Quote Originally Posted by 120mm View Post
You're kidding me. He doesn't have a sequel out? He needs to get off his butt and write one. I'm pumped for the next book, as well.
Nah, he's been "wasting" his time writing a new series with Linda Evans .

Quote Originally Posted by 120mm View Post
You know, I see his writing as being very "religion-friendly" despite his obvious negative views of the bureaucratic religious organization. His heroes/heroines tend to have strongly held fundamental religious beliefs, though they are nearly always at odds with "establishment" beliefs.
I think he's drawing on a fundamental distinction that really started emerging in the 60's between "spirituality" and "religion". Actually, it's another one of those cases where it's just an update of a perennial debate, in this case between immanentalsm and trascendentalism - is the locus of morality/ethics/what have you inside the individual or outside of them?

Obviously, in most cases, it's a combination if for no other reason than most people need symbol systems to interpret their experiences and these are, by definition, inter-subjective (if they aren't, we call them "psychotic delusional" ). What I think he does do is make a heavy distinction between a hypertrophied system (the bureaucratic "religion" and the fanatics produced within it) and individuals who use the system but interiorize it (i.e. make it their own).