Customer Reviews

1. Should be required reading for everyone Review by Arhata

   Star Rating

   Another important step in full disclosure of the truths of religion. (Posted on 7/12/10)

2. A Must Read for Every Catholic School Student in the Country. Review by Aristopus

   Star Rating

   That's right. If I would have read Man Made God 50 years ago it would have changed my life. Now that I'm a senior, as I think back, only two books had a life-changing effect on me: "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding and "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. Now I have a third.
   
   Here's why. When I went to Catholic high school in the late '50s, I merely sat quietly and listened meekly to all the magical nonsense that was foisted on me on a daily basis. Believe what you want, was my attitude, just don't try to sell me any of this supernatural boogety-boo. Symbolic cannibalistic rituals were all right with me--just as long as I can sit in the back of the auditorium with my own little teenage daydreams.
   
   If I would have read Barbara's book back then, I would never have put up with it. "Hey, Brother, is it true the Church killed and tortured millions of people for over five hundred years? After the Council of Nicea, Europe was awash in blood and learning was ground to a standstill. The Dark Ages were imminent. Books were burned, libraries destroyed and the peasantry kept illiterate. All I got from your religion classes was the Apostle's creed."
   
   How come you never mentioned the genocide caused by your religion? After the bloodbath had subsided in the 1800s, a century later Cardinal Angelo Sodano would apologize and call this insane sadistic mayhem, "a sad episode in church history." Is he crazy? What has the church done to human progress?
   
   How can church officials live with themselves? How come there's no priests listed on the National Sex Offender list? What's going on?
   
   In short, I didn't become a militant atheist until 40 years later. I was always an atheist but I was close-mouthed about religion and tolerant of it. This very year there will be hundreds of people, mostly children, tortured and killed in Africa because of witchcraft, just as Barbara describes it. She even gives the line from the Gospels, Christ's own words, that centuries later the Inquisitioners would use to rationalize burning heretics at the stake by the millions. One town in Germany, states Ms. Walker with accurate annotation, burned as many as 1000 pathetic victims in one year. Outrageous--that's three per day! Watching public immolation must have been a national pass-time, like going to the movies or the Friday-night fights.
   
   Good job, Barbara, it's the scholarship that makes Man Made God so powerful. I hope your book goes down in history as one of the most important anti-religion statements of the modern age. All I can say to any Holy Ghost/heaven-hell/Eve-came-from-Adam's-rib/Noah's Ark believers is: read it and deal with it.
   
   Richard Goscicki, author of Mirror Reversal, Peppertree Press, 2007
   
   Mirror Reversal (Posted on 6/12/10)

3. Outstanding Review by Peter

   Star Rating

   Walker, Barbara G. (2010) Man Made God; Stellar House Publishing, Seattle, USA.
   Barbara Walker is an enigmatic person. She is a religious historian with an incisive understanding of the origin of Christianity and of the various pre-Christian mythologies that have been cobbled together to form the basis of one of the world’s most pervasive religions. She is also the author of The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets; she has written books on the Tarot and the I Ching and has a wide range of texts on Knitting and Knitwear Design!
   
   But this is the book that establisher her as one of the greatest scholars and erudite communicators about the origin and the global domination of the Christian mythology. It is essentially a collection of previously published essays, so there is a small amount of repetition in some chapters but it is easy to choose a topic and selectively read the appropriate chapter.
   
   The book is astounding in its coverage, detailed in its analysis, comprehensive in its expose of the many recurrent religious themes and dogmas promoted since antiquity. Walker is not a militant atheist. She is methodical, measured and entertaining in progressively dealing with and dismissing as fiction the majority of Christian beliefs including whether Christ actually ever existed. The reader has to concentrate through several chapters because of the extensive amount of factual and historical evidence that Walker can draw upon as she systematically de-mystifies Christianity. But it is well worth the effort. I have a library of some one hundred and sixty similar texts, but this one is the standout!
   
   There have certainly been many recent publications about atheism, rationality, concepts of god, the history of Jesus, the errors, contradictions and fabrications in the Bible. But Walker’s book rises well above all of these because of its evidence base and its comprehensive and informed coverage. It is effectively the objective and defensible encyclopaedia for anyone who seriously wants to understand Christianity. Walker’s book should be mandatory reading in schools and for believers and non-believers alike. There is no need for anger or militantism......the facts speak for themselves.
   
   Man Made God will go down in history as the turning point for a rational understanding of humanity and how humans have developed and hybridised fanciful and often oppressive religious dogma over time. It has happened in a continuum from antiquity through to modern day Christian fundamentalism. Keep this book handy for when the biblical fundamentalists next come knocking at your door!
   
   By Peter Bycroft – Peter is a Secular Humanist based in Noosa who specialises in the history of Christianity and the origin of Biblical myths.
   (Posted on 12/09/10)

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