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Title: The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions
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Manufacturer: Crown Forum
List Price: $23.95
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| The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions by Crown Forum Great book | This book should be required reading for anyone in, or entering, a university. It has been secular dogma that science can only lead to atheism for far too long.
Thank you David Berlinski | | The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions by Crown Forum Needs tighter focus | A very stimulating book by a very bright guy. In the early pages he sets out clearly the issue and his purpose with respect to it: Certain scientists and philosophers have attacked religion by making extravagant claims for science, using those to denigrate religious faith. He skewers those individuals without mercy, and appropriately so. But he fails to make the point that those scientists and philosophers are no worse than their counterparts on the other side, who pretend that creationism is scientific and that investigating questions of scientific fact is a proper function of religion. The blame for the on-going abysmally stupid war between science and religion needs to be spread in both directions.
Berlinski makes the critical point on the very first page, quoting Stephen Jay Gould's assertion that science and religion are Non-Overlapping Magisteria, both very fine things that are equally without standing to be dabbling in the other's subject matter. Doing so is fundamentally incoherent and mutually corrupting. Leave questions of empirical fact to science, and leave questions of ultimate meaning and morality to religion. He makes the point, but then does not sharpen it as he should.
Dawkins has written that "if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution that person is ignorant, stupid or insane." That's generally correct, but it is also properly of no consequence whatsoever for religion, because religion is not about the truth of this or that scientific theory. If that were not the case, then religion forever would be hostage to the next scientific finding. Only creationists are foolish enough to go take that wrong-headed and self-defeating road; with "friends" like that, religion needs no enemies.
Berlinski's book is fun reading, but it gradually loses focus, by becoming primarily a critique of contemporary science. That's certainly useful for highlighting the pretensions of certain of its spokesmen, but it's beside the point in every other respect. He correctly attacks the new atheists for claiming that "Because scientific theories are true, religious beliefs must be false," and he sees his book as "in some sense a defense of religious thought and sentiment." Well and good, but no part of such a defense should in any way hinge on a critique of science. It is not as if science must be false for religion to be true. Rather, the point should be that however science progresses, or fails to progress, scientific claims will always be fundamentally incommensurate with the religious sphere of meaning and morality. And vice versa. The truths of one imply nothing about the truths of the other. The war between science and religion is a phony war, based in a mistake. It drags on partly because some of the combatants are operating in philosophical ignorance, and partly because it has become for others a personally profitable career path. Berlinsky should have made that case with greater clarity and force.
| | The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions by Crown Forum Short concise review | Someone once said brevity is next to godliness so here is my bottom line on this book. It's very well written and Mr Berlinski breaks up the scientific chapters by liberally inserting fun quotes. One of my favorites was the one by "Dirty Harry".
Anyway if you are a believer (in God) you will enjoy this book. If you are an avowed atheist you won't.If your a person whose faith is on the fence and your suspicious of the atheist rant, then I highly recommend this book to you. Close enough! | | The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions by Crown Forum A SImple scientific question | There is nothing achieved by arguing the minutae of religion...Did God part the Red Sea or did they walk across in the mud? Arguing over historical anecdotes from Centuries ago will never produce consensus.
There are 2 simple questions that should be capable of modern scientific enquiry.
1) Does prayer show ANY evidence that Anyone Else is listening and 2) Is there ANY evidence that the individual 'soul' survives death ? If either or both of these answers is NO, I really dont see why we should care about answers to the gazillion other questions. | | The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions by Crown Forum A brilliant and fun read | I have read several of Berlinski's books, and this is the best and the most fun read. He takes down by several notches some of the better-known and more arrogant atheists--Richard Dawkins, Peter Atkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett (one of the "brights")--with clever barbs and clear reasoning.
One of the one-star reviewers, in an otherwise rather thoughtful review, made this baffling statement: "His only option is to put forth a case that is ultimately (and desperately) designed to protect Christianity by defending anything which science cannot disprove." Berlinski, a self-described "secular Jew," is surely doing no such thing, and he makes this clear in his preface: speaking of religious traditions, he says, "I do not know whether any of this is true. I am certain that the scientific community does not know that it is false."
His book is written as a caution to the over-reach of certain people in the scientific community who have attempted to draw conclusions about religion and God from facts or hypotheses in science. In this he does an admirable job. | | The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions by Crown Forum Product Description | Militant atheism is on the rise. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have dominated bestseller lists with books denigrating religious belief as dangerous foolishness. And these authors are merely the leading edge of a far larger movement–one that now includes much of the scientific community.
“The attack on traditional religious thought,” writes David Berlinski in The Devil’s Delusion, “marks the consolidation in our time of science as the single system of belief in which rational men and women might place their faith, and if not their faith, then certainly their devotion.”
A secular Jew, Berlinski nonetheless delivers a biting defense of religious thought. An acclaimed author who has spent his career writing about mathematics and the sciences, he turns the scientific community’s cherished skepticism back on itself, daring to ask and answer some rather embarrassing questions:
Has anyone provided a proof of God’s inexistence?
Not even close.
Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here?
Not even close.
Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life?
Not even close.
Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought?
Close enough.
Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral?
Not close enough.
Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good?
Not even close to being close.
Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences?
Close enough.
Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational?
Not even ballpark.
Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt?
Dead on.
Berlinski does not dismiss the achievements of western science. The great physical theories, he observes, are among the treasures of the human race. But they do nothing to answer the questions that religion asks, and they fail to offer a coherent description of the cosmos or the methods by which it might be investigated.
This brilliant, incisive, and funny book explores the limits of science and the pretensions of those who insist it can be–indeed must be–the ultimate touchstone for understanding our world and ourselves. |
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