Doh! Fell for it, I guess ;) Hmm, while I agree that this particular book selection could come of as rather heady, and the author is obviously not doing an exe

Doh! Fell for it, I guess ;) Hmm, while I agree that this particular book selection could come of as rather heady, and the author is obviously not doing an exercise in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_English either - but just gauging from the post itself, I find it plausible enough that the auther indeed just loves those books. My red flags: Putting others or other works down, pretending everyone is on the same level of knowledge ("everybody would agree that...", "It's pretty easy to see that...") and in putting the focus onto ones own (percieved or real) abilities. I see nothing wrong in engaging in complex, deep works, but I think some sense of humility should be at least subtly present; If that is not the case over and over again, I either assume that at least some form of signaling is going on, or that the author is genuinely that much out of my leage enough to make it hard for me to connect (I meet people like this in real life, they were often also nice people too, but I could simply not keep up - which is fine, not every crowd is for me and I am not for every crowd...) On the bible itself: if we are strictly talking about the culture of the western world, I do not think it is controversial claim the bible has been and still is a fundamental element, for better or worse, and often also due to critics and their thoughts. Trying to make sense of the western culture without the bible could be compared to trying to make sense of chinese culture without the writings of Confucius - or a maritine biologist trying to explain the oceanic ecosystem, while working on the hypothesis that geothermic energy cannot interact with oceanic life at all. There will simply be wide, gaping spots in knowledge, and plenty of hacks needed to fix them somewhat.