Bücher von Peter Heinegg

In today's world, we are witnessing both the spread of a hopeful secular humanism and the persistence of cultural traditions that mindlessly glorify humans and are paving the path to environmental collapse. In Dim and Dimmer, Peter Heinegg tackles the question: "Can the 'New Enlightenment' already dawning save the day?"

Even as the number of unbelievers continues to rise, religion in America still gets unwarrantably good press. Unfortunately, the central religious concept of the "sacred" proves, upon closer inspection, to be fictitious. This book surveys the various traditional "fortresses" of the sacred and finds them all empty and indefensible.

This book is a broad survey of our 'sacred texts,' both Holy Writ and secular masterpieces, whose canonical status often exempt them from hardnosed, commonsense criticism. A frank look at this literature is necessary and reveals a stunning combination of bias and blindness toward women.

That Does It is an enfilade of critical attacks on the absurdities, stupidities, and crimes of present-day American life. The book provides a handy checklist of ills, from the life threatening to the merely obnoxious, afflicting the American psyche and body politic, which it then proceeds to submerge in satirical acid.

Good God! (And Other Follies) takes a critical and satirical look at the wave of religiosity now sweeping the country. From faith-based initiatives to bans on stem cell research, from public postings of the Ten Commandments to attacks on evolution, American godliness has apparently never had it so good. Much of this behavior and even more of the God-talk accompanying it, whether fueled by passionate faith, cultural resentment, or political opportunism, is intellectually absurd. This book points out this absurdity and explores the underlying fallacies, contradictions and, at times, sheer nonsense that beset not only Christianity, but Judaism and Islam as well.

Like war and politics, philosophy is too important to be left to professionals. Oh Wait_Now I Get It illustrates this basic truth by tackling a broad spectrum of issues, which include: history, religion, government, sex, family, and death. In fact, the entire contemporary cultural scene from the perspective of a thoughtful amateur philosopher is brought forth within this book. Recalling Neitzsche's dictum that all philosophy is also confession, Professor Peter Heinegg begins with some autobiographical pieces on his background, which include seven years in Jesuit seminaries and doctoral studies at Harvard. He then offers approximately three-dozen brief, pointed, and witty essays that focus on present-day issues, but draw upon a lifetime of reading, teaching, and writing about the great literary and philosophical classics.

Better Than Both: The Case for Pessimism is an experiment in "popular philosophy." It presents and discusses (literally) life-and-death issues in non-technical, everyday language. This new work sees pessimism not as a kind of depressed moodiness or self-indulgent negativity, but as the inevitable result of any fair-minded survey of the world we actually live in.

In Abraham's Ashes, Peter Heinegg uncovers the truth behind the bizarre, contradictory, and oppressive fantasy known as monotheism. He offers a forceful critique of the biblical and Qur'anic views of Abraham, showing how at the heart of all prophetic religions lies an untenable myth of suprarational magical thinking about "revelation."

This book is a satirical-analytical view of monotheism in our time. Building on the work of both the great traditional unbelievers - Hume, Mill, Nietzsche, and Freud, among others -and contemporary critics - Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Ibn Warraq, etc. - Heinegg exposes the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Crazy Culture is a series of broadsides against many widely held misconceptions in both academe and the general public. Surveying the history and ideology of cultural realms such as religion, sexual norms, politics, economics, the arts, and athletics, Heinegg deftly identifies and explains ubiquitous traces of cultural sins by humanity.