Terrific history of religion, based on the idea that religion serves people and culture based on “facts on the ground.”

A woman describes growing up as a fundamentalist. Kinda charming, although not a book’s worth of story.

Pretty much sums up my position!

Lovely, an easy read, and exciting to read about Ganeshpuri! Meg is thrilled that she actually met the guru in this book (and movie).

Too long, but great insights about how the brain works. Or, watch her TED Talk instead.

I found the odd word choices annoying until someone pointed out that the author is a Romanian writing in English. The hero of this true story — an explorer whom Jordan Sr. must have met — is intrepid and smart, but not always the best planner, so I had trouble not wanting to yell at him.

Someone loaned this to Meg. It’s an account of growing up with Rajneeshis as parents — ignored, neglected, free, rootless, and sad.

Rev. John Weston loaned me this book because it’s one of his favorites and it’s about Addison County, VT where we live. It’s a lovely combination of literary criticism (analyzing a single Robert Frost poem), nature writing (about the Bristol Notch), and personal reflection. Wonderful.

(That’s the working title.) This is an excellent introduction to UUism, but a lousy title. Doug may end up self-publishing this book — I sure hope he does!

I am reading this to remind myself of the reason that we know that there’s no such thing as objective reality. 

This is another in the series of books that I’m reading because my friend Jerry Shedd quotes them in our email discussion about religion and truth. Dawkins claims that prove things, but he doesn’t. However, he collects an very interesting set of arguments. Worth reading.

A New York Times Middle East correspondent’s rant condemning all fundamentalism, including fundamentalist scientism. A nice match to Chris Hitchen’s works.

A funny, if snide, look at research about the soul and the afterlife.

More philosophy about free will than I wanted to know.

A polemical rant, citing a random (negative) assortment of ways that organized religion has been misused. Hey, who knew that the Bible was written by people — several of them — and that science has advanced since then! Disappointing.