By which, one supposes, he means that a leap of faith is needed in the whole question of whether God exists, which should...
An overwrought retort to Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins and company.
Discovery Institute senior fellow and science writer Berlinski (Infinite Ascent: A Short History of Mathematics, 2005, etc.) has a big job on his hands: convincing atheists that science doesn’t back their lack of belief. He names names (“I count myself among Harris’s warmest detractors”; “Richard Dawkins has nothing but contempt for theology, often glorifying in his impressive ignorance”) and protests that while there has never been a worthy proof against the existence of God, there are numerous scientists saying that God is at the very least improbable, at the most a delusion. His counterargument is scattershot, however. There’s nothing so elegant as Pascal’s theorem to be found in these pages, but instead a lot of rhetoric by sly suggestion: If Noam Chomsky is a child of the Enlightenment, and since the Enlightenment produced the French Revolution, it follows logically that Noam Chomsky is responsible for guillotining the innocent. Since Hitler and Stalin were atheists, it follows that all atheists are mass murderers in fact or potentiality. And so forth. In calmer moments, Berlinski offers a nice tour through modern cosmology, pointing out some of the theoretical weaknesses and built-in conundrums of quantum mechanics, even if it seems to be stretching to claim that Max Born was guilty of “legerdemain.” The author seems more comfortable with Einstein’s more nondogmatic views, to say nothing of Einstein’s willingness, at least publicly, to accept the possibility of God. As for the militant new atheists who deny divine agency in creation, he sometimes gets choked up in his furious rejections: “Scientific atheists should at least be open to the possibility that scientific explanations by their very nature come to an end well before they have done all the work that an explanation can do.”
By which, one supposes, he means that a leap of faith is needed in the whole question of whether God exists, which should come as no news to anyone on either side of the question. Those concerned with that question will find better grist elsewhere.Pub Date: April 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-39626-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown Forum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2008
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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