MSOBL
Warm words for a bleak book
Available from independent booksellers, Amazon, Walmart, Barnes & Noble
Kind words from smart folks about my ambitious little philosophy book Making Sense of Brief Lives:
I really enjoyed reading your book. There were many notable thoughts, like the spot-on assessment of evolutionary psychology. But what impressed me most was your ability to take a complex subject and make it as simple as possible but not simpler. That has been my struggle. It’s not easy to weave between variables. That particular talent is unique, and you use it well.
—Ron Marks, founder of The Politically Homeless Society
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Making Sense of Brief Lives, and see a kindred spirit when Smoke discusses free will and the idea of conscious experience as a simulation or fiction. “How can I then be certain of anything about the world beyond my mind? Ultimately I cannot.” I’m amazed Smoke packs so much into such a short manuscript. The notes deserve special attention. Overall a great read.
—Robert L. Taylor, MD, author of The Deceptive Brain: Blame, Punishment, and the Illusion of Choice; Psychological Masquerade: Distinguishing Psychological from Organic Disorders; Finding the Right Psychiatrist; and Madhouse Blues
I would love to see Making Sense of Brief Lives on the syllabus for all first year seminary students. Smoke does readers a service by repeatedly focusing attention on matters of utmost existential relevance and providing clear and simple tools to address them. In doing so, Smoke is uncompromising in his honesty and merciless in assailing wishful thinking on all fronts. In an age when so many in our culture cannot muster the internal resources to reflect critically on their commitments, this is a call that needs to be made again and again. A supernaturalist account of religion is regularly examined in these pages. Like many students entering seminary, he has rightly discerned that the gods of religion are, without exception, human creations. There are a few classic ways that people respond to this realization. Smoke shows us the path of the nihilist. He feels compelled to drive the shock of existential abandonment from God’s death straight through the heart of all reality. There are other paths that people of radical honesty have open to them, even—capitalizing on Golgotha—quite Christian ones. I hope that someday Smoke finds one. Like a young Saint Augustine, he has much of true value to teach us.
—Alexander Blondeau, PhD in Systematic Theology
This book changed the way I think, the way I speak, and the way I live. Making Sense of Brief Lives delivers on the title’s promise. From the introduction: “You will live briefly in this world, and then you will die. You will never understand everything, or even understand most of what humanity as a whole has understood. But you will nonetheless think in certain ways, act in certain ways, live a certain life.”
So what are we to do then with our brief lives, our incomplete knowledge, and limited understanding of the world and our place in it? With a writing style that is precise and surgical but also seductive, Phil Smoke produces compelling answers to these most pressing questions. And while Smoke’s writing is some of the finest I’ve come across, this only points the reader to what is essential to the project of this book – beautifully clear and careful thinking.
Smoke explains how we arrive at our worldviews more or less by accident and urges us to make a deliberate effort through slow and careful reasoning aided by evidence to construct a new, more sensible view of the world. One of the main recurring themes of MSOBL is that life forces us to engage in philosophy – we must believe something, and then we must act accordingly. On some level, Smoke’s prescription is wonderfully simple – at every fork and junction we have only to weigh the available options and choose the best one.
This book takes aim at discerning the truth in service of living well – the essence and very best part of philosophy. I won’t steal the author’s thunder and give away the answers, but for me, Smoke’s conclusions are bleak but undeniable.
—David Cressey, sociologist and musician
You can buy Making Sense of Brief Lives from independent sellers or big evil ones!