CNN interviews AC Grayling about his “agenda”
“The Bible is the best-selling book of all time. So why not copy the way it’s written to sell your own agenda, even if that’s nothing to with religion or even God?” So begins CNN’s interview with AC Grayling on his new book, The Good Book. Video at religion.blogs.cnn.
What if the book that billions have turned to for ethical guidance wasn’t tied to commandments from God or any one particular tradition but instead included the writings of Aristotle, the reflections of Confucius, the poetry of Baudelaire? What would that book look like, and what would it mean?
Decades after he started asking such questions, what Grayling calls “a lifetime’s work” has hit bookshelves. “The Good Book: A Humanist Bible,” subtitled “A Secular Bible” in the United Kingdom, was published this month. Grayling crafted it by using more than a thousand texts representing several hundred authors, collections and traditions.
… In other contexts, Grayling – who will soon take over as president of the British Humanist Association – admits he’s written critically about religion. But not in “The Good Book.”
“It’s not part of a quarrel,” he says of his latest work. “It’s a modest offering… another contribution to the conversation that mankind must have with itself,” and one he says he wrote for everyone, Bible lovers included.
Link: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/11/leading-atheist-publishes-secular-bible/
My copy of The Good Book is on its way. I read some of it as a Kindle sample, but I’m getting the printed form, since, as Grayling says, this is a book that you will want to dip in, and ponder, and return to read again. An ebook would not work. It’s also a case of preferring a physical touchable book; something with which you can, almost bible-like, establish a personal relationship (if that’s not too weird). I *am* an atheist, btw.
I’ve just written a brief review of the Good Book
http://hastingshumanists.blogspot.com/2011/04/graylings-good-book.html
This is just my impression so far after a first reading.
I wouldn’t recommend it unless you can take a heavy dose of Greek and Roman history!
I’d have liked to see more from later periods, like the Scientific Revolution.
But perhaps there is a “New Testament” to follow!