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What Should I Believe?
 
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What Should I Believe? (Paperback)

by Dorothy Rowe (Author)
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What Should I Believe? + Dorothy Rowe's Guide to Life + The Successful Self
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Review

"Dorothy Rowe brings a refreshingly sane voice to the fraught, confusing but vital discussion of our beliefs about life, death and reality. Looking past the content of beliefs, she asks why people believe as they do and describes with wonderful lucidity how deep-seated emotions shape our ideas about life and these, in turn, mold our experience of it. This book is a timely reminder that we choose what we believe and how we believe it, and a passionate, liberating argument for self-awareness." - Vishvapani, Buddhist writer and broadcaster

"Dorothy Rowe casts a bracingly cool eye on the fantasies which can inform religious belief. An important and robust attack on the self-serving aspects of religion." - Gwyneth Lewis

"An important and moving account of our beliefs in life and death." - Lewis Wolpert FRS, Emeritus Professor, Cell and Developmental Biology, University College, London

"Dorothy Rowe uses her exceptional gifts of wisdom, common sense and clarity of thought to explain the nature of religious belief and to show us, as only she can, how to confront the problem of death." - Carmen Callil

Too often those who write about religion seek to convert, inflame, or condemn. At a time when belief in God has never been more controversial and debated, the sane, balanced and wise voice of Dorothy Rowe comes as manna from heaven. - Peter Stanford, Catholic writer, broadcaster and biographer

'I am a great devotee of Dorothy's writing but I don't think it's appropriate for me to offer a quote for this particular book, since I am declared Christian - and happy' - Fay Weldon

Dorothy’s book focuses minds, like mine, who do not allow themselves time to think things through’ - Terry Mullins, Chairman of the North London Humanist Group



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Suddenly, in the twenty-first century, religion has become a political power. It affects us all, whether we're religious or not. If we're not in danger of being blown up by a suicide bomber we've got leaders to whom God speaks, ordering them to start a war. We're beset by people who demand that we give ourselves to Jesus while they smugly assure us of their own superiority and inherent goodness. We're surrounded by those who noisily reject science while making full use of the benefits science brings; by the 'spiritual' ones; the ones who believe in magic; and there's the militant atheists berating us all for our stupidity. We wouldn't object to what people believed if only they'd keep it to themselves. We want to make up our own minds about what we believe, but it's difficult to do this. Everyone has to face the dilemma that we all die but no one knows for certain what death actually is. Is it the end of our identity or a doorway to another life? Whichever we choose, our choice is a fantasy that determines the purpose of our life. If death is the end of our identity, we have to make this life satisfactory, whatever 'satisfactory' might mean to us. If it is a doorway to another life, what are the standards we have to reach to go to that better life? All religions promise to overcome death, but there's no set of religious or philosophical beliefs that ensures that our life is always happy and secure. Moreover, for many of us, what we were taught about a religion severely diminished our self-confidence and left us with a constant debilitating feeling of guilt and shame. Through all this turmoil comes the calm, clear voice of eminent psychologist Dorothy Rowe. She separates the political from the personal, the power-seeking from the compassionate. She shows how, if we use our beliefs as a defence against our feelings of worthlessness, we feel compelled to force our beliefs on to other people by coercion or aggression. However, it is possible to create a set of beliefs, expressed in the religious or philosophical metaphors most meaningful to us, which allow us to live at peace with ourselves and other people, to feel strong in ourselves without having to remain a child forever dependent on some supernatural power, and to face life with courage and optimism.
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but flawed: a missed opportunity, 30 Dec 2008
By S. J. Payne "Weeven" (Leicester, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Dorothy Rowe's "What Should I Believe? Why Our Beliefs About the Nature of Death and the Purpose of Life Dominate Our Lives" has been billed in some quarters almost as an offering to the religion debate similar to those in recent times of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and A.C. Grayling, albeit more moderate in tone. I have to admit that, having read all these and more and being in enthusiastic and complete agreement with them all, it was partly on the strength of such comparisons that I bought the present volume.
Such comparisons are erroneous -- as indeed I think Rowe would be the first to say. This is a work of psychology rather than physical science, anthropology or philosophy. There's quite a bit to say about religion, and as Rowe makes no bones about being an atheist, it is largely critical and these are the bits that I enjoyed most. But such parts are few and far between, and one has to wade through rather a lot of what I'm afraid I regarded as filler to find them.
The great fault of the book, in my view, is its lack of focus. The book's real thesis is in its subtitle rather than its main title, but the actual treatment of this fascinating theme -- how our beliefs about life and especially death shape our everyday lives -- was, in my view, quite sorely lacking. It's no disservice to Rowe to say that it's plainly obvious that we can hold either one of two opposing beliefs about death: either it is a wall -- the cessation of consciousness and thus the total and final end of everything we have ever been as sentient beings -- or it is a door: that is to say, the portal to some other form of post-mortem existence, as all the world's religions teach (albeit in vastly differing ways). From either of these beliefs much, and in fact perhaps literally everything, follows about how we live our lives. So far, so obvious: and surely with such a perennially engrossing topic there's scope for a truly fascinating book.
I'm afraid to say, however, that I don't think that this is it. One of the major faults of the book is that it's simply too long. Like most of Rowe's books, there are many personal case studies, transcribed conversations with patients from therapy sessions. This is all well and good and just as you'd expect from a clinical psychologist with decades of experience, but there are simply too many of them and this reader didn't find them at all interesting after, say, the first two per chapter at most. These case studies could have (and should have) been cut right back to the occasional example here and there: not only would it have done no damage to the book but it would actually have made it less flabby and diffuse. The work as a whole could, in my judgement, have lost a hundred pages or so of these transcripts and left the book a great deal tighter. One or two per chapter would have made the point far better.
But in my estimation the biggest fault of the book is that Rowe never really seems to get to grips with the subtitle -- how our beliefs about life and death dominate our lives. That's a fairly simple remit and it shouldn't be too difficult for the clear and conscientious writer (and that Rowe surely is) to stick to it. However, I don't believe that she has done. There's much (far, far too much) about what individual real people believe, but no real engagement about how beliefs -- specifically religious or metaphysical beliefs -- are what Sam Harris called engines or motors of action. There is real meat in this book, when Rowe discusses the religious beliefs of the major world religions and how these beliefs about the nature of reality motivate believers to good or ill. Here at last we feel Rowe really getting into her stride and really writing up to the purpose of the book. But alas, there's all too little of this, and we're soon back to reading the testimony of another former patient.
This is not a bad book: Rowe always writes well even though it struck me as especially noticeable that there's quite a bit of verbatim repetition throughout the book. Entire sentences, even paragraphs, are reproduced wholesale elsewhere in the book, something that I'd have thought any reasonably conscientious editor or proof-reader would have picked up on. So no, this isn't a bad book by any means. But it is, I think, a missed opportunity, and not quite the examination of the subtitle that it surely set out to be.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars what should i believe, 29 Jul 2009
By lilleth (england) - See all my reviews
This book contains a lot of commonsense statements and insights that I would expect from the author but there are far too many case histories which are too lengthy and contain material that is totally unnecessary to illustrate the points she was trying to make. Consequently there is the risk of becoming bored and skipping pages. This would be a shame as 'nuggets' of her unique genius could be missed.
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