"Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America's Nonbelievers," by Bruce Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer

Atheists (and just those who are interested in religion and/or a lack of religion) everywhere are indebted to Hunsberger and Altemeyer for this concise, yet powerful look at the cold hard statistics that emerged from their intensive study. Think atheists are amoral and untrustworthy? If so, that puts you exactly in line with what an enormous majority of Americans think. But is there any way to know for sure? Well, they combine 20+ years of extensive surveying that quizzed thousands of Canadian college students and their parents about their religious beliefs with an in-depth study of about 300 active members of atheist groups across the United States to bring some empirical evidence on the matter to light. 

This project is remarkable for being the first significant study of its kind, and it's also written with a warm, humorous prose style and includes a number of helpful graphs and charts, making it easy to read and understand. It also accommodates beliefs in a very generous way, allowing people to self-describe as being atheist, agnostic, spiritual, fundamentalist, and lots of other areas in between.  They also ask questions about attitudes towards spirituality, supernaturalism, and other realms of belief outside of strict or traditional boundaries.  The conclusions drawn are that much stronger and more believable as a result.  Non-believers also are given a chance to talk about what events or ideas lead them to their questioning of religious belief, and an overwhelming number report that it was either a perception of the misbehavior and/or hypocrisy of believers, or a lack of morality and/or logic in the religious texts that tilted them towards atheism or agnosticism.  And in that light, perhaps the results of the study shouldn't be so surprising.

Still, if you are among those who think that a lack of religious belief translates to a lack of morality, then the results of Hunsberger and Altemeyer's research might actually shock you. What they found, time and time again, is that when it comes to basic human decency and egalitarian and humane behavior, atheists come out on top every time when compared to Christians, Jews, Muslims, and people of every other religion (whether they are part of an organized, institutionalized religion or just hold a basic belief in an unspecified supernatural entity).  For instance, atheists tend to be much less dogmatic or ethnocentric, they tend to hold fewer racial prejudices, and they are less authoritarian.  And when asked specifically about influencing others' religious beliefs, they are much more likely to encourage people to educate themselves and draw their own conclusions about religion and morality than simply trying to convert others to their own camp.   


In short, if you are a non-believer, prepare to be flattered.  If not, you'll still find these studies interesting and eye-opening.  In either case, you'll watch a lot of myths being dispelled.  And that's always a good thing.

"The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World," by Eric Weiner

This was an interesting read. I'm quite guilty myself of thinking in terms of "If I just lived in _______ I'd be happier," so I was pretty excited to discover that this book more or less endorses the idea that the society you live in can indeed make you either happy or miserable. So now that I've given the gist of his findings away, let me backtrack...

Weiner spent years as an NPR foreign correspondent, and had already traveled to some of the most miserable, war-torn and disease-ravaged areas on the planet. So he quickly clarifies that his new investigation will eliminate places under such obvious duress that happiness would not really be possible. If a country has been decimated by civil war for the past 20 years, it's pretty safe to say that the people of that country are going to score pretty low on the "rate your happiness from one to ten" test. So he focuses on countries that are not currently fighting wars on their own soil, and which are not facing devastating droughts, famine or disease.

Weiner looks at the stats, creates his list, and prepares to spend one year traveling the world to visit the happiest places (Iceland, The Netherlands, and Bhutan) and unhappiest places (Moldova and Qatar) on the planet. Before he dives into his official trip, however, he visits Rotterdam's World Database of Happiness, hoping to get some better idea of how to measure happiness. He talks to researchers who have spent years trying to determine the nature of happiness, the value of happiness, and how a largely undefinable abstract can be quantified in any meaningful way. They turn out to be surprisingly incapable of shedding any light on the subject, and he leaves feeling rather unsure of how this experiment might turn out.

In the course of his travels, Weiner spends time meditating at an Indian ashram, smoking hash in Amsterdam, and interviews wise men and women in Europe, Asia, and the good ole US of A, and he shares some eye-opening discoveries with his readers, such as:

*In order to have a happy society you don't necessarily need wealth or
democracy. They have neither in Bhutan, which rates highly in happiness terms,
but they have both in Qatar, where people seem relatively miserable.

*In all happy societies, trust in one's fellow citizens and government, and a
reverence for the society's culture are hugely important.

Along the way we learn about Weiner's own struggles with depression and pessimism and ultimately he weaves an interesting tale that's not so deep that it turns into an existential exercise, nor so shallow that it can be easily skimmed. If you've ever wondered what makes a place, a mere location, happy or miserable (or if you've ever wondered if happiness can be created or transplanted), this is a worthwhile and satisfying read.

"Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond

It's an exciting and rare thing, so I love it when I find a book that takes theories from several various disciplines and blends them into a work that offers a totally new perspective on the world.

Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" is an inspired work that merges geology, archaeology, history, biology, agriculture and anthropology (am I missing anything?!) to offer a thorough, and thoroughly satisfying, answer to the fundamentally human question, "why do some societies on this planet have so much while others have so little?". As the title of the book suggests, it has a lot to do with the development of weapons, immunity (or lack thereof) from disease, and technological advancement. And in turn, those factors rest upon other matters, the most important being basic geography (is the soil fertile, are the crops and animals nutritious, are there plentiful natural resources, is the weather conducive to supporting varied types of plants and animals, etc.).

The research that went into this book is nothing less than a man's entire adult life. Diamond has traveled the globe in many capacities and has consulted with friends, colleagues, and the native peoples of various continents to piece his theories together. Like all truly great thinkers he has mixed science with creative insight to come up with a startling new way for us to understand our planet and the dramatically diverse human societies that have sprung up on it's surface to either prosper or wither.

Diamond won a Pulitzer for this book, and PBS created a three-part documentary based upon it, which can be viewed on their website at www.pbs.gunsgermssteel/.