George Parish's Reviews > God: An Anatomy

I really enjoyed the first half of this book. It was an energetic portrayal of Yahweh and his various body parts that really leaps off of the page. You can tell the author has passion for bringing light to this more ancient understanding of God in relation to humanity.

I appreciated the author's commentary on how the notion of God became more abstract as time and ideas wore on. However, it soon became clear that her passion to revive the physical nature of God hindered her ability to convey this process. A Chapter midway through the book demonstrates this. On the topic of lightness vs darkness, she concludes that this later addition from the Christian perspective led to modern day racism. Now, I am no Christian, but from here on her contempt for the faith becomes quite clear and begins to obstruct her academic dissection.

Short rebuttals to this vein through the book: not only did she omit the ancient Zoroastrian origin of the duality of good vs evil, but she states that the much later associations of light & dark / good & evil with white & black skin was solely conjured up from what she describes as a uniquely Christian abstraction. 1. As mentioned, this is not uniquely, nor originally, a Christian concept. 2. There was no mention of the theory of natural selection, which arguably is the more likely source of modern racism. 3. Neither did she mention that the origin of the anti-slavery movement came from a Christian source (the Quakers). 4. Neither that it's abolishment and later civil rights campaigns were based on Christian principles of universality and equality under God. It was by appealing to their shared Christian theology that Martin Luther King was able to persuade white Americans of his just cause.

I did not expect to be defending Christianity when reading a book about the anatomy of Yahweh. It is disappointing that the duality of the author's passion both stimulates her engagement with the topic of Yahweh as well as her disdain for the religion that emerged from it. As such both avenues become tainted and I do not trust the author to convey her passion reliably.