Airy Nothings

Even as the number of unbelievers continues to rise, religion in America still gets unwarrantably good press. The tenets and teachings, however nonsensical, of each and every "e;community of faith"e; may not be attacked. Secular academics who would never be caught in a synagogue, church, or mosque seldom fail to manifest politically correct reverence for the creeds, codes, and cults of the religious. Unfortunately, the central religious concept of the "e;sacred"e; proves, upon closer inspection, to be fictitious. The understandably popular "e;holy"e; times, places, deities, peoples, books, laws, and scenarios for the afterlife are fantasies projected into everyday experience by human beings trapped in time and unwilling to accept their own transiency and long-term insignificance. This book surveys the various traditional "e;fortresses"e; of the sacred and finds them all empty and indefensible.