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This book can be boiled down to the idea that people should find things that are already meaningful in their lives and recognize that meaningfulness, then ritualize that meaningfulness to add to its existing meaningfulness. I think the author's intention behind writing this book was to express the idea that people should be comfortable turning experiences that are traditionally non-religious into a spiritual and meaningful encounter as a replacement for traditional religious practices. However, I felt that his message was too open-ended. He doesn't provide any sort of framework for what would be defined as positive and meaningful beyond what feels good and feels right. What if someone feels spiritually connected to the world when they commit violence? Is that valid? It just seems as though there's a lack of structure, or there's a presumption that people will somehow fall back on the morals and basic ideas provided by the religions that he intends his approach to replace. I suppose I'm approaching this from the perspective of experiences not being able to have any more or less meaning in a spiritual sense if we don't believe that there's something spiritual beyond us that these acts will appeal to. Will thinking about how meaningful my coffee drinking is while drinking my coffee really make drinking coffee more spiritually meaningful? More meaningful to me than, say, prayer is to a committed Muslim or Jew? It's as if he tried to give "permission" (his word) for people to experience their religions à la carte, without believing in those religions as valid. The book is interesting, but it just feels like an incomplete idea borrowed from the trend of mindfulness that is prevalent right now. Mindfulness works because it doesn't appeal to religion per se. It just asks us to focus on what's actually happening in the present moment, and that can be accomplished without appeals to spirituality. I also didn't care too much for the fact that the book was mostly about the author's personal experiences instead of rituals. I remember that the author was so absorbed in singing a song from Grease that he literally walked off a cliff and almost died and that he trembles when he thinks about it, but I can't recall what was said about the development of rituals in various religions and their significance, or if he even mentioned anything about pre- or non-Abrahamic rituals, besides the occasional reference to meditation and mindfulness. And last but not least, I can not understand how this made it into his book: “Tricia Hersey, the creator of the Nap Ministry, describes rest as a form of resistance, because it pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy.” Taking a nap is a form of resistance? Every toddler is a freedom fighter. Or more likely, this, along with most of the modern rituals he mentions, are seeded buzzwords meant to make his book as broadly marketable as possible.

I'd heard about the Jefferson Bible repeatedly over the past 10 years but never got around to actually checking it out. I'm glad I did. It was pretty interesting.

It's not exactly new content, of course. It's just Jefferson's copy/paste of what he thought Jesus actually said and did. There's some repetition in what he chose. It's been a good long while since I read the New Testament so I'd have to double-check to be sure, but I think he pulled bits and pieces from Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John to form his own more coherent and more consistent narrative.

I forget where I read it, but I read that many Christians somehow put all four narratives together into one narrative in their head and just even out the rough spots and contradictions subconsciously. It becomes one story. That's probably what Jefferson is doing here, but some of what he has in there doesn't even look familiar.

I wonder if it's because, with so much time having passed since I last read the NT, that I'm coming at it from such a different perspective now.

Anyway, it was a short read and worthwhile for the novelty and the religious and historical significance.

This book is two sets of interviews with a bit of analysis and explanation sandwiched in between, followed by a very brief essay that tries to draw conclusions based on the Aum Shinrikyo interviews.

What I appreciated most about the book was how well Murakami captured the individual perspectives of people who were involved. It makes the situation real and immediate and lets the reader get into the heads of both the victims and members of Aum Shinrikyo.

I really empathized with the feelings of the victims who spoke about how people were dropping to the ground and foaming at the mouth while people kept passing by and going on with their day as if they didn't see what was happening. Also, with the people who felt that if they didn't make it to work or weren't noticed by someone they worked with in the street, then they would not have been helped. What an amazing view into Japanese society and the Japanese psyche in the late 90s!

The Aum Shinrikyo members that were interviewed were so plain and unassuming. It seems like most of them were looking for some kind of purpose or greater meaning in life, and I can empathize with that, but they fell victim to a charismatic, manipulative fraud, and even after the fact, some of them refused to believe it.

I got the impression that some of the Aum members didn't really know what was going on, but others seemed to be telling an invented story that reduced or covered up their culpability, I suppose with the expectation that there would be no way to contradict it.

I wonder if the general persecution of former Aum members is still common in Japan today?

I know why it's not (lingering influence of Christianity on local governments and teaching for standardized tests instead of to create educated people), but this book should be required reading for every 11th grade student in the United States.

"The Age of Reason" challenges a lot of the misconceptions that people have about the Bible and Christianity that have developed over the centuries and that somehow still persist today. It was really hard for me to read this and realize that it was published 200 years ago, but I still grew up with a distorted idea of what the Bible is.

To sum this book up, I would say that Paine clearly shows what other academics have shown: the Bible is a conglomeration of texts of dubious origin that contradict each other and don't paint a clear, coherent, or even positive light on Judaism, Christianity, or God. Paine argues that the real expression of God is creation itself and that educating ourselves in mathematics and the sciences are the only way we can commune with and show devotion to the driving force behind existence.

That's a pretty interesting idea. I like it, and it's something that's going to influence how I look at the world from now on.