<p>Somehow through a process of following links on the Web I heard about a new book, </p>
<p>I Sold My Soul on eBay: Viewing Faith through an Atheist’s Eyes by Hemant Mehta (Colorado Springs, CO: WaterBrook Press, 2007) </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Sold-My-Soul-eBay-Atheists/dp/1400073472/[/url]”>http://www.amazon.com/Sold-My-Soul-eBay-Atheists/dp/1400073472/</a> </p>
<p>which ended up being more interesting and enjoyable to read than I expected it to be. I finished it yesterday and my wife started reading it today. We hope our son can read it before we return it to the public library (where it is on a waiting list of requests). Some parts of the book are laugh-out-loud funny–that’s how I discovered my wife reading it this morning, by hearing her laugh–and most parts are thought-provoking. </p>
<p>Making a wild guess, I suppose that there is every which point of view about religion represented among the people who read CC, which is why I can be 100 percent sure that not everyone here will agree with the author–but that is the point of the book. The author is a young man, a recent graduate of U of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He grew up in the United States with parents who believe in the Jain religion that originated in India. He became an atheist as a teenager and organized a student group called Students without Religious Dogma (SWORD) when he was a student at UIC. </p>
<p><a href=“Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos”>Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; </p>
<p>You might think, knowing that, that he is quite a militant, proselytizing unbeliever, but in fact his personal style is very engaging and curious, and not at all confrontational. One outcome of his personal style of asking questions and seeking dialog was his eBay offer to attend one worship service at any place of worship specified by the winning bidder for each $10 in the winning bid. That rather unusual eBay posting received national news publicity and thus generated a lot of bids. The winning bidder is a Christian who advocates that churches ought to think more about how to be welcoming to inquirers, and so Mr. Mehta was sent by that bidder, Jim Henderson, to visit various Christian churches and write up his impressions of his visits on a blog. The book collects the blog entries on Mehta’s church visits along with some additional material. </p>
<p>Who would NOT like this book? Anyone who is 100 percent established in his or her point of view on matters of ultimate values and who doesn’t care to talk about those with anyone else. (How could such a person be reading this College Confidential Parents Cafe? 
) Who would like this book? Anyone who is reexamining his or her own personal values, or anyone who would like to talk to someone about differing personal values, or anyone who is curious about what an atheist visitor might think of a variety of Christian worship meetings in the United States, or anyone who wonders how people of radically differing beliefs can discuss their beliefs calmly and respectfully. It is this last aspect of the book that I find most interesting–Mehta and one Christian pastor were even able to work out ground rules so that the two of them could present a joint “dialogic sermon” during worship services at a megachurch, without anyone feeling disrespected and without any disruptive behavior happening during any of three meetings of the congregation. I like that. One of the strengths of America is people talking together about their differing opinions, and I hope I teach my children how to do that politely and sincerely. (Yeah, I also hope that is the culture that always characterizes CC.) A book like this might be good precollege reading for a lot of students.</p>