Reviews for Death and Bereavement Around the World: Death and Bereavement in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Vol. 4

The average rating for Death and Bereavement Around the World: Death and Bereavement in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Vol. 4 based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-05-10 00:00:00 Paul Edelbergs Each year, I try to read at least one book from the perspective of the enemy. I got this one for free so I figured I would give it a shot. One of the featured statements in a lot of the reviews of this book is how it is "non-judgmental." This is a rather funny claim, since the very basis of this book is judgement. Yeah, the author talks the usual line of rubbish that Christians love, essentially a variation of "love the sinner, hate the sin", but behind it all is a veritable ark-load of judgmental assumptions: Sex is bad (except where sanctioned by the church within a proper marriage), masturbation is bad, fornication is bad, non-vanilla sex is bad, fetishes are bad, homosexuality is bad, etc., etc. Of course the denial of these underlying assumption come fast and furious, but let's pull a few points straight from the book. From the very beginning of the story, comes this revealing bit: 'At first, however, we only had two words on our website: "Porn Sucks."' Put aside how unintentionally humorous the phrasing is, and it should be clear, there is a fundamental, unquestioning assumption, nay judgement, revealed, that underlays the entire endeavor. From this point on, everything about Gross and his ministry is cherry-picking(!) and confirmation bias. Next up, "I love people and see pornography as a deadly threat to the individual", which again shows the foundational judgement going on. These are pretty strong words that might come as a surprise to the millions of people who enjoy porn and continue to have completely normal lives without dying from it. Odd, that. Another gem is this one "Can you be a pornaholic? ... We knew the answer was an overwhelming yes", which again reveals the nature of his unquestioning assumptions. There is no actual search for truth in this book. It is a grab bag of unqualified, unsupported claims, confirmation bias, and anecdote. The book contains extensive claims about porn (and pre-marital sex, and masturbation, and sexual thoughts) being an addiction, but absolutely none of these claims are backed up by any kind of serious evidence, scholarly or otherwise. It's a balls-out assertion, which will of course be accepted immediately by most readers of this book, but there is no proof. Normal human behavior is defined as deviant and harmful, and then when people behave in completely normal ways, out comes the judgement stick with the word addiction stamped on. A substantial message of this book is guilt. Over and over, people express guilt about their interest in porn. Never is there the slightest thought that maybe it would be good to get rid of the guilt instead. Women are marginalized as weak, foul, temptresses, and of course there is a fundamental buy-in into the sexist idea of female purity. Single people are marginalized, because sex is only supposed to be for the married people with the intent to have children. There are so many problems with this book, that I could probably write a book in response, but I'm going to cut this short, maybe to return with additional comments later. But one last thing. I'm used to reading non-fiction books that feature extensive references and bibliographies. This book has exactly 7 references, including an anonymous posting on craigslist, which is laughably bad. Five of the references are clearly biased, including one sub-titled "How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future". The final reference is to an article from LA Times, which in fact does not provide a scrap of evidence for Gross's claims, and in fact has this to say about porn "If it's corrupting them, the data don't yet show it."

Review # 2 was written on 2008-07-22 00:00:00 Julie James I would highly recommend this book to anyone, whether or not you struggle with pornography. It's so easy to look at people in the industry as heathens and hedonists, but this book really opened my eyes to the hell those people endure. Rather than judge and condemn, we need to be Jesus to those who struggle within the industry and those who struggle with the industry. A definite must-read!