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an amazing book i need to recommend - Ace of Spades by David Matthews

this is my first posting. hello! my name is sarah, and i'm half black half jewish. my mother is jewish.

A friend of mine recommended a book called 'Ace of Spades' by David Matthews (you can find it here: http://tr.im/iGsu), and I love it so much. I'm half way through it and I can't believe how great this book is. It's so funny and personable. There are moments where I have to put the book down and just burst out laughing. But wow, is it well written! David Matthews is poetic with his words. Truly astounding.

Here's a brief description from The New Yorker:
The son of a Zionist white mother and a Malcolm X-admiring black father, Matthews, in this memoir, is a boy without a race in a city, Baltimore, that requires him to choose one. The story of racial pinball is not entirely unfamiliar: the black kids reject him as too light-skinned, the whites as too broad-nosed. But Matthews displays improvisational verve—blacks are "burnished" and "browned butter," and whites are anything from "alabaster" to "a puffy marshmallow in Baltimore’s steaming cup of cocoa"—and narrates with the vigor of a movie script. Indeed, it is on television that, as a child, he finds the clarity he yearns for. "I was a living contradiction of elements that shouldn’t have been," he writes at one point, whereas on TV "everything was black, or white, and a lot like life."

Really, i can't recommend this book more! I love it! Have you read it?


here's the author, david matthews:

Who I am

You asked us to describe a little about ourselves and our decision to be Atheist, so here I am:

I know I haven't believed in god for a really long time, but I never before thought about why.  I've been discontent for so many years, but I just settled for what I had and didn't ask any questions.  Until I read "letters to a Christian Nation" by Sam Davis. 

Now I can't stop reading or thinking about evolution vs. creationism.  Reading "The God Delusion" has set the tone for the rest of my life.  I have a lot to say on the subject in my journal, so please feel free to read it.  I just started writing again after years of not writing, and I'm so glad I did.  I had no idea I had so much unrest in my heart until I picked up that pen and it all just started pouring out.  

I'm looking for feedback on my ideas and I look forward to starting a discussion based on my musings.  Please take a look at my journal, I promise it will be worth your time! 

 

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I was reading a book by Mark Vernon the other day called: "Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life".  Here's what he had to say:

If god talk can avoid getting hung up on "proofs", then it can become a way of critiquing human knowledge.  Examining what people take to be divine is baluable because it reminds them that they are made lower than gods and that aspirations to god-like knowledge will remain just that-aspirations.  Then, if this can be stomached, the attitude it nurtures itself becomes a valuable source of insight, for religious humility is the product of embracing the human condition.  With it, the vain attempt to "overcome" is ditched, and the challenge to understand is taken on.  And this, in turn, is what makes life worthwhile.  It produces the best kind of human beings, people who are not merely ignorant, but recognise the ways in which they are.  To this extent, they become wise and lovers of wisdom.  To put it another way, the unexamined life is not worth living, negatively because it would be deluded, and positively because examining all those other things in life- character, intuition, friendships, loves and fundamentally "who am I?" gives life shape and meaning. 


What?  First off, what's with all this anthropomorphic crap?  Why is this man, former Christian, turned Atheist, now agnostic defending agnosticism using anthropomorphic gods?  How does he know?  So far, he has been citing "god" as being some "supernatural" being who thinks and acts like humans, with human emotions and human desires.  He claims to not know or will ever know if god exists, yet he talks as if he believes god exists- "examining what people take to be divine is valuable because it reminds them that they are made lower than gods."  That's assuming gods even exist!  He's contradicting his agnosticism just with that one sentence, nevermind the whole paragraph!


He claims that religion is the key to opening that door that lets out our inner philosophers.  What about me?  I agree that examining and questioning the world around you gives life more meaning, but I don't need to believe in a "god" to humble myself and try to understand who I am.  I see belief as being a sort of target in the dark for insecure people to aim for.  I'm happy for some people who have broken away from "mainstream" religion, but to grasp on to agnosticism to keep you afloat seems to me to be even more futile then focusing all your energy into an actual religion.  I mean, good for them that they see something wrong with religion, and I'm sure it's difficult trying to explain to people what being agnostic means.  But I'm pretty convinced only 30 pages into his book that it just sounds like agnostics are just trying to find an easy way out. 


*Sigh*  I'm not going to stop with Mark Vernons opinion though.  He has a lot of interesting things to say about philosophy, which means "love of wisdom" by the way.  It sounds like this guy is taking Socrates words and twisting them until he gets a theistic meaning out of them.  It's ridiculous!

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