Cap’n Refsmmat’s Blog of Doom

This summer I thought it would be an interesting project to sit down and read the Bible cover to cover. (Perhaps later I can tackle the Qur’an.) At the time of righting I’m on Numbers 20 (page 170 out of 1217) and generally learning a lot. (The Old Testament God is scary.)

But reading the Bible probably isn’t going to help me understand Christians any more than I do already. A few days ago I posted a thread on TheologyOnline asking them which chapters of the Bible they believe would be the best for an atheist (like me) to read.

Then I get this response from “OMEGA”:

You can buy a 2 CD set in the USA for about $15.00

that will have the bible read to you so, you can Listen to it at your convenience.

and a short while later:

I hope that my suggestion helps because I am not sure that you atheists have evolved far enough to be able to READ.

Okay, so I might not have gotten into the New Testament preachings about kindness and love yet. But isn’t this hatred a little, well, un-Christian?
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I recently bought Michael Shermer’s latest book, The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics.

The book starts off highly interesting: it brings up points about free trade few people have likely considered before, and in general makes interesting observations. Readers of Shermer’s other works, however, will notice a common theme between books — Shermer brings in evolution and intelligent design for yet another battle, and some of his examples from Why People Believe Weird Things are used over again in the new book.

While it is interesting, The Mind of the Market seems to suffer from a catastrophic failure to make a point. Shermer brings in studies and stories and numerous interesting facts, but yet never draws these studies together and offers his own hypothesis or uses them to make a broad point about economics. One can’t help but think that the book is more a compilation of interesting evolutionary economics rather than Shermer’s attempt to advance his theory. There just doesn’t seem to be a common thread between the stories.

So while the book is interesting (like all of Shermer’s work), it seems like it needed some more work and perhaps a strong-willed editor. If you’re looking for an interesting read, get the book — you’ll learn things you’ve never heard before. If you’re looking for a persuasive discourse on evolutionary economics, look elsewhere.