Wednesday, October 27, 2004Book Review: The Religion WarThe Religion War by Scott Adams This is the wittiest, sharpest, coolest philosophy book since... God's Debris. Adams' first novel was, as he put it, an interesting thought experiment. It was designed to get people thinking, but maybe only for thinking's sake (i.e., only for the most important of reasons). The Religion War goes a little further, addressing more mundane issues like global annihilation even as it works toward ultimate truth. God's Debris carried a disclaimer that it did not necessarily reveal Adams' thinking, only a possible way of thinking. Though this was not explicitly asserted in The Religion War, the limitation probably holds since it is a sequel. In other words, the book should be taken as thoughts produced by Mr. Adams but not necessarily Mr. Adams' thoughts. It is my suspicion that a letter denouncing him and a letter announcing total agreement would be met with equal measures of horror, not only because the reader mistook Adams for his fiction but because he thought he could get into Adams' head enough to know what what Adams thought about what he had written. I'll leave it at that since this isn't a litcrit review, but will advise the reader to take this on with an extremely open mind. Absent a willingness to believe anything, at least until the book is closed, there's no point in reading this. In The Religion War, Adams postulates a not distant enough future in which, fearful of terror attacks, the West has put its stock in a charismatic general - who believes he's doing God's will - and his minions to keep the world safe for rapidly eroding democracy even as the Muslims have turned to an equally self-impressed terrorist leader who is at once of caliph stature and virtually unrecognized lest he become a target for assassination. Into the mix comes the Avatar of God's Debris, convinced that through reason he can stop what looks like inevitable war. Will he? If so, how? And what nods will be made to Adams' real life? Click the book(s) and Amazon will deliver the answer. 
posted by gbarto at 11:51 AM |
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