Sunday, August 21, 2011

WEIT and JI Indexes

Now that I've finished both Why Evolution is True and Jesus, Interrupted, I thought it might be useful to create indexes for the two of them.

I'll start with WEIT. I was surprised to see that nearly half of my coverage came from the intro and first two chapters of the book. It seems that early on I was in the habit of making shorter, more in-depth posts about individual subjects. However, since the latter chapters were less about the evidence for evolution and more about its workings, I sped through them at a rate of a chapter per post.
My coverage of JI began with a focus on specific contradictions in the Bible, which is what I was expecting from the book given its subtitle. Later on, though, Ehrman began to focus more on forgeries and general disagreements in tone, as well as the fierce competition within the early church.
I learned a lot from both of these books. Alternating between them was an interesting experience as well. While it did take me a bit longer to get back into the mindset of one book after having previously covered the other, it was also nice to have a continuous change of pace, a balance between science and history.

I also already have my next two books lined up: Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation and Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World. The former is very short and easy read, so I'll finish that before starting on the latter.

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