Bunnies4Buddha and I are off to canoe on the Shenandoah River for a few days so there won’t be any updates this week.  We’ll take pictures which we’ll eventually post here.

B4B has completed another couple of book reviews. One is for Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and the other is for the entire Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. As usual, she did a great job of reviewing both. Here are a couple of excerpts.

This book [Neverwhere] was an eye-opener for me on Gaiman’s amazing ability – the writing kept my interest, the story was a nice mixture of adventure and plot and I found the characters entertaining. What I most liked about this story (and subsequent Gaiman novels) is that although it is a fantasy story it is grounded in reality. Nothing is too obscure or goofy and everything is written to make the reader think that it is plausible…

Just when I was about fed up with this one-trick-pony of [A Series of Unfortunate Events], I reached the seventh book in which an overarching mystery is revealed and the children’s adventures become about solving the mystery and not about finding new places to live. The big mystery is written well from books seven through ten. There are clues and riddles that the Baudelaires must decipher; this larger plot involves the author, Lemony Snicket, Count Olaf and the children’s deceased parents. I found myself once again interested, however by book twelve there are too many clues and unanswered questions…

You can keep up with all her reviews and all the books she has read and is currently reading on her book page.

I just got back from seeing a pre-screening of Bill Maher’s new movie, Religulous. I found it quite enjoyable. It was very different from my usual, prefered method of approaching religious skepticism. I’m accustomed to the more intellectual approach championed by the likes of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. In contrast, Maher comes across very much as an everyday, average kind of guy. You know, the kind of person you’d want to have drink with in a bar or vote into the highest office on the planet.

Also different about this movie is that Maher doesn’t describe himself as an atheist. He’s more like Michael Shermer who describes himself as a militant agnostic – “I don’t know and you don’t either.” Maher goes one step further. Not only does he point out that religionists don’t know, but he points out that what they think they know is, as the movie title implies, ridiculous. But the admission that he doesn’t know the answers to life’s big questions is such a point of strength for him. He appears very humble next to the interviewees who express such absolute certitude.

True to Maher’s style, the movie was infused with humor, the best of which was often the looks on people’s faces as they react to him. Other moments are funny because of how surprising they were (I won’t give these away). His natural charm even enabled him to get laughs from people who clearly didn’t like him.

On the down side, this movie really didn’t offer any new insights or facts for the free thinker. Instead of being informative, it was merely entertaining, which I suppose is what a movie is supposed to be first and foremost. I think there is potential for the nominal religionist – the Christmas-and-Easter-only church goer, the “my parents were Christian so I guess I am too” crowd – to get something out of it. There’s enough meat for these types to say, “wow, there are some ridiculous aspects of my religion.”

Also, I would have liked to hear more about making the non-believer voice heard. Like Dawkins’ The God Delusion, Religulous points out that in America, the non-believing community is a huge minority; larger than jews, homosexuals, and NRA members combined and even larger the African American community. We need not be timid. Unfortunately, that point was only touched on.

Finally, there was an attempt in Religulous to tack on a message on the end. This message was not a theme throughout the movie nor was it built up to towards the end. It’s almost as if they felt obligated to ‘get serious’ before the credits. It simply didn’t work. I wish it had stuck with the theme of the movie, which was belief in ridiculous things can make people do ridiculous and sometimes dangerous things.

Overall, this movie is worth seeing. It’s shortcomings have no impact on it’s entertainment value. I recommend this to anyone who likes humor and is not overly sensitive about their own religion, if saddled with one.

In a post I wrote awhile back, I bemoaned the increasing prevalence of censorship done in the name of “tolerance”. It seems that I am not alone in my opinion. I found this opinion piece by Jo Glanville by way of a RichardDawkins.net reprint. In it, Glanville calls the corporate coward Random House Books to task for caving to threats of violence and reversing a decision to publish The Jewel of Medina.

“It was also disingenuous of Random House to suggest that the novel might incite violence. Certain members of the population might choose to commit an act of violence, but that is not the same as the book itself inciting violence. To pass the responsibility in this way to the novel was a betrayal of the author and of free speech.”

But Glanville brought something to my attention that I was unaware of. The Jewel of Medina will be published, at least in Britain. A small and brave publisher, Gibson Square Books, has signed a deal with the book’s author, Sherry Jones.

The decision by Gibson Square’s owner, Martin Rynja, was met with violence. Over the last weekend, Gibson Square’s offices suffered a fire bomb attack. No one was injured and three suspects are in custody.

In my opinion, the book sounds completely awful – it’s a historical fiction based on the romance between Mohammed and his prepubescent wife, Aisha. Despite that, I’m tempted to buy it just to rub it in the faces of these self-righteous assholes. More likely, I will purchase another book from the publisher simply to reward their dedication to free speech.

This above image is licensed by Windy Ed.