Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #403605 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 200 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781577316428
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Review

Customer Reviews

Terrific, challenging book and needed addition to atheist canon.
Ever since Sam Harris first got our attention with "The End of Faith," a parade of atheist-themed books has come out. Thanks to people like Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger, Taner Edis and others the scientific case for the implausability of religious dogmas has been largely made. Christopher Hitchens has made the politico-sociological case against the desirability of religion, and Daniel Dennett has gotten us to question religion and religious psychology. Many other authors have added distinct voices with unique views and areas of expertise (even a mathematician, John Allen Paulos, weighs in!), comprising quite a Devil's Breviary. But until recently, a few topics have been missing from our canon. Enter Eric Maisel and his "Atheist's Way."

"Way" presupposes atheism. Maisel wastes no time making a case for godlessness, a position he sees as too evident (perhaps because the case has been made elsewhere) to address in this slim volume. He has other, bigger fish to fry, anyway, rather than rehashing the same old arguments against cogent evidence for theism.

Maisel sets out to answer the question, "How then should we live?" in a godless universe, and he largely succeeds in providing challenging answers that provide philosophical courage and direction without succumbing to unrealistic, wishy-washy, banal "inspiration."

This is the path of existentialism that looks reality in the eye unflinchingly and determines to create in our meaningless universe a source of boundless meaning from within. We nominate ourselves, we invest meaning, and we take off on a hero's quest. Some statements within the book reminded me of my favorite line from Joss Whedon's TV series, "Angel," in which the title character says, "In the greater scheme or the big picture, nothing we do matters. There's no grand plan, no big win....If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do. 'cause that's all there is....All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because I don't think people should suffer as they do. Because, if there is no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world."

Dr. Maisel might take exception to some parts of what Angel said. It is perhaps a little facile. But as a statement of principle for the character, it rather nicely reflects the attitude of "The Atheist's Way." In one sitting, I read it cover to cover. It took a couple of chapters to get into the book, but once I was hooked, I was hooked like a hungry trout. Too few atheist writers, even the best ones, seem to know how to address the problem of meaning--not for themselves, but for others. It is fine for the relatively well-off and well-known to make brash proclamations about a godless universe without ultimate purpose, but where does that leave the overweight stock boy in Kansas who wants to be part of an epic struggle between opposing forces to give his life some meaning? I found "Way" has the answer: Anyone can be involved in an epic, HEROIC struggle against the forces, external and internal, that would seek to drain life of meaning. It truly is a heroic undertaking, and has the added virtue of being true in a way that demons, angels, and apocalypses never can be.

This is a book to challenge and improve an atheist's life, and to show the skeptic who is afraid of embracing atheism a clear-eyed view of what a life free of superstition can be. It is simply written, direct, accessible, and potentially life-changing. There's no excuse not to read this book, and I urge all atheists to do so. Frankly, we need a better class of non-believer, and adherence to the "Way" laid out in this book can help produce that.

The most loathsome movie character I know is Cypher from "The Matrix." Knowing what was real, he chose to re-enter the imaginary world of the matrix to experience fantasy comforts and pleasures rather than bravely facing a grey, bleak reality in which painful struggle could make him an actual hero. This choice is somewhat analogous of what Maisel lays out for the reader. As a life coach, he provides the insight, the motivation, and the methodology to make selecting the hero's journey seem not only achievable, but noble in a way that will satisfy the self.

Powerful and thoughtful
This is absolutely my favorite book about living life the atheist way and offers much that's worth reading for just about everybody else too. I'm not an antheist but there is so much in Eric's book that surpasses that; it encourages us to be brave thinkers as individuals, find our deepest values, learn about meaning-making in our own sense of it, seek an authentic life as circumstances allow, nurture what is good and just. This new release by Eric Maisel continues his stream of consciousness about learning to live life responsibly, fully and creatively from a deep sense of connection to our sacred humanity. As a spiritual person I found a lot in Eric's book that rings as true to me as it does to my atheist friends.

The ups and downs of motivational writing
Full disclosure here: Eric Maisel, perhaps because he'd read my book "Secular Wholeness," did me the honor of letting me read a draft manuscript of this work. I favored him with several hundred words of commentary, most of which, aside for a few typos I had spotted, he cheerfully ignored. And that's appropriate; Maisel has a clear vision of what he wants to say, a vision that arises from long experience coaching and lecturing to creative people, and he has stuck to it.

What he wants to do is to inspire you to a high-hearted life of self-definition. Or as he writes (p.165) "you announce that you are the arbiter of the meaning your life, you nominate yourself as the hero of your own story... You stand up as a simple human being who must earn her own sense of pride and heroism, and you... identify how you want to represent yourself and which values you want to manifest."

As another reviewer noted, this is no more or less than Sartre's vision of living the "authentic" life, but Maisel is not even slightly interested in the mechanism of philosophy -- in laying down axioms, in defending theses, in weaving firm and subtle arguments into a fabric of logic. Far from it!

His interest is in inspiring the fallible, troubled human to muster the diligence, creativity, and honesty that are required to live the life of self-authentication. He does this in part by quoting from the first-person stories of many of his clients and friends. He does it in part by manifesting great sympathy for the difficulties the cold universe throws in anyone's paths. And he does it in part by trying to get you to adopt a "vocabulary of meaning," a mind-set in which you see each of your daily activities as either "investing" or "draining" meaning from your life.

For the right reader, this is going to be wonderful stuff: inspirational fire to help you wrest conscious control of your life from fate. That "right" reader will be, in my opinion, a "right-brained" one, who prefers to deal with life from the big-picture, broad-brush, humanistic and emotional perspectives. For that right (-brained) reader, this could be a terrific book, possibly a life-changing one.

That said, I need to say also that the wrong reader for this book is a left-brained one who, like me, favors tight definitions, crisp terminology, and nicely-enumerated, practical rules. I don't say this book lacks those things entirely, but that is where the nits could be picked in it. If your first act on being given a horse is to check its teeth very carefully, this is perhaps not your book -- but if your first act is to go for a gallop on your new horse, you will likely find Eric Maisel wonderfully inspirational.