Interesting Books Archives : Page 5 of 7 : Proslogion

The Rage Against God

Peter Hitchens is probably best known for the fact that he is the brother of Christopher Hitchens, the famous New Atheist who recently died. This is unfortunate, because he is actually a very accomplished writer. He was a resident foreign correspondent for British newspapers in both Moscow and Washington, and over the years, he has written five books. In 2010, he was awarded Britain’s most prestigious prize for political journalism, The Orwell Prize. Honestly, I had never heard of him until I read about his latest book, The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith. Given that he is the brother of a New Atheist, and given that New Atheists are known for their anger against God, I decided this would be an interesting book to read. While it did turn out to be interesting, it wasn’t anything like I expected it to be.

I think my expectations for the book were wrong because I didn’t appreciate the fact that Peter Hitchens is a political writer. As a result, he seems to see things through the prism of power and control. For example, here is how he explains the New Atheists’ rage against God:

Why is there such a fury against religion now? Why is it more advanced in Britain than in the USA? I have had good reason to seek the answer to this question, and I have found it where I might have expected to have done if only I had grasped from the start how large are the issues at stake. Only one reliable force stands in the way of the power of the strong over the weak. Only one reliable force forms the foundation of the concept of the rule of law. Only one reliable force restrains the hand of the man of power. And, in an age of power-worship, the Christian religion has become the principal obstacle to the desire of earthly utopians for absolute power. (pp. 112-113)

In other words, as far as Peter Hitchens is concerned, it’s all about power. There is a rage against God (and Christianity in particular), because belief in traditional religious principles gets in the way of the New Atheists’ desire to force people to live the way the New Atheists want them to live.

How does Peter Hitchens come to this conclusion? Mainly, it is because of his life experiences. A large part of the book is concerned with his experiences as a foreign correspondent in Moscow. As he discusses them, he paints a picture of Russia in the waning days of the Soviet Union, and it is not pretty. The people are mostly depressed, alcoholism is rampant, and there is no freedom. Everyone is watching everyone else, and if you aren’t connected to one of the elites, the slightest mistake can produce drastic consequences. In the end, all this was possible because of the supreme power the Soviet Union wielded over its people.

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The New Creationism

Paul Garner is a British environmental scientist and Fellow of the Geological Society of London. He is a very active young-earth creationist researcher, currently doing original geological research in collaboration with Dr. John Whitmore and Dr. Steve Austin. He also recently authored a book called The New Creationism.

The word “new” in the title does not mean that he is offering some fundamentally new concept in creationism. Instead, the purpose of the book is to give the reader an understanding of the latest creationist models in the areas of astronomy, geology, and biology. In this purpose, Garner succeeds admirably. He is not only a very understandable writer, he is also very knowledgeable in a wide range of fields. As a result, this book is easy-to-read and (mostly) accurate.

There are many things l really like about this book, and one of them is that Garner makes sure the reader is not fooled by terminology. For example, in his second chapter (“The Sun, Moon, and Stars”) he discusses how astrophysicists think main sequence stars (such as our sun) eventually turn into different kinds of stars (like red giants, white dwarfs, and supergiants) and perhaps even supernovae. He then says:

Some creationists have instinctively reacted against this idea because the process of change is usually referred to as ‘stellar evolution.’ However, it is perhaps better to think of it as ‘stellar ageing’ because the changes are nothing more than an outworking of the law of entropy, the tendency of all natural systems to move towards a disordered state. (p. 37)

This is a very important point. What is generally referred to as “stellar evolution” has nothing to do with evolution as the term is generally used. It certainly has to do with change, and “evolution” can mean “change.” However, the general use of the term “evolution” implies an increase in complexity, and that is certainly not what goes on in stellar evolution.

Another thing I really liked about the book is that it concentrates on the evidence that supports creation and only discusses the evidence against evolution when necessary. Many creationist books are nothing more than attacks on evolution. While it is important to show a competing theory’s weaknesses, science should never be focused on shooting down opposing ideas. It should be focused on building up your own ideas. As a result, Garner gives the reader a lot of evidence that supports various creationist models.

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Kisses From Katie

As most people who read this blog know, I spend a lot of time writing about science. However, I read a wide variety of books. Some are fiction, but most are nonfiction. When it comes to the nonfiction books, many are about science, some are about philosophy, some are about theology, some are about modern Christianity, some are about music, and some are about theater. Most of them have something useful to offer, and if I find one of them particularly interesting, I tend to blog about it, which is why I have an interesting books section. However, other than the Bible, most of the books I read do not have a deep, personal effect on me. I blogged about one notable exception to this general rule more than a year ago, and now it is time to blog about another one. Be forewarned. This is not going to be a typical blog entry. It has nothing to do with science, but it has everything to do with Jesus.

A few weeks ago, I saw a short video on Facebook about a young lady (Katie Davis) who, at the ripe old age of 16, decided that God was calling her to do mission work. She went to Uganda when she was a senior in high school and then again after graduation, and within a short time began adopting girls who had no caretakers. At the time of the video (roughly three years later), she had adopted a total of fourteen girls and was running a ministry that fed, clothed, and paid the school fees for hundreds of Ugandan children. The video was a promo for her book, Kisses from Katie. I decided to buy the book, and I thank God that I did.

In the promotional video, the author mentions Mother Teresa, who said that her role model (St. Therese of Lisieux) did:¹

small things with great love, ordinary things with extraordinary love

It’s fitting that the author looks to Mother Teresa, because she lives out St. Therese’s example better than anyone except perhaps Mother Teresa herself.

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The Genesis of Science

During the 2010 Global Atheist Convention, P.Z. Myers (my favorite atheist) said:

Science and religion are incompatible in the same sense that the serious pursuit of knowledge about reality is incompatible with [expletive]…. Religion makes smart people do stupid things, and scientists do not like stupid.

Obviously, Dr. Myers hasn’t studied much of the history of science, since it shows quite the opposite. Indeed, history shows that modern science is a product of Christianity.

Dr. James Hannam recently wrote a book entitled, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution, and he makes a very strong case that modern science is specifically a product of medieval Christian thought. As I mentioned in a previous post, Dr. James Hannam is a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge. He earned his physics degree from Oxford, and then he went to Cambridge to earn a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science. Thus, he is very qualified to write on this subject. He states his thesis in his introduction:

This book will show how much of the science and technology that we now take for granted has medieval origins. (p. xiii)

The book then goes on to give a wealth of evidence to support that thesis.

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Creating Life in the Lab

Last year, I posted my take on Dr. Craig Venter’s amazing accomplishment in which he copied the genome of one bacterium and transplanted it into a different (but very similar) species of bacterium whose DNA had been removed. It was a marvel of biochemistry, but as I pointed out, it clearly demonstrates the impossibility of abiogenesis (the fantasy that life originated by natural processes). One commenter announced that my claim was bogus and undermined my credibility. He further said that the claim was “infantile and wrong on so many levels.”

Well, I guess there are now at least two PhD chemists whose credibilities have been undermined and who are “infantile and wrong on so many levels.” It turns out that Dr. Fazale Rana, a PhD chemist (with emphasis on biochemistry), also takes the same position in his book, Creating Life in the Lab. Indeed, the theme of the entire book is how modern developments in the attempt to make artificial life have conclusively demonstrated that life cannot the the product of strictly natural processes.

While the goal of Rana’s book is to survey all the different ways scientists are trying to produce life in the lab, he starts out his first discussion of actual laboratory results with Venter. This is probably because Venter has come the closest to producing artificial life. However, as I stated in my original post, Venter’s team had to rely on already-living cells no less than three separate times in order to produce their “synthetic” life form. As Dr. Rana states in his discussion of Venter’s results:

Though not their intention, Venter and his colleagues have provided empirical evidence that life’s components and, consequently, life itself must spring from the work of an intelligent Designer. (p. 46)

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Let’s Break Off This Engagement!

Creation Made Free: Open Theology Engaging Science is an attempt by open theism to grapple with the issues of creation, evolution, and the scientific process. It contains many chapters, each authored by a well-known voice in modern Christendom. If you have read my blog from its early days, you know that I am sympathetic to open theism. I am not an open theist, but I certainly think that open theism takes the Bible more seriously than most other theologies in modern Christendom. I also think open theologians have displayed some truly original thinking when it comes to understanding many Biblical passages that most Christian theologies would rather ignore. Thus, I was excited to get the chance to read this book on my vacation. Unfortunately, my excitement quickly gave way to disappointment.

When it comes to the issue of origins, this book takes a theistic evolutionary position. Now I don’t necessarily have a problem with that. While it is a very weak scientific position to take, a Biblical argument can be made for it. I consider that argument to be rather poor, but not as poor as the scientific argument. Nevertheless, theistic evolution itself doesn’t bother me all that much.

Here’s the source of my disappointment: There are some wonderful ways that Christians have addressed the origins issue throughout the history of Christendom. However, this book shows that the same people who demonstrate incredible originality of thought when it comes to theology and philosophy subscribe to the most mundane, worn-out modern view of origins: that God “set everything up,” and evolution then took care of the rest.

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Quivering Daughters

This book is nothing short of amazing. It was written by a woman who grew up in the “patriarchy movement,” which is gaining popularity in the homeschooling community. In essence, the patriarchy movement suggests that if you follow a basic formula that includes parental authority, emphasis on family, homeschooling, and adherence to the “divinely-ordained” roles of the man as the head-of-the-house/breadwinner and the woman as the keeper-of-the-house/helpmeet, you will be rewarded with a legacy of godly children. Those in this movement say that children are a blessing, and God should determine how many children you have. Thus, many in this movement have very large families. Since Psalm 127:3-5 says, “Behold, children are a gift of the LORD…Like arrows in the hand of a warrior…How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them,” people will often refer to such families as “quiverfull” families, and that’s where the title of this book comes from.

Why is this book nothing short of amazing? Actually, there are several reasons. First, it is really intended for a very limited audience: women who grew up in the patriarchy movement and were harmed by it. Please note the “and” in that sentence. While the author was clearly harmed by the patriarchy movement, she does not contend that all women are harmed through it. This is actually one of the amazing aspects of the book. The author has every right to feel angry towards the patriarchy movement and those who promote it, but she doesn’t express any anger at all. To be sure, she discusses in several places why the patriarchy movement is unBiblical, but she never once condemns the people leading it or participating in it. I find that quite laudable.

The book is also amazing because even though it is intended for a very limited audience, it actually affected me in a profound way. Being neither a woman nor someone who grew up in the patriarchy movement, I still learned a great deal from it. In fact, I strongly recommend it to all fathers who have daughters. I truly wish this book had been around a long time ago. If I had been able to read it before I adopted my little girl, I would have been a better father to her.

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Galileo’s Daughter, Part 2: The Genius of Galileo

In part 1 of my review of the excellent book Galileo’s Daughter, I concentrated on how the author treats the confrontation between Galileo and the Roman Catholic church. In this part of the review, I want to focus on how the book treats other aspects of Galileo’s life.

The book shares all sorts of interesting things regarding Galileo about which I was completely unaware. For example, did you know that you can see a preserved part of his body if you wish? Indeed, the middle finger of his right hand is inside a glass egg at the Museum of the History of Science in Florence. My wife and I spent a day in Florence, but there are so many amazing things to see, we never got to the Museum of the History of Science. As a result, we never got to see Galileo’s finger.

I also learned that Galileo did not like academic garb. At that time in history, if you were a teacher at a university, you were expected to wear your academic robes at all times while you were working. When Galileo got his first teaching post at the University of Pisa, however, he:

deemed official doctoral dress a pretentious nuisance, and he derided the toga in a three-hundred-line verse spoof that enjoyed wide readership… (p. 19)

Now this is a man after my own heart. I hate it when university professors try to set themselves apart by any pretentious means. Not only did Galileo hate that as well, he actually wrote a snarky poem about it!

While little facts like these are interesting, there were two things I read in this book that I had never heard before, and they clearly show that Galileo was nothing short of a true genius!

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Galileo’s Daughter, Part 1

I recently mentioned the book Galileo’s Daughter in a previous post. I wrote then that it might become my new favorite book regarding this amazing scientist, and it most certainly has! The book is not only an excellent look at Galileo, his accomplishments, and his struggles, but it also is incredibly unique. In the process of discussing the events of Galileo’s life, the author weaves in actual letters written to him by his daughter, Suor Maria Celeste Galilei. Since she was a nun, there are also nice interludes where the author discusses what Suor Maria Celeste’s life was like at the convent of San Matteo in Arcetri. In addition to all that, despite the fact that this is a biography of a well-known scientist, there is actually a surprise ending! At least it was a surprise to me, and I have read quite a bit about Galileo.

There are so many good things about this book that I cannot cover them all in one post. So to start, I will discuss how this book treats the most famous issue involved in Galileo’s life: his confrontation with the Roman Catholic church. Obviously a lot of very detailed, very carefully-researched tomes have been written about this affair, and I have read many of them. However, I think this book deals with the issue better than any other book I have read.

Why is this book’s coverage of the struggle between Galileo and the Roman Catholic church so good? For one thing, it doesn’t try to take sides. I have read books about Galileo that portray him as the champion of science who was persecuted by the mighty Roman Catholic church, and I have read books that portray him as a egotistical man who tried to use the force of his personality to make the Roman Catholic church change its theology based on very little evidence. Neither of those portrayals is accurate. Instead, as is the case with most history, the confrontation between Galileo and the Roman Catholic church was very complex, with no pure villains and only one pure hero. That hero was neither Galileo nor the Roman Catholic church. Instead, it was Suor Maria Celeste Galilei.

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Signature of Controversy

Dr. Stephen Meyer’s book, Signature in the Cell is an enormous success. It was named one of the ~~New York Times~~ Times Literary Supplement books of the year by a well-respected atheist. It was on Amazon’s top ten science books of 2009. It has been called a “landmark in the intelligent design debate” by a prominent professor of medical genetics, “a ‘must read’ for all serious students of the origin-of-life debate” by an accomplished PhD in ocean chemistry, and a “decisive case based upon breathtaking and cutting-edge science” by a chemistry professor who is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Of course the real way you can see how successful the book has been is to read the hysterical reviews from those who disagree with its conclusions. Many of the reviews are quite comical. For example, on this blog I highlighted Dr. Francisco Ayala’s pathetic review where he not only displays his unfamiliarity with genetics, but he also displays the fact that he hasn’t even read the book.

Well, now you can go to one place to find many of these amusing reviews as well as how poorly they fare when they are evaluated based on science: the online book Signature of Controversy. This book is 105 pages of snarky (one section is called “Attack of the Pygmies”), detailed, and scientifically devastating arguments that show how poorly the critics of Signature in the Cell deal with the science related to the origins debate.

In some ways, this book is even better than Signature in the Cell. After all, the case made by Signature in the Cell is very impressive. However, while I was reading it, I kept asking myself, “What will the critics say about this?” After all, if you want to be truly educated on an issue, you must examine it from all sides. Well, with the help of this book, you can see what the critics have to say, and you can see how poorly what they say compares to science as we know it today.

Often, you can judge the quality and impact of a work based on what its critics have to say about it. The weaker and more desperate the critics’ arguments, the stronger and more important the work. Based on the criticisms leveled at Signature in the Cell, it is clearly one of the strongest and most important books related to the origins controversy.