John  Pickard

John Pickard’s Followers (7)

member photo
member photo
member photo
member photo
member photo
member photo
member photo

John hasn't connected with his friends on Goodreads, yet.


John Pickard

Goodreads Author


Born
The United Kingdom
Genre

Member Since
March 2013

URL


John Pickard has been a lifelong socialist and activist for most of his adult life. Apart from working as a research scientist in the pharmaceutical industry and as a high school teacher of science, he spent sixteen years working as a full-time journalist for the British Marxist newspaper Militant. During that time, he was managing editor of the newspaper in its best years, in the early 1980s, during the miners’ strike and the struggle of Liverpool City council against the then conservative government of Margaret Thatcher.
Behind the Myths: The Foundations of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam was inspired initially by Karl Kautsky’s book, The Foundations of Christianity (1908) although it seeks to update and broaden the scope of the work. Th
...more

Average rating: 4.15 · 68 ratings · 7 reviews · 1 distinct workSimilar authors
Behind the Myths - the Foun...

4.16 avg rating — 69 ratings — published 2013 — 8 editions
Rate this book
Clear rating

* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.

Quotes by John Pickard  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“The roots of modern anti-Semitism were well and truly laid down in the inflammatory and hateful writings of the Church fathers nearly two thousand years ago, all of whom have since been elevated to sainthood.”
John Pickard, Behind the Myths - the Foundations of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

“These men are despisers of riches, and so very communicative as raises our admiration. Nor is there any one to be found among them who hath more than another; for it is a law among them, that those who come to them must let what they have be common to the whole order…every one’s possessions are intermingled with every other’s possessions…”[312] These comments of Josephus have since been confirmed by the Dead Sea Scrolls”
John Pickard, Behind the Myths - the Foundations of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

“But if there is a significant weakness in the arguments of many modern atheists and secularists, it is that their case is presented as if the whole question of religion is purely an ideological struggle, an intellectual debate in which the followers of religion are charged with harbouring inferior and inconsistent ideas. This may indeed be the case, but it is important to see the historic foundation of these religions— and their continuation within society up to the present day— as being rooted in material social conditions and not due to intellectual stubbornness or obtuseness.”
John Pickard, Behind the Myths: The Foundations of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

No comments have been added yet.