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by D. D. Walker (Author)
Blending science and comedy, Browehs Before Yahwehs: A Secular Guide to Forgiveness, discusses how debate and ridicule impedes the progress of secular thought while giving an alternative strategy to changing religious minds. The book uses a postmodern narrative to illuminate forgiveness through satirizing the "just-so stories" espoused by religion and evolutionary psychology. By dwelling on the past and ancestors, religion and evolutionary psychology minimizes humankind's potential to create meaning in the present for a better future. Discussion between secular people and religious individuals turns toxic when the only conversation on the subject of religion is debate and/or ridicule. The book contextualizes religions' attempts to explain forgiveness and advocates for understanding of scientifically illiterate people throughout history, who probably suffered from PTSD. Science can clarify the imperfect examples of forgiveness in religious texts and help to give people what they want in life: social connection. "Just because an individual has the capacity to grasp the moment of The Big Bang, the slow gradual nature of evolution, or the ins and outs of Jaime Lee Curtis' digest system because of Activia yogurt, did not mean that he or she has an iota of scientific insight regarding forgiveness." Each of the book's six chapters outlines a different aspect of the forgiveness process by introducing pop-culture-themed neurological metaphors. The book gives the reader a humorous understanding of the daily practice of forgiveness as an effort to create meaning in the present by abandoning sentimental stories of the past.
