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The Bible Is Not Great: The Truth About The Bible, Religion And God, by Soren Sagan
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Atheism often gets a bad reputation. Through his book, Sagan shows atheism in a new light. Atheism, though commonly thought to be full of immorality, is not about self indulgence at all. It is about the love of humanity itself, without belief in a creator.
Not only does Sagan show the morality and superiority of atheism, but he presents compelling arguments for its case. Beginning with the world's first religions and animism and ending with the three major religions today (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), he explains how all these myths were created and why. He pokes holes in the most iconic and fundamental stories in the Bible, leaving little room for doubt in the mind of the reader of the falseness of these stories. Many of these myths were copied or adapted directly from the so-called pagans, such as Sumerians and Indians, who followers of the Bible called immoral heathens.
One of the most interesting aspects of his argument to me was his reasoning behind why the Bible was written, both the Old and New Testament. Once you read his explanation for the Bible's creation, you will wonder how you didn't see it before. Using nothing but logic and his knowledge of history, Sagan debunks the most believed myths in the world. From trying to explain natural phenomena to territorial disputes over sought after land, religion has been a tool for humanity. Sagan suggests it is a tool no longer needed.
The most difficult part for believers in religion to accept will be his perception of the evils and dangers of religion. The author shows how harmful religion has been to humanity throughout history and warns of future wars it may result in as well. Religion, though born from trying to explain natural phenomena we didn't understand and wishful thinking of a better life after death, has since been used to conquer territories and oppress other races, classes, and women. Though his views may shock the devoted religious, his arguments are hard to dispute. Believers in religion may argue that, without religion, we would not have a sense of morality and would kill each other off. However, Sagan would argue that more people have been killed in the name of religion than for any other reason. God is not our source of morality. It is in ourselves.
He presents an alternative to religion that has been growing in society for some time – science. Not only has science answered questions that religion was originally invented to explain, but it continues to make new discoveries daily. Science truly is the future, not religion. If you are currently a believer in a religion, Sagan's book may help you see your religion in a new light and start a new thinking process.
- Sales Rank: #624911 in eBooks
- Published on: 2014-11-26
- Released on: 2014-11-26
- Format: Kindle eBook
Most helpful customer reviews
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
Needs Professional Treatment and Republish
By Book Shark
Bible is not Great: True Origins of Bible, Religion and God by Soren Sagan
"Bible is not Great" is an ambitious book that seeks to demonstrate that the concept of god and religion are false. Author Soren Sagan brings a lot to the table that I like but unfortunately the book is crying for a professional editor and fact checker. Many biblical stories are analyzed and proven to be plagiarized but unfortunately the author is too careless with the facts (I can't emphasize that enough). This sloppy but interesting 184-page book includes eighteen chapters covering themes and popular biblical stories.
Positives:
1. A brief, accessible book.
2. The fascinating topic of religion.
3. I like how this book makes a strong case that religious ideas evolved from other religious ideas and in many instances from other religions.
4. The book is laid out fairly well. Each chapter covers a biblical story or a chapter-worthy topic.
5. The author's main theme is that the concept of religion is based on a false premise. The author does a good job of staying on point.
6. Unlike most atheist books this one ventures out to other major religions besides Christianity.
7. Provides many examples of religious-driven conflicts.
8. Does a fairly good job of tracing the origins of god and how mythology evolved.
9. The best attribute of this book is the numerous popular biblical stories that the author demonstrates were plagiarized or evolved from previous stories from other religions. "Abraham is considered the founder of monotheism, and Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are collectively called the Abrahamic religions. It came to me as a surprise that even the so-called founder of monotheism was mythology retold. There is no reason to believe that any Abraham and Sarah existed in the world. The Abraham and Sarah myth was copied in the Bible from an Indian myth of Brahma and his wife Saraswati. The Indian couple myth, Brahma and Saraswati, was later retold in the Old Testament as Abraham and Sarah."
10. Provides good information on the origin of monotheism. "Monotheism developed out of the concept of an Indian mythological god call Brahma, who created the universe, which Indian mythology called Brahman (created by Brahma). It was this Brahma which became Abraham of Sumeria and his wife Saraswati became Abraham's wife Sarah. Thus, the foundations of monotheism were laid down in the Middle East out of concepts which were imported from Indian mythology. What followed afterwards was simply a retelling of polytheistic mythology with one simple formula applied to it. That formula was to keep all the myths, but replace gods and goddesses with Jehovah/Allah and his angels."
11. Interesting observations. "Most of the beliefs of all the major religions even today have come from ancient Sumerian mythology. The Adam and Eve myth, which is the foundation of all monotheistic religions, was originally developed in Sumeria. Religion is still the innocent pseudoscience of the world's oldest civilizations. We have scientific facts in front of our eyes, but still most of us are blind, and continue to believe what our ancestors in Sumeria believed."
12. Insightful. There are some good nuggets here. "The original tale of creation was told in a Sumerian myth called `Enuma Elish'. Almost every detail of creation which was later adapted in Genesis had originally been told in Enuma Elish, which provided foundation for the Biblical or Abrahamic tale of creation."
13. Provides information on where the Old Testament came from.
14. Some bold claims. "Judaism was created with only one purpose. That purpose was to claim Canaan for Hebrews."
15. So is Jesus a myth? "The whole Jesus myth was created by Roman aristocracy by adapting stories and characters which were taken from various world mythologies."
16. What was the main purpose for Christianity? Find out.
17. Provides a strong case for religion and how it correlates to misogyny. Examples provided from various religions.
18. In defense of science as the best source for discovery of the truth.
19. Interesting look at religious prophecies and its inherent danger. "Hinduism believes that a Kalki Avatar will come, Buddhism is waiting for the coming of a future Buddha, Judaism is waiting for Jehovah to come down, Christians are waiting for Jesus to return, and Muslims await the Mahdi."
20. An epilogue that does a good job of summarizing the author's findings.
Negatives:
1. Low production value that hurts the book. In desperate need of a professional editor and fact checker. Too many mistakes.
2. Right from the start the author makes me cringe with how careless he is with some of his statements. "Atheism is a philosophy that tries to prove that the existence of a deity or deities who created the universe is false." Atheism is not about disproving deities it's about the lack of belief in them.
3. Technical errors that make me once again cringe. Evolution does NOT answer the question on the origin of life that is abiogenesis. Evolution provides the best explanation on how life changed over time. The age of the universe to the best of current knowledge is 13.8 billion years old not 15 billion years, the earth is not 5 billion years old, it's 4.54 (ok close enough if you round up I suppose) billion years old.
4. Oh no...acupuncture as a valid science field. Help!
5. Oversells and makes careless pronouncements. "We will discover that religion was always the root cause of the world's deadliest wars and conflicts." Religion is a major source of conflict among people but to say that it is always is a careless exaggeration.
6. Careless mistakes. "One more historian called Josephus is cited by some Christians as a source which mentioned Jesus, but according to most scholars, Josephus was a forgery and not a real historian." No, not true! Josephus was in fact a very good historian. A specific passage supporting a Christian claim to Josephus is considered a forgery.
7. More careless mistakes. "Around 100,000 years ago, when first thinking humans began appearing in the world as Neanderthals, the evolution of religion began. The world's first religion was Animism." I don't have the energy to explain this...
8. Too repetitive. Needs to improve flow of narrative.
9. No visual supplementary material like timelines graphs or charts. A book like this cries for a timeline!
10. Where are the references?
11. The truth is this book is very basic. It lacks depth and conviction.
12. No links to speak of. The eBook does not take advantage of its features. The table of contents is not linked for crying out loud.
13. No formal bibliography.
In summary, it pains me to give this well-intended author 2 stars but the accumulation of careless mistakes compelled me to do so. I like the idea of this book very much and even agree with most of the conclusions but the work here is sloppy and takes away from what this eBook should have been. My advice to this author is to go back and clean up the work you did here. Go over your references, verify that they are from reliable sources and include them in the book (it gives it legitimacy). Hire an editor and republish. I like very much where this book was headed and I think it's worth revisiting. I hope there is an updated issue in the future.
Further recommendations: "The Invention of Religion" by Alexander Drake, "Why I'm Not a Christian" by Richard Carrier, "Nonbeliever Nation" by David Niose, "Atheism for Dummies" by Dale McGowan, "The End of Christianity" by John Loftus, "The Atheist Universe" by David Mills, "Nailed" by David Fitzgerald, "The God Argument" by A.C. Grayling, "50 popular beliefs that people think are true" by Guy P. Harrison, "Godless" by Dan Barker, "God is not Great" by Christopher Hitchens, "Freethinkers" by Susan Jacoby, "Moral Combat" by Sikivu Hutchinson, "The Religion Virus" Craig A. James, "American Fascists" by Chris Hedges, "Doubt" by Jennifer Michael Hecht, and "Society Without God" by Phil Zuckerman.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Black and White Assessment of a Complex Subject
By The Spinozanator
To add a churchy touch to this subject, I'm part of the choir Sagan is preaching to. I suspect my group comprises the primary readership for this sort of book. Church-goers aren't much different from me. They read stuff they already believe.
The majority of "The Bible is Not Great" is dedicated to documenting that the stories from the Bible are recycled. Slightly different versions of these tales comprised mythologies that predated Judaism and Christianity. And the Old Testament wasn't their first recycle job. Modern human culture is thought to have begun about 50,000 years ago and the first written language (cuneiform) devised some 3200 years ago. That leaves 47,000 years (give or take) for the stories that predated Adam & Eve, for example, to have become well-established lore passed down by word of mouth - up for grabs by whatever religion or belief system was in vogue.
Dozens of biblical stories are shown by Sagan to have originated elsewhere and tweaked a bit (or a lot) for use in the Bible. He is on solid ground with this analysis. Many, many stories of a worldwide flood, for example, predate Noah's tale, and their close similarities cannot be denied. The same is true for the stories of Abraham and Sarah, Moses, and others.
Sagan moves to the New Testament and shows how the Jesus story is remarkably like those of multiple other characters from earlier folklore, religions, or histories, complete with virgin births, miracles, etc. Just what you'd expect during a very superstitious, pre-science time. I guess it's similar to what comedians say about new jokes - there aren't any. There are only restatements of funny stories passed down through the years.
That's the good part. If I may make a few criticisms: Sagan makes the scope of his subject matter huge when he states a generalization about religion as fact, then doesn't bother with documentation. Too huge to fit his less than 200 pages. Worse, he makes overt misstatements, again, with no footnotes or references. I'll present just a few of these.
Neanderthals are presented to be the first humans and Sagan says they appeared 100,000 years ago. I think mainstream science would say Neanderthals first appeared perhaps 250,000 or 300,000 years ago. He seems to believe we evolved from Neanderthals, which we most probably didn't.
Religion is presented as being the primary reason for all the ills in the world, including the wars. Jared Diamond has a chapter on causes of wars in his acclaimed "The Third Chimpanzee" and designates several major reasons for wars. I can't remember them all, but in addition to religion, they include nationalism, race, struggle over resources, and a couple of others. Wars usually had multifactorial causes. Sometimes a dominant personality was involved - like Alexander the Great or Genghis Kahn. And whatever individual or group perpetrated a war, if they needed an excuse, used whatever tools were available to manipulate the people - a little religion, a touch of garlic, a few chives, etc. Diamond concluded that religion was the PRIMARY cause of no more than its share - maybe 20-25%.
Nobody believes, as Sagan seems to, that Jesus dictated the gospels to his disciples for future publication. The Jesus resurrection story most likely wasn't made up by Roman Aristocracy for their own purposes. Biblical textual critics (that is, those who don't "drink the Kool-Aid") are prone to think the story arose through a myth-making process by Jesus's followers desperate to make sense of the unexpected crucifixion of their leader. And mainstream opinion amongst the scholars, although there are some who differ, is that Jesus indeed did exist.
Sagan is black and white in his assessment of very gray subject matter. He repeatedly exposes religion as the only cause of, for example, Columbus and other groups mistreating (and causing the extinction of) certain indigenous groups in the Americas. As if gold, imperialism, power, ambition, racism, and human nature weren't part of the equation.
Then he suggests that eventually science will prevail. Everyone will recognize that religions are false and live happily ever after. I too prefer what I consider to be reality (nobody's watching) and that history unfolds precisely as if there were no god(s). But the average person is unlikely to give up the comfort religion offers for the tragedies of life. Nor will they abandon the extended social networks associated with their common belief systems. I live in such a family and Catholicism is an integral part of their worldview. Those who have read Joseph Campbell's work, the "Power of Myth", or seen the video series on TV with Bill Moyer, recognize that human nature gravitates to a good story, regardless of its truth.
For anyone wanting a (if a little "pat") synopsis of the origins of the myths in the Bible, this is your book. Despite its deficits, it's worth reading and, as always, you can take what you like and leave the rest.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Setting scores
By Chris Albert Wells
Soren Sagan, author of The Bible is not Great, has lost faith and moves every stone available to prove he is right not be a believer any more. Past believers are tempted to share their investigations, findings and amazements. They write books that go in different directions. The most common is criticizing all the evil made in the name of God; more elaborate is establishing all the inconsistencies and contradictions between the Gospels; then we find comparisons between religious myths; and finally the strategies behind the texts. Sagan focuses on comparing religious myths and criticizing religions.
The strongest point of his book, accessible to beginners, shows that most of the biblical stories find earlier antecedents. People not aware of the many OT borrowings from ancient Sumerian texts will learn a lot about the Adam and Eve and the flood stories. Outside influences stretch to India with Cain and Abel and other narratives. Moses found floating in a basket is not unique to the OT. The New Testament has also its part in borrowing from other cultures. Jesus shows striking similarities with Egyptian, Persian, Indian or Sumerian Saviors.
I can't avoid the negative opinions of other reviewers stressing that the book would have gained a lot by editing endless repetitions. And also that it seems a bit too angelic to believe that discarding religion will stop wars. Other pretexts will be found for territorial and economic control.
The merit of this book is that it informs with fervor and may tempt Sagan's readers to further explore a more scholarly approach to a complex and exciting subject. For instance, readers may advantageously complete Sagan's book by reading "The Bible Unearthed" by I. Finkelstein and Silberman.
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