Rating: 
Summary: The Quest for Answers to Unanswered Questions
Review: In Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief, Huston Smith argues the human heart seeks answers to questions left unexplained by the Modern worldview.Raised by missionary parents in China and a professor at M.I.T., Syracuse University and U.C. Berkeley, among others, and his World's Religions serves as the standard introductory textbook for college religion courses Smith is in a unique position to pass judgment. Human beings, he posits, have allowed themselves to become so obsessed with the answer to life's fundamental questions that they have written science a blank check for what constitutes knowledge and justified belief. As a result the world is experiencing a spiritual crisis. The culprit is not science. We have constructed a worldview tunneled by scientism, higher education, the media and law. As Smith looks to the future, he sees "the light at the end of the tunnel" - a time when science and religion peacefully co-exist. While acknowledging the science's importance, human beings ultimately flourish, he argues, when they seek the answers to life's ultimate questions -- What is the meaning of life? Why do pain and death exist? What is reality? Religion recognizes the gulf between these questions and their answers. Humans being never waiver in their conviction that these questions have answers, religion motivates them to continually seek the answers. I liked the book. The author states his case in a simple, direct manner. Style questions, such as whether Smith quotes from other authors are too long or not, are not important to me. Smith makes his case in a witty, personable and, in my opinion, persuasive manner.
Rating: 
Summary: Religion, Science, and Modern Life
Review: Professor Huston Smith is indeed an inspiring scholar in world religion. His work, explaining the different ways in which human beings approach the unknown and seek transcendence and meaning for themselves is itself one of the best ways to gain an appreciation of the importance of religion and spirituality. This book, Professor Huston's most recent, has a somewhat more ambitious goal than simply explaining and describing religious teaching. He tries to explain, in the words of his title, "why religion matters" and why it is of the highest importance to many people. Although much of the book is eloquent and convincing, I found much of it unduly polemical and unconvincing. In particular, the first half of the book is taken up with a discussion and refutation of "scientism" which is the view that science is the only guide to the truth and out only source of knowledge. There is a wide-ranging attack on scientism, which broadens into a critique of the secular American university and of certain court decisions, which is intended to show not so much that scientism is wrong or incorrect but that it hasn't been proven. This is a worthy goal but the specifics misfire. In particular, Professor Smith spends too much time in criticising Darwinism and the theory of evolution, a criticism which I find markedly unsuccessful and probably unnecessary if I understand his broader claims correctly. He spends far too much time, I think, discussing a straw man, Hollywood's version of the Scopes trial, "Inherit the Wind." The stronger portion of the book is included in part 2 which speaks eloquently of the nature of religious life, of the search for a transcendent reality separate from the world of everyday impulse and of the different ways religions have for approaching the divine. Professor Smith rightly ties in the religious quest with the quest of traditional metaphysics for the "big picture" as in Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus,Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza, Kant. In essence, as I understand Professor Smith, he argues that we don't know that the world of science is all that there is. Science is limited to a certain type of human cognition which may not be the complete story of the universe. This is, although Professor Smith does not point it out, a Kantian conclusion. Professor Smith also wants to make a great point over descriptions of religious attitudes and aspirations in explaining why religion matters. Here he comes closer to well stating his case. The book is rather digressive in style. It was not written for the academic specialist. Some of the stories and anecdotes although intereting and well told are overly chatty and distract from the main points of the book. Also, a bibliography and citations to the many sources Professor Smith cites would have helped me understand the book and follow-up on points he makes. I am not sure after reading this book if asking about the relationship between science and religion is itself asking the correct question to help understand religion. Professor Smith did not entirely convince me in his discussion of the relationship between the two, but he did come closer in convincing me, in his discussion of the religious attidtude,that he understands a great deal about the religious needs of human beings.
Rating: 
Summary: Impassioned, but ultimately unsatisfying, even insulting
Review: Smith is a gifted writer and historian, and his comprehensive grasp of the often dizzying myriad of religious beliefs and thinkers throughout recorded history allows him to make compelling connections throughout centuries and across cultures. Unfortunately, as a philosopher of science, Smith is woefully out of touch with much of the current debate, and his criticisms misrepresent the scope of arguments about the role and meaning of science, and his discussions here contribute little that is new or significant. Indeed, the threats he believes that "scientism" represents are largely the result of his own failure to distinguish technical methodology from people. Most troubling, however, are his attitudes towards all things secular, which lead him to make statements about both society and unbelievers that are unfair, poorly defended, and at times even polemically insulting. While reading, I desperately wanted to reach out to Smith, to tell him that emotion, morality, and all the depths of human emotion are traits of people, not just particular attitudes towards metaphysics. There are non-believers who hate religion, and there are believers who fear godless metaphysics and people. Smith is clearly passionate about religion, and lulled by this false dilemma, seems to reflexively assume that he must fall in the latter camp. Both camps are dangerously misguided. Religion can matter without being the only thing that matters to every person, without denigrating the lives and passions of the non-religious (which are as meaningful to us as the passions of believers are to them). As the U.S. founding fathers understood, religion thrives best when it is personal, creatively divergent, and voluntary: not when it seeks to dominate or denigrate the secular world that, if nothing else, we all still have in common. Believers enrich my life, and I hope to enrich theirs. There is a place for us both.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book on nature of religion
Review: Smith's "Why Religion Matters" is the best book I have ever read on the importance of religion in our societies, and its conflict with our current world-views such as post-modernism and scientism. With no apologies, Smith addresses such notables as Chomsky and Gould, attacking the assumptions of the standard "science is about this, religion is about that" arguments. Particularly, Smith challenges the implicit assumption that only science deals with facts. Smith also addresses how scientism (not science, which is the study of the physical world, but 'scientism', which is an unflagging faith in science) has invaded our political and educational structures to such a degree that it is hardly even questioned. This is an excellent work on the conflict of science and religion, and does a wonderful job of backing up its title. I have been thinking about this book almost non-stop since I finished it several days ago. It was that important and that good. Sometimes, the book appears to be a bit rushed and meandering, but the message remains lucid and direct. My highest recommendations.
Rating: 
Summary: Another confused religionist
Review: This book bothered me in three main ways. First off, the author treats evolution as if it's one "belief system" among many, and he quotes from various authors that promote the pseudoscience of creationism to back him up. Smith betray's his lack of understanding of what constitutes a scientific theory. He even gives a few howlers including his weird notion that evolution cannot account for why parrots can mimic humans.
Secondly, Dr.Smith suffers from what I call the "good 'ol days" syndrome. He whines that we are now living in a spiritual vacuum thanks to our modern materialistic view of the universe. I wonder if the good doctor would like to live back in the middle ages where religion reigned supreme, you faced death if you didn't believe and if you were simply accused of being a witch you were most likely going to be convicted and burned as one.
Finally, if Smith is so pro-religion it begs the question: which religion? I don't agree with these modern diplomatic theologians who look too much into the the similarities of different religions but forget the glaring inconsistencies. Try telling the "different religions are different paths to the same end" people the command in The Koran that forbids muslims from being friends with christians and jews (5:51). How does Smith reconcile his tirade about denying the existence of God with buddhism: an essentially godless religion. (Although there are different strands of buddhism with a variety of supernatural beings). I'm sure Smith and company would scold me for "misinterpreting" these religions, but that's the problem with theologians, they interpret things to death so that religious scriptures and practices could mean whatever you want them to mean. The beauty of science is that with ongoing research we constantly cast away old notions and incorporate new discoveries into our understanding of the universe. Religion on the other hand has to keep distorting itself to fit into a universe run by natural laws. I'd rather simply accept what seems to be a completely materialistic universe than worship an angry god as depicted in the Old Testament and The Koran.
| 
