Reviews for Religion

The average rating for Religion based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-01-21 00:00:00 Andy Drooker In this book, Thrower presents a system to organize various theories of religion, including writers such as Feuerbach, Hegel, Freud, Durkheim, as well as the origins of revealed religions. And this would be a great framework to have, to be able to compare and contrast these writers' diverse ideas, if only Thrower's writing wasn't nearly impenetrable. His sentences are so long and convoluted that by the time you finish a sentence, you've forgotten how it started... It takes two or three rereads just to figure out what he's saying. Ultimately he has some great ideas, but I'm sure you can find them elsewhere, written much better.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-05-15 00:00:00 Blake Harrison This was a good introduction to theories of religion, broadly understood. Whether the religious ideas presented in the first third of the book count as 'theories' is debatable, but the book certainly stands out by providing a genealogy of abstract thinking about religion that goes beyond 'scientific' theories. It also does what no other intro book does: there are 20+ pages on Marx and Engels and about 5 pages each of Durkheim and Weber. Further, there are some original insights in the section on Marx and Engels. This is explained by Thrower's own specialisation, but is a very welcome exception from the rule. One wishes there was an up to date version of a similar theory book.