No. 1 Amazon Review: Steve Meyer, Signature in the Cell

And here is is, my most popular book review on Amazon, out of 300-400 to date . . . Wouldn't be my first choice.  But elections have consequences!   

Signature in the Cell, DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design

 

758 + / 131 -

 

I come to this book with two peeves, one pet, the other a stray that is beginning to wear out its welcome.

My pet peeve is fanatics who attack ID out of ideological compulsion, rather than using the "think" cells hidden deep within their brains to evaluate and argue. That includes most of the reviewers who gave the book 1 or 2 stars so far. Meyer, we are told, is "lazy," a "creationist," "idiot," "fraud," and "liar" who hawks "error-prone" "snake-oil," "gobbledygook," "pseudo-science." We should read Richard Dawkins new Greatest Show on Earth instead (I did -- it isn't about the origin of life, you numbskulls). One "reviewer" blasts the book after reading four sentences, and gets 69 of 128 "helpful" votes. Another "reviews" the first few pages and calls Meyer a liar.

Hardly any negative reviews even try to point to any scientific errors. Two exceptions: reviews by A Miller and K. M. Sternberg are worth reading. Sternberg's is particularly eloquent. (Though having written a couple books on the historical Jesus, I tend to wonder about the objectivity, awareness, and / or good sense of someone who thinks there is no evidence for the life of Jesus!)

My second peeve is a growing dislike for the way Discovery Institute often packages its arguments. I visited DI a year ago when another ID book came out -- I won't name it, seeing no need to embarrass the author. His presentation essentially said, "Look at all the wonders of creation. How can evolution possibly explain all that?" When Q and A time came, I was the only one to ask any critical questions. "That sounds impressive, but why don't you engage the explanations evolutionary biologists offer for those features?" Like the talk, the book (he gave me a copy) simply ignored detailed arguments.

This book does much better. Meyer's critics to the contrary, he does offer detailed scientific and philosophical arguments. Signature is NOT mainly about evolution per se - it is about the origin of life. It is, therefore, not strictly parallel to Dawkins' books or arguments -- ID is in a sense broader than evolution as a theory, since it seeks to explain things that evolution does not.

My main beef is the book is too long. While many of Meyer's illustrations are interesting, he uses too many, and repeats himself too often. Meyer should chop out some of the remedial 7th Grade biology, cut some stories and the "I was in Akron when I thought A and in Baton Rouge when B occurred to me" stuff, and cut the book in half.

The first-person auto-biographical is overworked. No one thinks you're neutral, Stephen -- so just argue! Don't pretend your conversion to ID was purely scientific -- reasonable people understand that people act under a mixture of motives, and the unreasonable ones are not worth arguing with. Dawkins, Behe, Hawking, and Darwin for that matter write serious arguments without losing ordinary readers; models that Meyer could profitably shoot for.

But the issue here is the origin of life, and when Meyer finally gets to it, he argues it well, I think. The central chapters seem to cover most of the main issues well. He discusses different solutions, and explains fairly clearly why they do not work, and why some sort of design seems preferable. It is interesting that none of Meyer's critics here dispute those arguments. (Again, Miller and Sternberg come closest, but do not really engage his most important points.) I wish, however, that Meyer had expanded those central chapters, and discussed in more detail leading rival contemporary hypotheses.

Many of his secondary arguments work, too. I suppose one can't complain if a philosopher of science writes a lot about the philosophy of science, and I suppose those arguments are made necessary by attempts to marginalize ID proponents through the sheer power of wordplay.  As I wrote in Truth Behind the New Atheism, in response to Dawkins' attempts to marginalize ID proponents: "David Bohm once defended science as 'openness to evidence.' The best scientist -- or theologian -- is not someone who shouts 'heresy!' when he hears strange views, but one who listens carefully and responds with reason and evidence. When it comes to ultimate questions, 'openness to evidence' is the definition that counts."

The scientific evidence is what matters, and I would have liked to have seen more detail on that. Still, all in all, a strong ID perspective on the origin of life.

No. 2 (Really!): Karen Armstrong, History of Islam

Last April, having posted over 300+ book reviews on Amazon, I began a duel series of my ten most popular and most unpopular.  I couldn't keep it to ten each -- so many books, so little time, as they say.  But I finished in late October with the most-hated list, with Lynn Bachmann's awful The Gospel of Thomas: Wisdom of the Twin, perhaps the least significant of eleven or twelve on that list.  I have now reviewed twelve books for my "Ten Best" list -- my reviews have, after all, been pretty popular, having received over 8000 "helpful" votes, so there were more to choose from.  Among writers who appeared on that list, which is this list, have been Howard Zinn, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Michael Martin, G. K. Chesterton, Rodney Stark, Jay Budziszewski, Daniel Dennett, John Esposito, Sam Huntington, Michael Behe, NT Wright, and Chesterton again, from bottom to top -- all serious, influential books, as it happens.  Though I do dabble in the occasional novel, that, apparently, is not what people like best. 

But I now repent of the funny math!  We're really and truly almost at the end, finally.  The next post in this series will be my most popular review on Amazon ever - since ham radio was invented, since termites munched wood, since the Earth cooled!  (I'm counting, in case you forget, by total number of positive votes, for the popular reviews, and a combination of negative votes and percent negative, for thumbs-down reviews.)

So here's my Number Two Most Popular review in thirteen years of posting Amazon reviews.  It happens to be a negative review, and garnered a few negative votes, as well.  Can you guess why?


"Quakers in a Hurry" 

G. K. Chesterton's Everlasting Man: "One of the best books of the 20th Century"

Mature wisdom touches
childlike wonder in
The Everlasting Man.

"One of the Best Books of the Twentieth Century"

1 1/8th Top Review (233+ / 5-)

*****

This is a book that everyone ought to read two or three times at least. It is a crime that such nonsense as Conversations With God, or better but still relatively shallow introductions to comparative religion like Religions of Man, seem to be better known. Here you will find a description of Christianity and its relation to other faiths strong and fine as aged wine. I don't know of anyone who writes with this much class in the modern world. Having ordered the book for our college library, I tried not to mark it too much, but found myself putting ink dots on paragraph after paragraph of material I wanted to quote. He rambles a bit, but I think there is more wisdom, humor, and insight in a single page of this book than in whole volumes that are better known in our days. Imagine if, after reading David Barry and laughing your head off, you wanted to go out and kiss a blade of grass or be amazed by the water running in the river instead of (say) looking up at the sky to make sure there aren't any mackerel about to fall on you. G.K.Chesterton makes his readers laugh themselves sane. And sanity is a rare and wonderful thing in the modern world.

Chesterton's archeology and contemporary references are a bit dated, of course. But even there, what goes around often comes around. Chesterton leads off with a story about Grant Allen, author of a piece of heresy of that time called Evolution of the Idea of God.  More recently Karen Armstrong wrote a book with an almost identical title and thesis, History of God, and was greeted in the press as a bold thinker. (Note: Robert Wright's subsequent The Evolution of God would continue the theme, also to be found in rather different forms in Dawkins, Pascal Boyer, and Daniel Dennett.)  Chesterton kindly and elegantly refuted her error, and those of other modern skeptics, decades before they were born. Admirers of Bishop Spong in particular should read this book. Chesterton was not a scholar of comparative religions, of course, and he may have oversimplified a few things, but I think got the big things in true proportion better than anyone.  The plan of the book is simple. In the first half, Chesterton describes man, particularly in his religious aspect. In particular, he explains four universal elements of human religion: mythology, philosophy, demonism, and an awareness of God that one finds in almost every culture around the world. The tendency in the modern world is to ignore the last two elements when they occur outside of Western culture. But I have found in my own studies of Asian cultures and religions that Chesterton's description of human religion fit the facts extremely well.  The second half of the book is about Jesus and the movement he founded. I like what he says about Jesus best, and wish he had spent more time on that and proportionally less on European culture. A few of his racial or cultural assumptions do not come across well in our age. It is worth remembering how the face of Christianity has changed over the hundred years since this book was published. Then Christianity was almost exclusively a Western religion, while now two thirds of the believers in the world live in Africa, Latin American and Asia.
If you are interested in a more detailed discussion of some of the points Chesterton brings up, I suggest Don Richardson's Eternity in Their Hearts, another of the most overlooked works of the 20th Century. I have also just written a book called Jesus and the Religions of Man, that covers in more detail some of the same territory.

Note: I first posted this review in June of 2000; it remains among the highlighted reviews on Amazon.  I've added a few updates, here. 

NT Wright: Jesus and the Victory of God

We now come to the twelfth among my "ten most popular book reviews" on Amazon.  I am not embarrassed by the surplus.  It is not due to poor mathematical skills or corporate greed, like overbooking an airliner, but is my way of affirming the truth of that great bumper-sticker, "So little time, so many books."  
 
Anyway, I promise we are not TOO far from the end, now.  That light at the end of the tunnel is not a train heading this way.  And these last . . . few . . . are books worth talking about. 

So, anyway, here's the one and one quartereth most popular review I've posted on Amazon.  

1.25th Most popular review: NT Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God 

****  (196 + / 29 -)

"Is there an Historian in the House? Right Here."

When I read A. N. Wilson on Jesus, I closed the book and thought, "That's a pretty good book, about Wilson." When I read Crossan, I thought, "Here is the man who should have written the Book of Mormon." Wright first suggested to me the hope (yes, I had some reading, and writing, to do) that historical criticism might actually have something of value to say about Jesus.

Behe: The Edge of Evolution (1.5th most popular review)

Mathematical purists may object.  But my list of "top ten" most popular Amazon reviews will actually include more than ten items, as will my list of ten least popular reviews.  "What are they teaching them in school, these days?"

And so as suspense grows, numbers shrink, and I resort to fractions to keep readers from knowing not only what the top book will be, but even how long before we reach it.  Think of our dilemma like that of an astronaut approaching the "event horizon" of a black hole, and never able to quite reach it.  But in this case, rest assurred, we will some day arrive, the number of books in the world being limitted, as St. John implicitly recognized. 

Anyway, I skip over the book that actually received the next greatest number of votes -- Elaine Pagel's Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of John, with 176 votes, for at least three reasons: (1) I maxed out on scathing in my last review: I would like to retain the illusion, at least, of being basically a nice guy. (Pagels earns a somewhat more favorable review, overall, but I come down pretty hard on her in places). (2)  There really should be a limit to how many items a "top ten" list contains. (3) Two frequent visitors here, Crude and Rudy, have been talking about Michael Behe on random threads about Lao Zi and Chris Hedges.  That conversation seems to have fizzled amicably, but we probably should maintain a dedicated thread here, if ever they or anyone else decides to take it up, again. 

Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution 196 + /  61 - 

(****) "Read it with an Open Mind"

Just as a massive star bends light, so emotion warps thought when we approach the question of origins. An eminent professor who takes the wrong position on this subject can lose tenure. A less eminent researcher may lose his job. Depite his forty-some peer-reviewed articles and a tenured faculty position, and the careful, measured tone in which he writes, Michael Behe will be called an "ID-iot," his honesty disputed, and anyone who agrees with him dismissed as an ignorant, red-neck hick who can barely muster the cognitive powers of a good high school student.

In such an environment (and if you doubt my appraisal, read some of the reviews on Amazon), it takes conscious intent to ignore manipulative appeals to the "argument from sociology" and attend to substance.

For the record, Behe is not an "ID-iot." He is a sharp and thoughtful biologist who doesn't think evolution can work on its own. In this book he argues for common descent, but also argues that naturalistic evolution is limitted. He thinks the mechanisms proffered for powering the massive creativity and innovation in nature could not come from mutations alone.

His primary tool for advancing this argument is the evolution of the malaria bug, and of human immune defenses against it, over the past several thousand years. Behe shows that while microbes can and do evolve resistances to medicine, they generally do so by breaking down in some way, as does the human body. Touching briefly on the evolution of e coli and HIV, then on other critters, he makes the case that bugs that evolve rapidly, and within enormous biological communities, mark the limits to naturalistic evolution. The mathematical arguments he brings in to explain and support his more theoretical argument against the power of mutations, which some reviewers take issue with, are not his main line of persuasion, nor, I admit, do they seem fully persuasive as developed here.

This book is not about Irreducible Complexity (IC). Behe defends the concept, and his examples of it, briefly, but that is not the main line of discussion, critics to the contrary. He's offered a lengthier defense of IC elsewhere. (While I've read some of his Dover testimony, and some of the summary given in a critic's book, and agree he could have done better at some points, I think carefully considered written articles provide a better forum for ideas than courtroom drama. As someone who has been known to stutter himself in interviews, I'm not inclined to judge a person's intelligence or argument on how well he holds up against hours of verbal examination by a well-prepared and clever attorney. In Debating Design, he seems to me to do well vs. Kenneth Miller and his famous Type III Secretory System.) But here Behe comes at the question from below, rather from above, looking at the known history of recent evolution among well-studied microorganisms. The book is, therefore, a good compliment to Darwin's Black Box.

Read it, and the discussion that will follow (both sides), and make up your own mind. Don't let the raw emotions so in evidence sway you. Behe is right or he is wrong, but he is not a fool. For me, the primary issue remains the frequency and character of beneficial and creative mutations. Looking into the question a bit myself recently, I found a pattern very like what Behe describes. Ironically, it seems to me the best argument against the position Behe stakes out here that I have seen so far is theological. Why would God create the malaria bug? I asked him that question in an interview: as a scientist, he seemed uncomfortable answering such questions, but they are as relevant as the science. I am still not satisfied that anyone really has the history of life pegged.

The Clash of Civilizations (3rd most popular review)

Too Big a Chunk of Reality?

(*****)  132+ / 20 -

I remember noticing the essay on which this book was based, in an international newspaper several years ago. Though I knew nothing of the author at the time, I don't think it took me more than a paragraph or two to realize, first, "This is a major argument," second, "It has some validity," and third, "This is going to make a lot of people mad." The book is, of course, far more nuanced and detailed than the article. I do not agree with every point Professor Huntington makes, but it certainly carries through on the promise of those first few paragraphs. This book is one strong and rather iconoclastic model by which to understand international relations in the coming years. Even if you disagree with it, or find it offensive, this is definitely a book worth reading, or if you're a teaching, assigning your students to read and attack or defend.

Oxford History of Islam (4th most popular review)

John Esposito, Oxford History of Islam

"Whitewashes History"

(***)  113 + / 48 -

This is a beautiful book with a lot of lovely pictures and illustrations, and a great deal of useful and interesting information. I appreciated learning more about sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. The chapter on the relationship between Aristotelian philosophy and Arabic theology was interesting. I also learned a lot from the chapter on Islam and Christianity, which generally seemed fairly balanced. This rather hefty volume helped fill a large hole in my historical knowledge, and I am sure I will continue to find it a useful resource. (An Egyptian colleague, herself Muslim, actually borrowed it to prep for a talk she was asked to give on Islam!) 

I have two major complaints, however. First, I bought the book hoping to learn more about the history of Islam, the religion. While I appreciate the fact that the editor chose to tell us about art and law and economics too, it often seemed like the history of Islam, the religion, got drowned out in the somewhat accidental details of Islam, the civilization.

In particular, I came to the text with questions such as, "How did Islam spread? What motivated those who spread it? How did the teachings and example Mohammed, in particular, affect human history?" These seem like reasonable questions to ask of the "Oxford History of Islam." But there was almost nothing about Mohammed in the book. (Fortunately, I had just read Maxime Rodinson's Mohammed, which is a good supplement to that portion of the book.) While the authors gave a great deal of information around the edges of other great expansionist periods in Islamic history, some kind of scholarly myopia seemed to prevent them from getting to the heart of the matter.

I wanted to know, for example, if the frequent claim that Indonesia became Muslim peacefully were true. Bruce Lawrence, in his chapter on Islam in Southeast Asia, hardly addressed the question of how the islands became Muslim, except, for example, in the following subordinate clause of one sentence: "Although the actual Islamic conquest of the Javanese kingdom of Majapahit took place in 1478 . . . "

That brings me to my second complaint. On page 352, there is a photo of a tomb, identified as that of Tamerlane. "His majestic blue-domed tomb epitomizes the splendor of Timurid architecture," the caption reads. When I read that, and leafed through the index for further references, I had to wonder: what kind of history of Islam is it that, in 750 pages, cannot find room for a single clear sentence about the greatest Muslim conquerer of all -- and less for his millions of victims? It is like writing a history of communism and only noting, in passing, that a fellow named Stalin inspired a new movement in socialist realist painting. (Granted, however, that the tyrants of yesteryear had much better taste in art.)
Similiarly, Lawrence seems to completely whitewash the thousand-year history of the Islamic assault on India, that Durant describes as "probably the bloodiest story in human history." Sultan Mahmud, the text merely notes, "not only pillaged and destroyed; he also built and rebuilt." (As, of course, did Stalin.)

It is said that history is written by the winners. The authors seem to want to prove that aphorism. Mohammed's own cruel career is glossed over a few pages. Tamerlane is memorialized with a pretty tomb, his victims ignored. Nehemia Levtizion seems to blame the Ethopians for putting up too good a fight, therefore bringing jihad down on themselves. (As opposed to other tribes that were simply swallowed.) Another writer calls the Medieval Europeans "xenophobic," and the European idea that Islam is violent is treated as a prejudice. Muslim armies had just conquered half of the Christian world, launched attacks against Rome and Constantinople, and into France. If half of your children had been kidnapped by a neighbor, would it be fair to call you "paranoid" if you locked your doors at night? (Or even in the day?) (See Jihad for more details.)

One author mentions an Islamic attrocity -- discreetly, so as not to embarrass anyone -- then marches on to the dogmatic but question-begging conclusion, "The contest is over political authority even when it is framed as a contest over religious truth." How, in a religion that does not distinguish between mosque and state, is one to tell the difference? And can we really generalize about what made Muslim conquerers tick in this way? From what sources?

Ira Lapidus is more frank, and suggests perhaps a bit more sympathy with the victims, in her description of the tyrannical Ottoman empire and its "divinely given mission to conquer the world." Again, I would have appreciated more details on exactly how the Ottomans formulated and explained their ideology, and how they related it to the Qu'ran and the career of Mohammed. But at least she does mention the "losers."

The book probably does deserve the five stars in some respects. It is, as I said, a physically-beautiful book, and an erudite work of scholarship.  But I am getting tired of this habit of scholars whitewashing inhumanity and painting a pretty picture on top. I felt like giving it one star, in protest. But a lot of good scholarship and artistry went into the text as well, and it would be unfair not to acknowledge that.

Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell (4th Most Unpopular Review)

We continue our ascent towards Amazon glory today, with my fourth most unpopular book review of all time.  We're almost on the home stretch!  I say "unpopular," not "least popular," by the way, because the books on this list tend to get a lot of positive AND negative votes.  (The rating is determined by multiplying the gross number of down votes by the ratio of down to up votes -- though I don't try to be too scientific, as you'll see when we close in on numero uno.  The most popular reviews, by contrast, are determined simply by aggregate total of positive votes.  This difference is because reviews don't get a LOT of negative votes unless they get some positive votes, in the Amazon system.)

Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomena

 "Amateur Hour" (** ; 41 + / 91 -)

At the core of this book (which meanders a lot), Dennett synthesizes the work of William James, Pascal Boyer, Scott Atran, and the early Rodney Stark into a multi-disciplinarian theory of religion. Dennett follows Boyer in supposing that religion derives from the co-option of several distinct mental faculties that evolved independently: mechanisms that enable us to sort memories, recognize "cheaters" in a transaction, act as moral (therefore trustworthy) members of society, share stories, and recognize what Dennett calls the "intentional stance." The "disposition to attribute agency to anything complicated that moves," as he describes this latter, is crucial, the "irritant around which the pearls of religion grow." Echoing Edward Tylor's theory of animism, Dennett argues that we "over-attribute" intentionality to natural objects. When a loved one dies, we deal with fear of decay and her ongoing life in our minds by ceremoniously removing the body and projecting our thoughts as a "spirit," a "virtual person created by the survivors' troubled mind-sets."

I see four major problems with Dennett's argument. First, he seems to know very little about religion. Second, he simply ignores most contrary data. Third, often his "new ideas" actually echo orthodox Christian insights, of which he appears ignorant. And fourth, he overlooks a key phenomena -- awareness of God in primitive cultures.

Dennett's knowledge of religion appears derivative and weak. He buys the long-discredited notion that the Medievals thought the world was flat. He finds Elaine Pagel's ill-informed "Gnostic Gospel"theories persuasive. (See my Why the Jesus Seminar can't find Jesus, and Grandma Marshall Could, for why Pagels is wrong.) But his deepest error has to do with the usual  misunderstanding of faith and reason. He assumes that Christianity, in particular, recommends "blind faith," and spends much of the book lecturing believers to finally critique our faith rationally.

It is painful to see a philosopher so badly informed on this subject. Not once does he interact with a single Christian or Jewish philosopher, scientist, historian, or theologian. (Even though he has co-written a book with Alvin Plantinga on related topics.)  One would have hoped he would have at least read the previous pope's 'Fides et Ratio.' But that might not have helped. In a parallel apologia for atheism, Michael Shermer quoted John Paul's words on the complementary nature of faith and reason, took a poll which showed that a plurality of theists believe for rational reasons, yet still managed to buy the "blind faith" meme. (See my anthology of quotes by key Christian thinkers for the past two thousand years in an article around about here called "Faith and Reason.")

A related problem is that Dennett entirely neglects to consider empirical reasons for faith. Many people I have met claim to have experienced miracles. Millions credit their faith to supernatural events, even sophisticated believers like Augustine and Pascal. While he tries to be measured and careful in his criticism, Dennett disdains to even speak of this wealth of empirical data. How can one explain a phenomena that one disdains to even mention?

Thirdly, Dennett appears ignorant of how orthodox some of his points are. Dennett warns against "over-attributing intentionality" to artifacts - what Christians call "idolatry." He criticizes what Jesus called "vain repetition" in religion. He thinks his most "shocking" conclusion is that it is unwise to trust poorly credentialed preachers too strongly! Yet Jesus warned against "wolves in sheep's clothing" -- a phrase that makes use of (I count) five different key "discoveries" Dennett mentions about human memory, thus making Dennett's most important point 2000 years before the "Father of Brights" thought them up, and far more memorably.

Dennett spills rivers of ink on "memetics." Memes work "unobtrusively, without disturbing their hosts any more than is absolutely necessary." They may "conceal their true nature from their hosts." They "acquire tricks" "exploit" romance, "proliferate," and "benefit" from adaptation. Wicked religious memes teach "submission" (Islam) and love of "the Word" (Christians) over life. It almost sounds as if Dr. Dennett has invented a new theory of demon possession!

The root fallacy here lies in confusing subject and object. Dennett himself warns that our "built-in love for the intentional stance" encourages us to see "invisible agents" as "secret puppeteers behind the perplexing phenomena." Admittedly, it is often  hard to understand why people fall for bizarre beliefs! But blaming the ideas themselves, rather than the people who buy and sell them, is to confuse subject and object.  People exploit, spread ideas, and benefit when those ideas are accepted. The ideas themselves are deaf to all desires and temptations, even the temptation to publish silly arguments. 

If Dennett finds agency where it does not exist, he also overlooks it where it may. Assuming the view, common since Hume, that people were originally polytheistic, he writes of "the historical process by which polytheisms turned into monotheism," and "dramatic deformation" between ancient and modern ideas of God.

Here, Dennett has not even read his own sources carefully enough. Emile Durkheim, it is true, argued that religious beliefs have "varied infinitely," and none of them, therefore, "expresses (truth) adequately." (Elementary Forms, 420) But earlier in the same work, Durkheim noted that among Australian tribes (which he took as the testing ground for theories of primitive religion), concepts of the Supreme God "are fundamentally the same everywhere." The Supreme God was always "eternal," "a sort of creator," "father of men," "made animals and trees," "benefactor," "communicates," "punishes," "judge after death," "they feel his presence everywhere." Stark and Armstrong also touch on this subject, to name only Dennett's own sources. (See the chapter "The Non-History of God" in my Jesus and the Religions of Man, for the longer story.)

It is untenable now to simply assume the triumph of secular thought. The oft-prophecied reign of irreligious man has been delayed so long that theorists like Boyer throw up their hands and declare faith congenital. Philosophical theists have staged a comeback. Astronomers have learned (often to their horror) that the universe had a beginning, after all. Anthropic coincidences have led some to call for a repeal of the Copernican Principle. The origin of life remains shrouded in mystery. An historian of the stature of N. T. Wright has written a book like The Resurrection of the Son of God. Great 20th Century social experiments conducted in the names of Hegel, Feurbach, Marx, Engels, and Tylor led to horror.

A cynic might suppose that this is a good moment to try bluffing. But Dennett's ignorance seems sincere. Next time, professor, please do your homework, and give us an argument, rather than a question-begging free-association intellectual ramble.

Jay Budziszewski: What We Can't Not Know (5th most popular)

"Pure Gold." 

87 + / 7 -

I have read hundreds of books on religion, morality, and philosophy, but Budziszewski has taught me much that I did not know, or at least realize. C. S. Lewis' Abolition of Man is wise warning to an age in which we tinker with the formula for man: but Budziszewski  goes beyond Lewis.

6th best: Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God

"An Essential Book"             

*****     84 + / 5 -

If I were going to pick ten "must read" books out of the two hundred or so I have reviewed for Amazon or in print, this brilliant work would stand near the top. Your education is not complete, and may be defective, until you have come to terms with Stark's arguments.

Seventh Best Review: G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

"Fit only for unscientific children -- like me." 

*****            85 + / 9 -  

Orthodoxy is written for the poet and child in each of us (The part Jesus said can inherit the Kingdom). Orthodoxy is, at the same time, one of the wisest, and funniest, books I have ever read; almost up to the level of Everlasting Man. It seems to me Chesterton does give a logically challenging, if rather whimsical, argument for the Christian faith here. And having read many of the most famous skeptics of our time, his argument remains no less timely, powerful, and suggestive.

Eighth Best Review: Martin, The Case Against Christianity

Michael Martin, The Case Against Christianity


"Nice Try, No Cigar" (***) 80 + / 55 -

This book is a well-written and systematic argument against the Christian faith, mostly from the point of view of Biblical criticism and philosophy.  Dr. Martin's writing is disciplined and readable, though not as lyrical as, say, that of Bertrand Russell. Unlike some skeptical writers, he has done a bit of homework, quoting Plantinga, Habermas, and Kierkegaard, for example. (Though he seems to have missed others that he really should have read.) His tone is fairly genial.

Martin's argumentative method is to throw lots of arguments up and see what sticks. (Could the resurrection be caused by the indetermidacy principle of quantum physics? Or by Resurrecting Finite Miracle Workers [RFMW]?   I'm sure the little buggers are glad to finally get an acronym!) The more you know about the subjects he covers, however, the less seems to stick. And the more slides off, the more you wonder if Martin has got some of the mud in his own eyes.

Martin's first main argument, against the historicity of Jesus, is so weak, and Martin appears so unconscious of that weakness, that it undermines his credibility. He'll start an argument with, "Some scholars believe. . . " and end it (same sentence) "clearly, then. . ." What kind of argument is that? An argument is not as strong as the sum of its dependant clauses! A piece of speculation (often very wild) by an unnamed "scholar" seems to set up like concrete in Martin's mind in the space of a few clauses into fact. If my father built houses that way, he would have gotten into a lot of trouble during the last earthquake in Seattle!

Argument from silence is another of Martin's favorite weapons. "Surely if X believed or knew Y he would have said so." Generally, though, such arguments are fallacious, because you can only with great caution infer that an event did not happen because someone failed to mention it.  Also, the epistles to which Martin appeals in this regard, are short and on other subjects. (Such as Christian living.)  One fact most such arguments seem to overlook, is that we have a book in the New Testament -- Acts -- which tells the story of the early Christian church, while saying almost nothing about Jesus' life -- even though its author had just written the Gospel of Luke!  And most of the rest of the New Testament is written by Luke's main protagonist in Acts, St Paul, who would probably have had most of the eyewitness contacts Luke relied upon, and more.  So this sort of Argument from Silence really means nothing at all.  It is evident that early Christians could know a lot about the life of Jesus, without referring to it all the time, when they're talking about something else.  (As, indeed, can we.)

In any case, the Gospels do relate Jesus' life. Many wise Christian scholars, and even many non-Christians, have repeatedly pointed out the characteristics of the Gospels that mark them as historical. (See my Why the Jesus Seminar can't find Jesus for one approach, citing many anti-Christian scholars to make some key points, and Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses for a very different, but also legitimate, approach.)  But Martin does not seem very aware of long-standing historical arguments for the Gospels, or of the qualities in the Gospels that make them credible.

Martin believes that the differences among Gospel accounts of the resurrection are a strong argument against it. What do you think skeptics would say if they agreed on all points? "Conspiracy!" And rightly so. As prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi said of the Manson case, when the killers prepared beforehand what to say, "The stories tallied perfectly," But when you have honest witnesses, "There will always be left over evidence that just doesn't fit." And the prosecutor in the Columbine case said, "Any time you have a tramautic situation, even if only one person is killed, every testimony is different." So it appears to many that the superficial differences, but underlying agreement, of the NT records, are very impressive evidence for the truth of the resurrection. But Martin does not even consider this perspective.

Martin's argument against Paul's testimony that 500 witnesses to the resurrection were mostly still alive, is breathtaking. "The fact that 500 people reported seeing a resurrected man would surely have attracted wide attention and come to the attention of. . . historians."  Therefore, since we didn't have any clear secular references to that, this report must be false, and Paul an unreliable witness!

This is only a touch less ludicrous than Jesus Mysteries, that argues against the existence of Jesus since Roman historians don't mention him much, and then turns around and notes that they don't say much about Christians at all until 250 AD! But if the community itself was ignored when it had hundreds of thousands of members, why should a single incident within that community be recorded when the membership was still just a few thousand? In fact, from my studies in China I know that remarkable things can happen among a disfavored group (Christians, again) with little or no mention of those events in the  press.  One would never know the story of how tens of millions of Chinese have become Christians in China, from casually following the Chinese press, still less if one were only given a small sample of politically-conscious contemporary Chinese historians during the Deng era.  From many such specious arguments, Martin proves to his own satisfaction that the Gospels are unreliable, but to mine that (at least) he is out of the loop when it comes to historical evidences.

If you want philosophy, Martin might help a bit more, but even here I find some of his arguments rather
contrived. For example, I guess the tension Martin describes between Scripture and theory of salvation arises because he is concerned with philosophizing about salvation for others, rather than gaining it for himself. But the Bible explicitly limits itself to aiding in the latter, not the former, enterprise. And Martin has overlooked other Scriptural principles on this topic, such as that we are judged by the light given us, and that God, not man, is the judge. Martin might have come to a better understanding of the issue by reading C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. Its too bad that he nowhere mentions the most influential Christian thinker of the 20th Century, and unfortunate for his argument.

So if you're in the market for arguments against Christianity, what you get here for the most part is quality in terms of style, but quantity as to substance.

Ninth Best Review: Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle 


"The Perfect Novel"  (*****) 79/ 82

The theme of this book is not prison camps: it is nothing narrower than life itself. And it is almost as rich in characters and stories within stories (here Solzhenitsyn is very like Tolstoy) as life: constancy in love, artistic integrity, the whimsy of fate, literacy in Medieval Novgorod, the prison in the Count of Monte Cristo, snow, how to sew, the law of unintended consequences.

A few major abiding themes run like threads throughout the book, providing unity: First, the life of the "zek," the prisoner in Stalin's camps. Second, loneliness: not just of (male) prisoners longing for a woman or lost loved ones, or of persecuted wives trying to make lives for themselves, but ultimately of each person. Every conversation carries a different meaning for the people involved. The author "gets inside of peoples heads" in an amazing way -- from the janitor Spiridon to the "Best Friend of Counter-Intelligence Operatives," Joseph Stalin himself. Third, and on a deeper level, the theme of this book is integrity, both artistic and moral.

Fourth, and I don't know if this was the conscious intent of the author or not, the book reminds us of the unity of Western civilization. Aside from mentions of Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Pushkin, and Lermontov (which, I might add, also describes the company Solzhenitsyn belongs in, with honor), the book is honeycombed with references to the great thinkers and artists of European civilization -- from the ancient Greeks and the Gospels, to Dante, the Holy Grail, Bach and Beethoven. The Marxist Rubin even quotes Luther. Primarily, no doubt this is a reflection of the fact that the prisoners in the "sharashkas," the top-secret scientific work camps, were educated men, unlike, say, the hero of his shorter novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. (The contrast Solzhenitsyn draws to their well-paid Neanderthal captors is just one form of the irony that is his most distinctive and powerful stylistic weapon. But even the Neanderthals, including Stalin himself, are portrayed not as cardboard villains, but with insight and imagination.) These references also remind us that, as much as Solzhenitsyn has been accused of being a "Slavophile," as if that were an insult, the Russian culture he loves is an integral part of Western civilization. This iconic dialogue of the ages, similiar to the works of great Chinese painters, also adds another layer of delight to the book.

The final and greatest thread that unifies this work is the idea of achieving humanity, of becoming what a person ought to be, of heroism. The prisoners are poets, eccentric, and philosophers (though there are also scoundrels, and everyone is tempted that way), beaten down by life and the forces of disolution within, trying to preserve their souls, or civilization, from the barbarians who are their masters. In describing the simple heroism of some of his characters, Solzhenitsyn achieves brilliance. In my opinion, First Circle is the greatest of his works, and one of the most powerful pieces of writing of the 20th Century, at least. And it is not about the Gulag, primarily: it is about what it means to be human, and the choices we all face.

Aside from the characters and stories, many of the scenes are wonderful (again like Tolstoy): of Rubin standing in the courtyard at night in the snow when he hears the train whistle, of the party at the prosecutor's house, of the arrest of the diplomat. If life is sometimes too strange for fiction, (and it is) there are also pieces of fiction that seem truer than life. First Circle is a marriage of style and substance made in heaven, or at least, the highest circle of hell.

Top Ten Amazon Reviews: Howard Zinn.

I imagine there will be two kinds of reaction to the title of today's blog: "Who?" and "How in the world?"

As I explained in the last blog, over the past fourteen years, I've somehow become one of the more popular reviewers of substantive non-fiction on Amazon.  So assuming all my readers to be great lovers of books, I thought I'd share some of the most popular, and also unpopular (and I think in many cases, among the best), of the some 400 reviews I've posted. 

Howard Zinn is a radical left-wing, Marxist, revisionist historian whose Peoples' History of the United States is, well, you'll see in a minute.  I am, frankly, surprised that my critical review of his book, unapologetically Christian, gained more "thumbs up" votes than "thumbs down."  But if you haven't read Zinn's book, yet, you may find this analysis interesting -- and the book, as well.  It may also shed some light on our contemporary talk about the "1%" and the "99%."