About this title: With clarity and wit, Kaminer argues that we are society intoxicated by the irrational: religion, spirituality, and popular therapies threaten to replace rational thought with supernaturalism and a belief in personal testimony, no matter how unsubstantiated.
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Description: Very good. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books, New York
Date Published: 2000
ISBN-13:9780679758860ISBN:0679758860
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Signed by previous owner. 2000 Vintage soft cover. NOT EX LIB! Clean, lightly toned pages with light reading wear, barely creased spine, top & side edges are lightly tanned, some edgewear, mild cover scuffing. Glued binding. 278 p. read more
Binding: PAPERBACK
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2000-10-10
ISBN-13:9780679758860ISBN:0679758860
Description: Very Good. 0679758860 This is a gently read paperback which has a solid binding and no spine creasing, the cover and pages are in excellent condition without any blemishes, there are a few highlights throughout. read more
Description: Very good. By Wendy Kaminer; ISBN: 0679758860; Pub. : Vintage; Pub. Date: 2000-10-10; Media: Paperback; Weight: 8.96 oz.; Very minor shelf wear, all else is like new. by Wendy Kaminer; ISBN: 0679758860; Pub. : Vintage; Pub. Date: 2000-10-10; Media: Paperback; Weight: 8.96 oz.; Very minor shelf wear, all else is like new. read more
Description: FINE/Trade pb. Yes, if we are such a rational society today, then why is there so much irrationality around and getting worse? Author investigates. As-new condition, no marks, straight, bright condition. 1999, Vintage trade pb, 278 pp. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Vintage Books/Random House;, N. Y. :
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780679758860ISBN:0679758860
Description: Near Fine. 0679758860. 278 pages; 8vo (9") 23 cm; Endnotes.; A critique of irrationalism and its dangerous relationship with public policy. 'Whenever I've publicly questioned the value of religiosity or suggested that atheism is not incompatible with morality, I've received vicious responses from people who claim to love God'.; No discernable wear. read more
Description: Good. GOOD with average wear to cover and pages. May contain minimal highlighting, inscriptions, or notations. We offer a no-hassle guarantee on all our items. Orders generally ship by the next business day. Default Text. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2000
ISBN-13:9780679758860ISBN:0679758860
Description: Good. Books have varying amounts of wear and highlighting. Usually ships within 24 hours in quality packaging. Satisfaction guaranteed. read more
Description: Satisfaction Guaranteed. Shipped quickly. 2000. Paperback. Used, very good. Very good overall with light to moderate wear. No dust jacket. read more
Description: Satisfaction Guaranteed. Shipped quickly. 2000. Paperback. Used, very good. Very good overall with light to moderate wear. No dust jacket. read more
Description: Satisfaction Guaranteed. Shipped quickly. 2000. Paperback. Used, very good. Very good overall with light to moderate wear. No dust jacket. read more
Description: Satisfaction Guaranteed. Shipped quickly. 2000. Paperback. Used, very good. Very good overall with light to moderate wear. No dust jacket. read more
""The contrary willingness to accept untested personal testimony as public truth is at the heart of the irrationalism that confronts us today. . . Generally, the only proof offered for a fantastic belief is the passion it inspires in believers." Kaminer's new book decries the influence that irrational belief has on public policy. In the introduction she humorously ridicules her going to a homeopath, recognizing that it has no scientific validity, and she knows the result is due to the placebo effect, yet that effect is real to her. She argues, however, that others should not take her testimony at face value. Objective evidence should be required.
Kaminer discusses the public's eagerness to join in the hysteria over satanic ritual child abuse, mass mourning for celebrities, how junk science and personal prejudice have influenced public policy decisions related to drugs, school vouchers, and classroom prayer. We are in danger of losing our skepticism, she argues, and that is dangerous for a democratic society. She acknowledges the personal need of many for divinities, but she suggests that a society that wears its piety in the public square craving for angels and alien abductions, not to mention Saint Diana, is more likely to look for miracles than face the challenges of living in a pluralistic society.
And she comes down quite hard on religious faith as feeding the irrational. "What's the difference between crossing yourself or hanging a mezuzah outside your door and avoiding black cats. Believing that you've been abducted by aliens or that Elvis is alive is, on its face, no sillier than believing that Christ rose from the dead. . . People who believe that God heeds their prayers have probably" waived the right to mock people who talk to trees and guardian angels or claim to channel the spirits of Native Americans." One man's superstition is another's sacred.
Kaminer blames the media for much of this, they quail in the face of the supernatural. Skepticism is edited out of journalistic reporting and she doubts H. L. Mencken could publish many of his antagonistic remarks about religious silliness, arguing that we risk becoming less religiously free than during the Victorian era. She is a fervent advocate of religious freedom. "Separation of church and state does not desire, much less mandate, the banishment of religious faith from public life, as right-wing rhetoric sometimes suggests. . . .The right of religious people to organize and mount political protest is, in par, a right of private association, which the government is bound to accommodate, but not support." But she cites numerous instances of religious viewpoints appearing in work and school settings, almost universally those of Protestant Christianity.
Kaminer's examples are witty and eerily disturbing. Together they present a rather disturbing vision of the future and she ends with a plea for a return to science, skepticism, reason, and freedom of inquiry.
"The rights and interests of individual believers clash with religious institutions when the institutions seek sponsorship of the state. Crusades to breach the boundaries between church and state constitute a much greater threat to religious tolerance than any number of evangelical atheists. Theocracies throughout history have made that clear."
As I was reviewing some of Kaminer's magazine articles I stumbled upon a very recent commentary which I quote in its entirety:
"Sometimes I put my faith in sectarian rivalries, which helped derail the most recent proposed school-prayer amendment to the Constitution. Last year, an organization in Arkansas, Put God Back in Public School, decided not to press for the introduction of school prayers in Arkansas (instead, they demanded state funding for special Christian schools). The group reconsidered the value of school prayer after its founder Kathy Smith, consulted with God: 'I asked God, "Do you want me to change the law to put prayer in the schools?" He said no. If you do that, kids would have the right to pray to other gods, too. They could pray to Buddha. God doesn't want that. There is only one God.'
"A Joel Osteen book listed on Goodreads has 616 ratings. This book has 22. Now it has 23.
A trip to the bookstore yesterday showed Osteen's book prominently displayed -- by the door, with the bestsellers, etc. There were rows and rows of self-help books, new age books, prosperity books. Over and over and over again, people find ways to market New Thought, Positive Thinking, the Law of Attraction, the Law of Reciprocity, and the Prosperity Gospel. It strikes me as peculiarly American -- see the book "Madame Blavatsky's Baboon" for a relevant American history lesson.
If you're into mainstream Christianity, there's the Prosperity Gospel -- God wants you to be rich. If you're not rich, attend my church to expand your faith and my pocketbook, and soon the money will come pouring in. If you're into New Age spiritualism, there's the power of the mind to attract what it wants through focused spiritual seeking -- read my book to find out how. If you're a fundamentalist, Pat Robertson will teach you the Law of Reciprocity.
There is a cyclical remarketing of these same ideas to the reading public who seek personal improvement or advancement in some way. The purveyors may or may not believe it -- but why wouldn't they, look how rich they're getting selling you books on the subject! I'm reminded of an observation about highly specialized professors in theoretical areas -- the practical (marketplace) value in learning what they have to teach is almost exclusively in becoming a teacher of the same material. Which is a way of saying the only way to profit from their ideas is to become another purveyor of them -- not by actually "applying them." It's a somewhat poor analogy, since many professors in abstract research areas have contributed over time to engineering breakthroughs and the like. A better analogy is the chiropractor who believes a spinal adjustment can cure every known ailment, from schizophrenia to cancer -- at $50 a pop! They seem to be true believers -- but it's easy to be a true believer when you benefit financially.
Wendy Kaminer's observations in this book helps one to step back and view all of these phenomena together and understand the forces that allow these purveyors of prosperity porn to proliferate. Her subjects range across mainstream religion, the New Age marketplace, the recovery movement, and many more of the intersecting pop religion sects that have integrated with the American gold rush culture to create the omnipresent Oprahfied world of American popular culture today. Read it and join the "reality-based community." (A group famously denounced by a Bush administration insider who claimed that the government's job was not to fret about reality but to visualize whatever it wanted in the world and then go create it. With bombs and deregulation if those are the tools God has placed at our disposal. Look how we've prospered!)
Kaminer's book is probably more grounded in issues of belief and the will to believe in supernatural forces as a psychological phenomenon -- with less focus on pervasive marketplace consequences than my review suggests. There -- I've tried to represent the reality of the book a little more closely, with a little less personal spin on what I want it to be about."
"she is one tough minded skeptic - i loved it. although humorous, the description of religious fundamentalists, ufo types, and new agers surrounding us all is unsettling."
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