Subtitled ‘1001 Things Everyone Should Know About RELIGION’, this is a piece of work, as the subtitle says, everyone should read.
That it is a scholarly work is indicated by the comprehensive bibliography, index and accompanying notes, which take up around 28% of the publication. The author lightens a heavy subject by being occasionally a little playful in his descriptions of the way past Biblical scholars have attempted to justify some of the worst excesses revealed in this otherwise serious book. That lightness of touch is a welcome factor in a work dealing with material that is both divisive and deeply disturbing.
As an author in search of truth, I have actually read the Bible (and its brother religious tome, the Qur’an) from cover to cover. Doing so set me on the path to becoming an atheist after having been raised a Christian.
The author points out, with many samples and quotes, the sheer nonsense, the hypocrisy, the multiple internal contradictions, the morally indefensible commands to followers, and the utter fantasy of the whole idea behind them.
The simple fact is that the Jesus described in the Bible is totally absent from contemporary historians’ accounts of the times.
Michael Polkovich is concerned about the way our children continue to be subjected to the contents of these religious texts at school, regardless of the true nature of dreadful messages that perpetuate misogyny, encourage slavery, murder, rape, and the mass killing of any who fail to accept them as truth. And his book, introduced as part of the educational curriculum in every school, could quickly remove the curse of the superstition and false claims currently fed to the accepting minds of developing children condemned to receive the same set of irrational fears forced upon their parents during their own childhood.
It is a well-written, comprehensive, and honest exposure of the lies and hypocrisy underlying the teaching of religion over the past two millennia. It could help bring an end to systems of belief that have encouraged and caused mass-murder, enslavement, injustice, misogyny, rape, child abuse, and war. Concern for truth may persuade many to take what they will perceive as a risk as they work through this book, but could turn into a force for real good and a saviour of generations to come.

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[Any review is a personal opinion. No reviewer can represent the view of anyone else. The best we can manage is an honest reaction to any given book.]

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The above review will appear, as it stands, in Goodreads and on Amazon. For my readers here on the website, I’ll add some personal details that convention prohibits from those sites.
I was raised in the Church of England Anglican Church, attending their Sunday Schools and, for a time, serving as a choir boy. I even considered joining the church as a priest. But during my teenage years an event changed my mind.
Two days after my 16^th birthday, my mother was killed in a road accident. The car was driven by my stepfather, who was not blamed for the crash. The whole family had been regular church goers, supporters of the congregation, yet we received no support from any member of that congregation or from the serving vicar. None. The route of the cortege from our home to the village church, however, was lined with mostly secular well-wishers, and the floor of our kitchen/diner was carpeted with floral tributes to my mother.
That lack of help from a group I expected to be most supportive led me to question my faith. Surely there was a mismatch between what they uttered each week in the pews and what they actually did? I began to read the Bible in search of answers, starting at the beginning and not finishing until I reached the last page. What I discovered in that reading was so disturbing it sparked my conversion to atheism.
Later in life, I read a good many books about religion and found nothing to change my mind about the thousands of gods portrayed by those various sects. Later still, during research for a trilogy of novels, I read the entire Qur’an from cover to cover. That experience further reinforced my conviction that religion is a force for evil in the world.
Consideration of the facts, and expansion of my scientific knowledge over many years of research for various books, later led me to revise my position from plain atheist to agnostic atheist. I take this second position now simply because I feel we cannot be certain about the existence or otherwise of some creative force we may be tempted to label ‘god’. In the rather unlikely event such a power exists, considering the complexity, profusion, and sheer persistence of the known universe, it would have to be something so far beyond our understanding as to be incomprehensible. It must always remain that way, and is also likely to be undetectable even if it were possible for us to identify it. So, whilst I remain convinced religion is a failed attempt to answer unanswerable questions, I also remain sceptical regarding certainty on the simple question of whether or not there may exist some undiscovered form of creative force. We do not, and never will, know everything there is to know. So, I live my life in the uncertain certainty that we will never know whether we are part of some extraordinary plan or simply the inevitable result of the combined laws of physics and the slightly mystical forces of nature.
As to morality, I try to live by the Golden Rule, and aim to leave this world a better place than when I entered it.