Name: rumbledethumps's review of God Is Not One by Stephen Prothero
Item: God Is Not One
Rating: 2
Author: rumbledethumps

Stephen Prothero

In the twenty-first century, religion remains the single greatest influence in the world. But, argues religion scholar Stephen Prothero, persistent attempts to portray all religions as different paths to the same God overlook the distinct human problem that each seeks to solve. For example: Islam: the problem is pride / the solution is submission Christianity: the problem is sin / the solution is salvation Buddhism: the problem is suffering / the solution is awakening Judaism: the problem is exile / the solution is to return to God God Is Not One is an indispensable guide to the questions human beings have asked for millennia—and to the disparate paths we are taking to answer them today.

The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World

God Is Not One

rumbledethumps

This is a tough review, because I agree with the basic idea of what Prothero is writing, that we should learn and acknowledge the different ideas and practices of religious people around the world. But he too often sets up a strawman in defense of his argument, and then tears that down instead of really engaging with the ideas he is discussing. An example: "The New Atheists see all religions (except their own “anti-religious religion”) as the same idiocy, the same poison. The perennial philosophers see all religions as the same truth, the same compassion. What both camps fail to see is religious diversity." Perennial philosophers, in my understanding, believe that religions point to the same truth, not that they are the same truth. And his attack on atheists in the final chapter was just strange, frankly.  

He also creates these strange silos within American Christianity, separating Fundamentalism, Evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism in ways that just don't really travel well outside of a classroom or a textbook, because the practices of these groups are much more fluid than his rigid definitions.

Finally, he uses subjective words when perhaps he should tone it down a bit. "One of the lies of the so-called New Atheists...." and "Evangelicals are both more friendly to modernity and less shrill [than Fundamentalists]." It feels like he has an axe or two to grind, and it makes me not trust his interpretations of the religions he discusses.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, dizzying scientific and technological advancements, interconnected globalized economies, and even the so-called New Atheists have done nothing to change one thing: our world remains furiously religious. For good and for evil, religion is the single greatest influence in the world. We accept as self-evident that competing economic systems (capitalist or communist) or clashing political parties (Republican or Democratic) propose very different solutions to our planet's problems. So why do we pretend that the world's religious traditions are different paths to the same God? We blur the sharp distinctions between religions at our own peril, argues religion scholar Stephen Prothero, and it is time to replace naÏve hopes of interreligious unity with deeper knowledge of religious differences. In Religious Literacy, Prothero demonstrated how little Americans know about their own religious traditions and why the world's religions should be taught in public schools. Now, in God Is Not One, Prothero provides readers with this much-needed content about each of the eight great religions. To claim that all religions are the same is to misunderstand that each attempts to solve a different human problem. For example: –Islam: the problem is pride / the solution is submission –Christianity: the problem is sin / the solution is salvation –Confucianism: the problem is chaos / the solution is social order –Buddhism: the problem is suffering / the solution is awakening –Judaism: the problem is exile / the solution is to return to God Prothero reveals each of these traditions on its own terms to create an indispensable guide for anyone who wants to better understand the big questions human beings have asked for millennia—and the disparate paths we are taking to answer them today. A bold polemical response to a generation of misguided scholarship, God Is Not One creates a new context for understanding religion in the twenty-first century and disproves the assumptions most of us make about the way the world's religions work.

The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter

garima mamgain

This is a decent book for an overview on religions of the world. I didn't appreciate the chapter on aethism at all. Not everyone is a militant aethist!!
I really liked the notion that someone is challenging the concept of "God is one".

rumbledethumps &
God Is Not One by Stephen Prothero

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God Is Not One by Stephen Prothero