Archivos diarios: 23 de marzo de 2005

No tengo muy claro por qué este libro de Thomas Paine estaba en el paquete que recibí. Sé que lo pedí, pero no consigo recordar la razón. Debí leer sobre él en algún blog de ateismo y pensé que sería interesante. Veremos cuando lo lea.

De la contraportada:

«Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst,» declared Thomas Paine, adding, «every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity.» Paine’s years of study and reflection on the role of religion in society culminated with his final work, The Age of Reason. This coolly reasoned polemic influenced religious thinking throughout the world at the dawn of the nineteenth century, and its resonance remains undiminished by time.

The selfsame humanist and egalitarian views that made Paine a popular figure of the American Revolution brought him into frequent conflict with political authorities. Parts of The Age of Reason were written in a French jail, where Paine was confined for his opposition to the execution of Louis XVI. An attack on revealed religion from the deist point of view-embodied by Paine’s credo, «I believe in one God, and no more»-this work undertakes a hitherto unheard-of approach to Bible study. Its critical and objective examination of Old and New Testaments cites numerous contradictions as evidence against literal interpretations of the text. Well articulated and eminently readable, The Age of Reason is a classic of free thought.

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Me encantan los libros de Terry Pratchett. Lo considero un autor tan cómico que alcanza las más altas cotas de seriedad. Me faltan unos pocos de las serie del Mundodisco y algunos de la encarnación más juvenil (juveniles en edad, porque por lo demás parecen todavía más serios).

De la contraportada:

Moist von Lipwig is a con artist and a fraud and a man faced with a life choice: be hanged, or put Ankh-Morpork’s ailing postal service back on its feet.

It’s a tough decision.

But he’s got to see that the mail gets through, come rain, hall, sleet, dogs, the Post Office Workers’ Friendly and Benevolent Society, the evil chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, and a midnight killer.

Getting a date with Adora Bell Dearheart would be nice, too.

Maybe it’ll take a criminal to succeed where honest men have failed, or maybe it’s a death sentence either way.

Or perhaps there’s a shot at redemption in the mad world of the mail, waiting for a man who’s prepared to push the envelope…

Ian Stewart y Jack Cohen son dos excelentes divulgadores (me gustan especialmente los libros sobre ciencia del Mundodisco que han escrito con Terry Pratchett).

De la contraportada:

How is it possible for inanimate matter to turn into complex creatures like us with rich inner worlds of mind and imagination?

Some will ascribe it to God and be satisfied. Some will ascribe it to the inexorable consequences of the fundamental laws of physics and be satisfied. However, for those who find either approach incomplete, this book seeks to explain the evolution of mankind’s consciousness from a new and intriguing perspective. It skilfully argues that the mind evolved in the context of culture and language, aiding survival in a complex and competitive world.

Written by bestselling authors Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, Figments of Reality breaks new ground and develops profoundly thought provoking and novel insights into the nature of evolution, science and humanity.

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