As with all reviews on this website, our goal is not to provide a complete overview of the book; rather, it is to examine how the book relates to the meaning of life.

The Logical Meaning of Life by David Chang, owner of glowingguy.com, is a short book totaling 36 pages. Despite the title, this may be one of the weirdest and illogical books I've read to date. To see why let's jump right into the review.

The book starts out with two assumptions: 1) reincarnation is real, 2) the process is lead by intelligent design. Okay, so far, not all that peculiar. But then bam! It gets strange, really strange — and fast! Who leads this intelligent design? Angels. The book does not really go into the origins of angels, but it appears according to the author the purpose of the angels is to help produce more angels. That is, becoming an angel is the end stage of the reincarnation process.

First, we start out as simple life forms, unable to move. Rather we just exist and gain experience while we are carried away by the flow of pure, untethered existence. Then little by little, we reincarnate into more advanced life forms, eventually gaining free will. This all sounds like quite a beautiful theory, and I for one never thought about reincarnation on this level — how the different stages would be part of our overall spiritual development, and he author articulates the process in a way that just got me thinking about it on a different level.

However, the author then goes astray on many levels. First, he assumes that more recently souls are reincarnating too fast, and this is causing evil in the world. He even goes so far as to suggest that this is causing autism, obesity, violence, and more. This perhaps would go back to the debate on whether the world is getting worse or better. Whatever the case, Chang makes the argument that the world is getting worse because, for some reason, the reincarnation cycle is becoming shorter, so individuals aren't ready yet for the human experience — thus they resort to living negative lifestyles.

Chang also makes the argument that to transmigrate to the level of angel, people must first be heterosexual, and then in a later more advanced life, they will become homosexual. Being a homosexual is essentially the last stage before becoming an angel. Half the book is spent arguing this point, and it is quite strange, almost as if the author has to justify to himself that homosexuality inflection point to becoming an angel. Although I have nothing against homosexuality, it is quite another thing to say homosexuals are more spiritually advanced than heterosexuals, or as Chang would point out, that a heterosexual's meaning in life is more or less about breading and raising children. Hence, homosexuals removed from raising children (and he does make an argument against homosexuals raising children), have the opportunity to experience meaning on a deeper level — mainly through helping others.

In his words, " Since homosexuals cannot breed children, they would have to seek meaning in life through public and social contributions ... such as while heterosexuals breed their biological meaning of life through children. And, the quest for the meaning of life among existing human beings is more consistent with angels who work with existing souls to try to convert those souls into angels... By the design of life, souls seem to practice raising children first as heterosexuals before moving onto working with adults as homosexuals and then working with all souls as angels."

So the main argument in the book is that the purpose of reincarnation is to eventually end up as an angel; and the purpose of being an angel is to help guide the reincarnation process to create more angels. However, one cannot become an angel until he is ready. Yes, that read correctly as "he" is ready. Chang seems to imply that women are not as spiritually evolved as men, but then attempts to tip-toe around this statement — although it is obvious this is what Chang believes by a number of his statements.

Overall, despite its title, Chang makes a number of illogical arguments and creates one of the strangest books I've read so far. The book is unique in that it attempts to define the meaning of life for more spiritually evolved being — angels. Their purpose is to create more angels, just as life begets life, but rather angels guide the process. Yet, to become an angel, you must become a homosexual and abandon the cycle of begetting life. The book is ruined because literally half of it is spent attempting to justify homosexuality's superiority over heterosexuality — when there is really no need to treat either as spiritually superior or argue that homosexuality is a necessary pathway to higher levels of reincarnation.

Notable quote: Angels have to master goodness and find meaning from doing good deeds in order to sustain eternal happiness as immortals.

Overall - 1

Meaning of Life Relevance - 4

Uniqueness – 9