19 men flew planes into the World Trade Center, or what motivates a woman to blow herself up in the crowded markets of Baghdad. Learn how religion influences sexuality for its own purposes, how and why it protects pedofile priests and wayward ministers and how it uses survivor guilt to propagate and influence and how it might influence a person's IQ.
The God Virus How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (Audible Audio Edition) Darrel Ray LLC Dogma Debate Books
This is probably the best book on the subject of religion that I have ever read. The book explains how religion does what it does.The book uses the term "god virus" as an extended analogy for what happens when a person becomes infected by religion. There are many parallels between viruses and religion. Ray uses terms such as vectors, binding, and uncoupling (from culture) to describe what happens to the individual who falls prey to a god virus.
A god virus is able to disable the critical thinking skills of its host so that one's own religion appears to be without error, while at the same time errors in other approaches to religion are obvious to the host.
Just as when a body weakens it becomes more susceptible to infection, the same thing happens with regard to a god virus. Emotional turmoil and distress may bring out the vectors for infection. Whenever there is a tragedy, it seems to bring out the religious because they see the opportunity to be had to spread the virus.
Ray gives advice on living a virus-free life. "Freely and openly acknowledging your own death as the ultimate end is the first step in virus-free living," writes Ray.
Comparing science to religion, Ray notes that "Science has a built-in error correction mechanism that does not exist in religion." I think this goes a long way to explain why there are so many denominations, while science is more unified. "Progress in science is demonstrable. The progress of religion is non-existent."
The analogy between viruses and god-belief helps us understand the way religion operates. I strongly recommend this book to those with an interest in religion.
Product details
|
Tags : Amazon.com: The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (Audible Audio Edition): Darrel Ray, LLC Dogma Debate: Books, ,Darrel Ray, LLC Dogma Debate,The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture,Dogma Debate, LLC,B00A8D0D9W
People also read other books :
- Free Fall (Cole and Pike Book 4) eBook Robert Crais
- Loving Redemption (Second Chances Series) (Volume 2) (9781620157671) SM Stryker Books
- Lonely Planet Greece (Travel Guide) Lonely Planet, Korina Miller, Kate Armstrong, Alexis Averbuck, Michael S Clark, Chris Deliso, Victoria Kyriakopoulos, Andrea Schulte-Peevers, Richard Waters 9781742207261 Books
- Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern, Chapters 1-46 (9781439048443) Raymond A. Serway, John W. Jewett Books
- Terminating Kennedy eBook Edmund Blanchard, James Dodds
The God Virus How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (Audible Audio Edition) Darrel Ray LLC Dogma Debate Books Reviews
I thought I'd already posted a review of this book. Oh well, try again. This book is evidently based on a theory of memes, but Ray presents the info in a "popular" or less intellectually demanding form, the metaphor of a disease. At the outset, as I recall, the premise seemed clever but somewhat too simplistic. However, as the book progressed, I found the author's "infection" metaphor contagious and instructive, and subsequently I've found it useful. It is, in fact, a terrible waste of one's vital energies to argue with those who are firmly convinced of some religious "truth" or "fiction," and yet it can also be intellectually stimulating to argue, and for that reason, arguing with the believers in one's life can also prove highly addictive. Ray's notion that believers are "infected," and that a principle of symptom of their infection is a "blindness" (so to speak) to all contradictory "truths" (or "fictions") can be a very powerful tool in one's arsenal of self-disciplinary restraints. In other words, it's not always easy to shut up, but sometimes perhaps we should shut up; and having in mind the notion that those with whom we simply MUST disagree are "sick" can help us to shut our yaps without surrendering the comfort of knowing that we are "superior" to those whose beliefs we simply must despise. It's a short book, easily assimilated, and mostly fairly amusing. And reading is a much better use of your precious time than is shouting at, for instance, brick walls.
A difficult subject that will have people line up on both sides of the question, thereby proving the author's thesis. In a nutshell belief systems are a type of virus that infects humans' minds, and religions most perniciously so because their beliefs have self-defenses against anything seeking to disprove them. They also have a viral urge to propagate by infecting others (through missionary activities and propaganda).
The author gives comparisons to biological phenomena of how viruses spread in nature by infecting animals and using them as breeding grounds and "vectors" to pass on the virus. The book is clearly written, in simple language anyone can understand, with footnotes for those who want to dig deeper into the science.
Atheists can find here a sympathetic presentation for debunking unfounded beliefs. Religionists may avoid this book like the plague (bubonic -- carried by fleas on rats). Open-minded people will enjoy the logic and excellent documentation. This is like a doctor diagnosing an illness of people who don't want to be cured because they are addicts to their beliefs. Well done, Darrel Ray!
I read lots (I could almost say all) books regarding atheism and there are lots of excellent books. I very much liked Victor Stenger's God, the failed hypothesis and of course all books from Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris's End of Faith which is truly magnificent book. Not to mention beautifuly written Chrisopher Hitchens's God is not great. All these books and many others can be admired and reader can find lots of understanding and answers why believing in god or gods, demons and angels, dwarfs and ghosts is utterly wrong.
But this book, The God Virus is something special. Even to the caliber of the above mentioned authors (and many not mentioned), this book is really special.
As much as other books and authors try to explain the wrongness of the arguments which believers of all kind are waving around, this book is doing it from the inside – from the way believers think. It combines examples from the nature and theory of memetics to explain how the mental viruses work. How wrong ideas take hold and how believers are victims of them.
If someone really want to understand the mind of a believer, this is the book I would suggest.
This is probably the best book on the subject of religion that I have ever read. The book explains how religion does what it does.
The book uses the term "god virus" as an extended analogy for what happens when a person becomes infected by religion. There are many parallels between viruses and religion. Ray uses terms such as vectors, binding, and uncoupling (from culture) to describe what happens to the individual who falls prey to a god virus.
A god virus is able to disable the critical thinking skills of its host so that one's own religion appears to be without error, while at the same time errors in other approaches to religion are obvious to the host.
Just as when a body weakens it becomes more susceptible to infection, the same thing happens with regard to a god virus. Emotional turmoil and distress may bring out the vectors for infection. Whenever there is a tragedy, it seems to bring out the religious because they see the opportunity to be had to spread the virus.
Ray gives advice on living a virus-free life. "Freely and openly acknowledging your own death as the ultimate end is the first step in virus-free living," writes Ray.
Comparing science to religion, Ray notes that "Science has a built-in error correction mechanism that does not exist in religion." I think this goes a long way to explain why there are so many denominations, while science is more unified. "Progress in science is demonstrable. The progress of religion is non-existent."
The analogy between viruses and god-belief helps us understand the way religion operates. I strongly recommend this book to those with an interest in religion.
0 Response to "[5GV]≡ Libro Free The God Virus How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (Audible Audio Edition) Darrel Ray LLC Dogma Debate Books"
Post a Comment