Beyond Religion and toward Ourselves

This book serves as a guide for those grappling with the complexities of religious faith, drawing from the author’s own profound journey through doubt and belief. It challenges the concept of an eternal, detachable soul, positing that our consciousness is entirely born of cerebral processes. The absence of such a soul, the book argues, casts significant doubt on the foundational promises of eternal life in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Furthermore, the book advocates for a life lived with full engagement of our human faculties. It suggests that authenticity in life is achieved by operating within our own realities and embracing the responsibility of fulfilling our own needs and desires. It is a call to live deliberately, using our innate attributes and experiences as the primary tools for navigating existence.

John Martinez was born and raised in Long Beach, California as were his mother and father. They were working class people. Each of Martinez’s grandparents emigrated to the United States from Mexico over a century ago. He attended public schools until his graduation from high school. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in political science from the University of Pittsburgh. He then received a Juris Doctor’s degree from Loyola law school, Los Angeles. Martinez practiced law for eight years until he was appointed to a state judgeship by then Governor of California, Jerry Brown. He retired from the bench twenty-two years later as a state Superior Court Judge. His major passion, aside from the law, is the reading of philosophy. A work of his entitled, Dogma’s Primrose Path, was published in 2015. It is an argument that many of society’s most intractable problems rest at the doorstep of both religious and secular dogma. He and his wife still live in the Los Angeles area.