Taking the Lying out of Living

About the Book

This is a book for unrepentant skeptics. In as concise a manner as possible, it shows what happens when people attempt to deal with their world using any of the major religions and ideologies which have so far been developed. In every area of endeavor, those disordered personalities who become leaders use those systems of ideas to get ordinary people to do things for them that do not benefit anyone except those leaders. It makes no difference whether the religions are polytheist or monotheist, or whether the ideologies are individualist or collectivist. The author draws on both history and current events to demonstrate just how inadequate systems of belief are, both in describing the real world as well as in helping us do anything about it. In every aspect of human life-psychology, politics, business, society, education, justice, science-this book pulls no punches. No new panaceas are proposed, since they would only result in the same distortions of reality that all the others have already entailed. The only way to prevent any ideology from becoming either hypocritical or totalitarian is to stop believing in it altogether. Real progress is taking place all the time, but not because of any one group´s concerted efforts. Parochialism-belonging only to one particular belief, region or social group-has become every human being´s worst enemy. Universal skepticism makes all of life´s problems that much easier to handle, by taking the lying out of living.

About the Author

Kevin Henley is a professor at Maisonneuve College in Montreal, Canada. He has twenty-five years experience in the teaching of both history and research methods, in English and in French, at the university level as well as at the college level. He has a Ph. D. in the history of ideology at the University of Quebec at Montreal and has published several scientific articles on that subject. He is also the author of two other books published by Xlibris, “Taking the Lying out of Living: The Skeptic’s Manifesto” (2001) and “Universal Skepticism: Taking the Lying out of Living, Book Two” (2004).