Dec 24 2007
Book Review: Last Minute Yuletide Shopping
Book Review: Everything You Know About God is Wrong, Edited by Russ Kick
Hello, fellow procrastinators! I have the solution to your atheist gift-giving conundrums. So far I’ve given you many suggestions for Yule gifts to spread the light of Reason to friends and family alike.
This book is not for the confirmed atheist, nor the informed agnostic. This book is for those who think they know, but don’t care to think that much about their beliefs, those who are curious but don’t care quite enough about their skepticism to really investigate, and anyone else you think would benefit from a basic primer containing the best and most obvious arguments against religion. These are the topics that get hashed out on various forums, and all of the things you’d really like everyone to know.
It’s a starting point. I’d say that, if you’re brave (or filled with the courage of eggnog and hot buttered rum), you can also give this book to anyone who has ever sent you a mind-numbingly inane email involving some bourgeois problem followed by divine intervention, or some melodramatic, Christian-tinted urban legend easily debunked by a trip to snopes.com. These people will probably be shocked, horrified, and maybe even curious. Most likely you will start a family feud, or even an unholy estrangement from the more religious members of your family. As horrifying as that sounds, it’s actually kind of fun to be the naughty one for a while. Your more interesting relatives will show you newfound respect that you had the drunken balls to send your Aunt and Uncle, (the former Missionaries to Hawaii) such an outrageous gift, particularly if you let them open it in front of the whole family.
Why stop there, though? This would be a great White Elephant gift at a religious party. Just imagine, this book going from hand to hand as people trade it for something else and foist it on someone else until it gets into the hands of one of the Goth teens who are truly thrilled to have it. Then the youth minister decides that now is the time to grow a spine and he tries to forcefully take it away from the scary girl-woman with a pierced lip and black fingernails. He will be humiliated to find (and prove once and for all) that she can physically overpower him quite easily.
My dears, I cannot recommend more highly this book, not so much as a pithy and wise treasure trove– after all, for most of us none of this information is remotely new. No, this is more of a Malatov Cocktail of a book, to be given with utmost care and strategy, to the budding free thinker and also to the religious, provided they open it in public for maximum effect.
Happy Yule!
