God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens.... This is one of a number of recently published anti-religious books that also include Sam Harris’s The End of Faith, Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, among others. Of this clutch of books, Hitchens’ is probably the best written. Hitchens is a world-class journalist whose complex style and nuanced arguments never stray from lucidity.
You wouldn’t know this from the subtitle of the book or the names of the chapters, which scream like tabloid headlines. The subtitle? “How Religion Poisons Everything.” Chapter names include “Religion Kills,” “Is Religion Child Abuse?” “The Nightmare of the Old Testament,” and “The ‘New’ Testament Exceeds the Evil of the ‘Old’ One.”
Despite these screamers, God is not Great makes valid points. Let’s face it: most world-religions have some destructive denominations, doctrines, and movements, and American media overlook these faults too often.
How many Americans know, for example, about the complicity of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Serb-on-Croat ethnic cleansing, or the Franciscans who provided leadership for the Croat-on-Serb massacres of an earlier generation? Since the press tends to report these conflicts as if they were purely ethnic, Hitchens does his readers a service by pointing out that Christianity has, in modern times, been used to justify massacres.
Valid points notwithstanding, God is not Great fails to address some important questions, to wit: How do the evils of religion stack up against the evils of other similarly significant cultural forces? Since when have avowedly secular societies, taken as a group, behaved any better than religious ones? Are there no benign forms of religion? IMO, Hitchens' failure to address these questions reduces his book to a sophisticated exercise in card-stacking.
Yes, religion has motivated many atrocities. So has commerce. And fantasies of racial superiority. And a frontier combined with a “Manifest Destiny.” And the quest for a classless society.
Hitchens’ book is at its weakest when it comes to the latter. He spends comparatively few pages on Communist tyrannies, and tries to establish a tenuous connection between religion and these officially atheistic states by pointing out that Communism is rather like a religion, and that it seeks, not to eradicate the faith, but to replace it. Even if we grant both these points, neither alters the fact that dialectical materialism is an atheistic creed that has been used to justify tens of millions of murders.
Hitchens also fails to mention the harmless religions. Missing chapters from his book include “Sufi Mystics: Threat or Menace?”; “The Amish: Scourge of Pennsylvania”; "Jainism as a Reign of Terror“; "The Episcopalian Conspiracy”; “Is Methodism Murder?”; "The Wicked, Wicked Wiccans"; and “The Horror of Millions of Unchurched People who Nonetheless Believe in God,” among others.
Of course Hitchens doesn't mention these groups. Doing so would force him to admit that that it is not religion per se that harms society, but the marriage of religion to political power.
Some people might argue that this point is trivial, since religion has been married to political power at most times and places throughout most of history. But in the last two centuries, the separation of religious authority and temporal power has become widespread. The modern era is simply not typical of most of history, and has provided us ample opportunity to see what happens when religion and political power part ways.
In Europe, officially Catholic and Protestant states wasted years and countless lives in religious wars. In America, the separation of church and state have prevented interstate religious wars from happening. In World War Two, Shinto was used to justify Japanese militarism. In modern, democratic Japan, Shinto hurts no one. In the Middle East, the State of Israel oppresses Palestinians for understandable yet morally insufficient reasons. In ancient times, the Israelites waged fierce wars of conquest when their kingdoms were not themselves subjugated. But wherever Judaism lacks the status of a state religion, its precepts and followers generally enrich their communities.
Points like these make Hitchens' arguments too one-sided to take seriously. But the facts and arguments that Hitchens marshals to defend his thesis make God is not Great worth reading, if only because they receive too little attention.
Clapton by Eric Clapton....Apparently, Clapton wrote this autobiography without a co-writer. His warts & all account chronicles a lifetime of bands, affairs, addictions, marriages, misdeeds, and musical accomplishments. Throughout most of the book, Clapton maintains a plain-spoken and objective tone, the voice of an old fellow who has made peace with his wild youth. In the epilogue, however, he waxes passionate about his beloved wife and children, the importance of staying sober, and the music and musicians that shaped his career.
Clapton grew up as a poor country boy. The animosity between Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker wasn't the only reason Cream broke up; Clapton thought that the group wasn't going anywhere musically. Drugs contributed to the disintegration the Dominoes. Having escaped heroin addiction, Clapton slid into alcoholism. It is truly remarkable that he and his music survived the years he spent swimming in booze. His relationships with women were emotional roller coasters that came to bad ends until he sobered up and married Melia.
He had a recovery center built in Antigua, and has raised tons of money for charity. His activities have led a great many people to sobriety. Now that he's in his early sixties, he doesn't want to do huge mega-tours that tax his stamina and keep him away from his family for too long. But he says he'll be working till the day he dies. He collects everything from watches to bicycles to cars and more, and is an avid hunter who eats what he kills. It's interesting that he doesn't say much about enjoying his rich and famous lifestyle until Melia and the children come into his life.
This book is jammed with people. If you don't identify with Clapton himself, odds are you'll find someone else in these pages whose triumphs and troubles remind you of yourself, a relative, a friend, or some co-worker or acquaintance. Yes, you can get some insight into people from this autobiography.
Clapton is also full of music. If you bought CD's of all the artists he praises, you'd wind up with a quality mainstream rock & blues collection.
There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind by Anthony Flew....Flew is a professional philosopher with a good international reputation. His book, like Stephen Hawking’s best-sellers, strives to be as non-technical as its subject matter will permit. It is also written in an even-tempered tone, and raises the level of discourse in the recent popular debates between atheists and theists.
Some of Flew’s arguments I will have to re-read.
Some of Flew’s arguments are shaky, for example, the argument that only a deity could account for the origin of anything as dynamically complex as life. Flew defends this notion with statements from other experts of the odds against the relevant molecules arranging themselves into organisms at random. He does not address the fact that chemical processes, while presumably not self-aware, are not random either. Nor does he mention that problematic nature of computing the odds for or against the beginning of life when no one knows how life began.
However, one of his arguments really grabbed me. Atheists often assume that the existence of the universe is a brute fact. In Flew’s book, we read that the universe is a complicated and strangely orderly aggregation of contingent entities. In all fields of scientific inquiry, the origins of contingent and orderly complexity are precisely the things that investigators seek to explain. In other words, the universe stands among the kinds of things that investigators almost never take as brute facts. The universe “cries out” to be explained in terms of something that is a) simple b) capable of making the universe into something that rational beings can model with mathematics, and c) not itself contingent.
God, who is a metaphysically simple, supremely rational, and necessary being, satisfies all these criteria, and so is the best explanation for the universe.
This argument serves us atheists right. For years, famous atheists have used methodological grounds like Occam’s Razor to argue for disbelief in God, the idea being that the notion of the universe as a brute fact invokes fewer entities than the notion of a universe created by another entity, God. Yet in Flew’s book, we see similarly methodological grounds invoked to defend theism!
But I’m not convinced yet. The argument in question depends on two ideas: A: The universe is an aggregation of contingent things. B: The universe is much more complex than its metaphysically simple creator, God.
At first blush, A seems obviously true. The objects we can observe, including everything from stars to artifacts to microbes, all have causes or antecedents that explain their existence. So too with most objects whose existence we infer, such as atoms, the simplest of which formed after the universe's initial state, with heavier atoms formed by supernovae.
But to accept A without qualification is to ignore an important feature of the entities in our universe, namely that, whatever form an entity takes, it is made of something, call it matter/energy/mass, that apparently can't be created or destroyed.
This is not a logically necessary property of our universe's ultimate constituents. Without contradicting ourselves, we can describe energy and matter coming into existence ex nihilo. Those who read about astronomy may remember that astronomer Fred Hoyle once proposed that new atoms were created in interstellar space.
Nonetheless, our current physics works, and works well, on the assumption that matter/energy/mass is conserved. This prompts an obvious question: if matter/energy/mass can't be created or destroyed, in what sense is it contingent? Isn't it true that it is only certain arrangements of mass/energy/matter that we call "entities" are contingent, and not the mass/energy/matter itself?
The fact that the universe had a beginning does not diminish the importance of this consideration. As the readers of Stephen Hawking's popular books know, time could be finite, in which case it would be meaningless to ask what came before the universe's initial state of infinitesmal size and infinite density.
We can also question the contingency of the fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force (responsible for radioactive decay), and the strong nuclear force (responsible for holding atomic nuclei together). As far as anyone knows, these forces didn't come from anywhere and aren't going anywhere: they're inherent properties of our universe. In what sense are they contingent?
So far, we have not defeated the argument in question, because we have not called B into question. Arrangements of matter/energy/mass are still very complicated compared to God's presumed simplicity, which means that said arrangements still "cry out" to be explained.
But as every eighth grader ought to know, the observed physical complexity of the universe can ultimately be accounted for by the interactions of a small number of particles and forces. So, in the unaided universe, we have complex phenomena arising from the underlying simplicity of a small number of particles and forces.
We also find staggering complexity arising from underlying simplicity in the case of God. Though God's substance may be simple, the complexity of his thoughts must be arbitrarily high, since, in his omniscience, he knows and is able to think about--simultaneously--not only all the general facts that there are, but all the particular facts as well. As with the universe itself, we have complex realities (God's thoughts) arising from the underlying simplicity (God's substance).
One might argue that there are more kinds of particles and forces than there are types of divine essence. However, the former have more empirical evidence in their favor than the latter.
In light of these considerations, our idea B fails, and with it, the argument in question. As far as I can tell, anyway.
Flew also mentions the Argument from Design, which, from what little I've heard, has gained new respectability among philosophers in recent years. All I can say about the Argument from Design is that theists assume that the universe reflects an order inherent in the rational mind, whereas atheists assume, with equal justification, that minds reflect an order inherent in the universe.
Flew mentions and reviews the arguments of a number of theistic philosophers in his book. One Richard Swinburne figures prominently. Swinburne apparently answered a number of atheistic arguments against the coherence of the concept of God.
Also included in the book is an appendix containing an essay by Roy Abraham Varghese, which isn’t very good. The other appendix contained answers to questions about Christianity provided by Bishop N.T. Wright of Durham, a New Testament scholar. These answers are very impressive.
So, is Flew a Christian now? No, he’s a deist. He’s also a mortalist; he sees no warrant for belief in an afterlife, so fear of death probably didn’t drive him into the theistic camp. However, Flew does believe that Christianity is the best defended of the world’s religions, and describes St. Paul as having a brilliant philosophical mind.
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood....This is an absolutely marvelous science fiction novel. Here it is in less than 60 seconds: Snowman lives in a world devastated by global warming, largely depopulated by an artificial plague, and inhabited by dangerous transgenic animals along with odd transgenic people who regard Snowman as a prophet. As Snowman returns in a series of flashbacks to the old days when transgenic life was a booming industry, the story of the end of civilization unfolds. Crake, a megalomaniacal genetic engineer, had a friendship with Snowman that started in their college days. Though not a genius like Crake, Snowman, then known as Jimmy, eventually works for Crake as an adman. Oryx, a young victim of human trafficking, winds up working for Crake as the teacher and handler of Crake’s transgenic people. Strangely at peace with everything, Oryx gets killed. Snowman, aka Jimmy, has been made immune from said plague for Crake’s own twisted reasons, and so becomes the last homo sapiens, or so we believe until the end of the book.
You didn’t read it here first, but it bears repeating: Atwood is an ingenious writer. One indication of her skill is her successful use of two literary devices that don’t serve most writers well, namely frequent flashbacks and present tense narrative. Frequent flashbacks kill most novels that have them, since they tend to break up action and confuse readers. But in Oryx and Crake, flashbacks are clearly marked by the use of past tense and the name “Jimmy” for the narrative voice character. Present tense marks scenes set in the post-plague world, where "Jimmy" has become "Snowman," the name he is given by the little village of transgenic people. What is more, Snowman’s present tense narrative reads just as well as Jimmy’s past tense narrative.
Another measure of Atwood’s skill is the manner in which she handles the novel’s two chief tasks: revealing the characters, the goal of mainstream novels, and revealing the setting, the goal of most science fiction novels. Since Crake is largely responsible for the transgenic life that changes the setting throughout the novel, the setting reveals the character. Atwood doesn’t just juggle her two tasks; she unifies them.
As for the setting, Atwood not only describes it beautifully, but also implies a great deal about it. One of my favorite passages in the book portrays Snowman’s attempt to figure out how to explain butter to the transgenic tribe, who eat only vegetation and live in a primitive village in the forest. After realizing that the villagers are unlikely to understand a reference to yellow grease churned into existence from cow’s milk that they have never seen, Snowman nixes the idea. That one passage implied what might have been a dozen pages of information about the death of whole industries.
As for the characters, I couldn’t help but identify with Snowman, the cynical middle-aged word nerd whose chief goal in life is getting by.
I didn’t understand Oryx, who seemed to take everything in stride, including years of childhood spent as a kiddie porn commodity. She seems to view the places and people in her life as one might view a forest filled with dangerous creatures upon whom it is pointless to place blame. Maybe that’s connected somehow to the fact that Snowman and the villagers call naturally occurring beings as “The Children of Oryx” and transgenic beings as “The Children of Crake.”
As for Crake, he seems innocuous when we first meet him—-an ambitious kid, pathetic in his inability to form close attachments with other human beings, and awe-inspiring in his genius and savoir-faire. As a friend to Jimmy, he is somewhat cold and domineering, but not malevolent. By the time the novel reaches its climax, however, Crake’s contempt for most of humanity turns to hatred. Having found out that Jimmy has been sleeping with Oryx, Crake slits Oryx’s throat right in front of his old friend, just as the plague starts killing cities around the world. I never did figure out whether Crake unleashed the plague because Jimmy and Oryx (and by extension humanity) betrayed him, or whether he wanted to destroy natural humanity to make room for his transgenic people. Maybe it was both.
And the moral of the story? It’s tempting at first blush to compare Oryx and Crake to Frankenstein. After all, they both concern a genius who creates life. However, Frankenstein talks about arrogating a power that belongs to God, hence the book’s subtitle “A Modern Prometheus.” Oryx and Crake sends a different message: that technology is only as benevolent as the people who create it.
© 2008 by Jim Grossmann