"Breaking the Spell" by Daniel Dennett (August and September, 2011)

I'm fascinated with Dennett's ideas.  Can we go past superstitious belief to form a more critical thinking society?  Daniel Dennett really thinks deeply about a lot of important human questions.  That's for sure.   Here are some interesting reviews:

I'll cop immediately to being a fan in general of the "New Atheism"; however, I've also had my problems with many of the works that were part of this recent trend. I don't have a particular problem with Hitchens and Dawkins rather ruthless treatment of religion; they're simply asking some obvious questions that religion has managed to obfuscate or bully people away from for far too long. My problem is that they do sometimes descend into bad philosophy and have a tendency to take cheap shots when they could be asking some more productive questions. Dennett, however, takes a different tack. A philosopher, not a biologist like Dawkins or a polemicist like Hitchens, Dennett starts by asking two questions; is religion a phenomenon we can understand prosaically? And should we want to?

These are, as it turns out, not easy questions, and Dennett's treatment of them reflects this. He explores various hypotheses for religion's existence and desirability slowly and carefully, but with incredible skill and precision. What religion is at base, and what function it serves, are necessary to determining our attitude towards it, and some of the answers Dennett has come up with are shocking and counterintuitive, but supported by a lot of evidence (some of it admittedly circumstantial). This book was not intended to be the last word on the subject; it was intended to foster inquiry, and I hope it's just the first of its kind. However, while Dennett's tone is mild, and his respect and compassion for religious believers is evident, his logic and methods are in their way more destructive to religion than those fostered by the other "four horsemen". Their work has been more like a broad swipe with a cleaver, while Dennett is much more like a surgeon expertly wielding a scalpel. They've been questioning Oz's orders while Dennett has shown us the first glimpse of the man behind the curtain.

Besides its fantastic and mind-opening exploration of the roots of religious sentiment, and how it affects us today, Dennett's book is a wealth of small details and strangely interconnected accounts of various human and natural phenomena. Music, art, religion, language, history, and yes, evolution, are all mightily entangled and far from removing the wonder of this tapestry, Dennett's exploration has only whetted my thirst for knowledge about it. While the ideas presented are not simple, Dennett has written the book as clearly as possible to make it readable by a large audience. As a result of course, the usual postmodernist and theologician suspects will claim that Dennett doesn't really get the vast complexity of the nonsense they regularly spout; which may be correct since I'm fairly sure they don't get it either. He gives such arguments a fair hearing in the book before disposing handily of them.

Ultimately, you either care what's true, or you don't. This book is for those that do, and are willing to ask some tough questions that may take a while to answer accurately. It's also highly readable and fascinating.

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This is a book that should be read more than once. The best way to read it is the way one would read a college text, pencil in hand for underlining. Most of us tuck our reading around our other daily duties, and this is a problem with this book. Because we must set it down and pick it up, it should have a glossary. All the new terms are clearly explained, but, because so many are new, it is hard to hold them in our memories while we walk the dog, entertain guests, etc. One of the main points of the book is that, even if we are 100 percent certain that our own religion is correct, it is our duty to try to discover why most others in the world don't agree with us. The author believes we should study all religions carefully. He points out that some have toxic elements and offers the hope that members of these religions weed them out before we pass on even more toxic elements to the next generation. For this reason, he dislikes the taboo that causes us to keep from criticizing religion. For instance, it is clearly toxic to say it is okay to kill innocent people simply because you are appalled by their lifestyles (as happened to us on 9/11.) And, it is clearly toxic to do things that will help bring about "end times" and destroy the earth upon which others depend. Professor Dennett suggests studying why religion seems to be irrelevant to moral behavior. In other words, why do our prisons have roughly the same religions as the rest of society? Why is the moral behavior of atheists as good as those of religious people? National security and the future of humanity depend upon our quest for answers. The only disappointing thing about this book is that it provides more questions than answers. But it is obvious we must start this discussion before the world is destroyed by people whose minds are closed even to the questions.

For more:

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/product-reviews/0143038338/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_5?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addFiveStar

"The Humbling" by Philip Roth (August 2011)

Many call this a novella.  It's about a man who in his 60's and is losing his artistic touch for acting.  Philip Roth writes beautifully, but the passages can be quite depressing.   He relates to our most morose and disturbing questions but appears to care deeply about the characters and what they are going through.  I can see atheism in some of his writing too.  

This will be an interesting book to read.  I am now on page 43 of 150, excited about the strange experiences our main character will go through and how he will react.   I am curious whether or not Roth will get too negative, more negative and deterministic than he needs to be.  

"American Pastoral" by Philip Roth (August and September, 2011)

A friend of mine said that she felt that Roth in the novel "Nemesis" was trying to advance his cause for the agenda of atheism.   She said Roth made several references in the novel to logic of atheism and how it apparently makes sense.     I was curious to read  my 2nd Roth novel.  There seemed to be an underlying negativity to his writing which I wanted to understand more comprehensively.   He is obviously a genius, much like John Updike or John Irving.  I think it is an oversimplification to call him an "evil genius."  Let's look at the whole picture, not just part or the picture.

Amazon.com Review

Philip Roth's 22nd book takes a life-long view of the American experience in this thoughtful investigation of the century's most divisive and explosive of decades, the '60s. Returning again to the voice of his literary alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, Roth is at the top of his form. His prose is carefully controlled yet always fresh and intellectually subtle as he reconstructs the halcyon days, circa World War II, of Seymour "the Swede" Levov, a high school sports hero and all-around Great Guy who wants nothing more than to live in tranquillity. But as the Swede grows older and America crazier, history sweeps his family inexorably into its grip: His own daughter, Merry, commits an unpardonable act of "protest" against the Vietnam war that ultimately severs the Swede from any hope of happiness, family, or spiritual coherence.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In his latest novel, Roth shows his age. Not that his writing is any less vigorous and supple. But in this autumnal tome, he is definitely in a reflective mood, looking backward. As the book opens, Roth's alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, recalls an innocent time when golden boy Seymour "the Swede" Levov was the pride of his Jewish neighborhood. Then, in precise, painful, perfectly rendered detail, he shows how the Swede's life did not turn out as gloriously as expected?how it was, in fact, devastated by a child's violent act. When Merry Levov blew up her quaint little town's post office to protest the Viet Nam war, she didn't just kill passing physician Fred Conlon, she shattered the ties that bound her to her worshipful father. Merry disappears, then eventually reappears as a stick-thin Jain living in sacred povery in Newark, having killed three more people for the cause. Roth doesn't tell the whole story blow by blow but gives us the essentials in luminous, overlapping bits. In the end, the book positively resonates with the anguish of a father who has utterly lost his daughter. Highly recommended.
-?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"

"The Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris completed July, 2011

In this book, as Harris makes a case for the objectifying morality, that there are objective ways to look at right and wrong.  He attempts to show moral relativism as a cop out in the sense that it is a way to rationalize not thinking through the entire problem of morality.     Here is what Richard Dawkins said of the work:

"Beautifully written as they were (the elegance of his prose is a distilled blend of honesty and clarity) there was little in Sam Harris's previous books that couldn't have been written by any of his fellow "horsemen" of the "new atheism." This book is different, though every bit as readable as the other two. I was one of those who had unthinkingly bought into the hectoring myth that science can say nothing about morals. To my surprise, The Moral Landscape has changed all that for me. It should change it for philosophers too. Philosophers of mind have already discovered that they can't duck the study of neuroscience, and the best of them have raised their game as a result. Sam Harris shows that the same should be true of moral philosophers, and it will turn their world exhilaratingly upside down. As for religion, and the preposterous idea that we need God to be good, nobody wields a sharper bayonet than Sam Harris."


In Harris's brave search for moral truths, he is bound to bruise a few oppositional egos, but he also will teach us some important lessons.  This I'm sure of.  


This review is very interesting:

In reading all the reviews of his paperback edition (298 of them) this morning, I was shocked how immoral most of the reviews were. It is as if someone had organized a concerted effort to attack Dr. Harris argumentum ad hominen. Repeatedly, what are the virile strengths of the book were maliciously misinterpreted, twisted and distorted to such a degree that it is apparent that the majority of the reviewers had actually not read his clean, immaculate and compelling prose style. He is a 1st rate philosopher with an uncluttered psyche (as one would aspect from a cognitive scientist)! What was most disturbing to me were the tens of hundreds of the writers who "praised" his book, only to insert their own worthless dribble in their review of his book. As he simply, passionately and profoundly asserts, there is NO meeting place between Science and Religion. If we want more social inequality, malice, unncessary crulty and misery---by all means promote the verbal nonsense of Religion based in obscurantism and ancient texts. I know my ancient languages quite well---Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Egyptian, Babylonian (Akkadian & Sumerian) and Sanskrit. These ancient texts have nothing to teach the post-modern, post-secular age! In fact, we will become extinct as a species, if the Scientific community does not heed Dr. Harris' clarion call. Facts and Values both obtain within a Belief system. On the great questions of Meaning, Morality and Life's Larger Purpose [see p. 1], it is only Science that can contribute meaningful information. Because his mind is so moral, pure and translucent, he incurs the hatred from the religious scum---lunatics, pedophiles, sadists, misers, & scoundrels---who hide behind the empty nonsense of an imaginary god to further their deprivating acts of autistic fear, anger & pain (what breeds violence)! This book is formidable and monumental! It is a pity that it was not written two centuries ago when the youthful Romantic poet Shelley was expelled from Oxford University for writing his treatise, "On the Necessity of Atheism." The anti-intellectual reactions to this book (by presumed intellectuals) is proof of its singular genius! It will be read for the next four centuries (if we survive as a species) to the mutual advancement of the human race!

"In Heaven As On Earth" by M. Scott Peck completed June, 2011

This is a very imaginative look at what heaven may be like for a psychiatrist.  The fiction is not that believable but Peck's creativity is amazing.  Here's what Publisher's Weekly said about the book:

"True to its title, Peck's second novel for adults (after A Bed by the Window) imagines an afterlife which, through a number of set pieces, dramatizes some of the earthly concerns of his other books, including the perpetual bestseller, The Road Less Traveled. Daniel, a psychiatrist and successful author much like Peck himself, awakens in a small green room to discover that he has survived his physical death. Hovering about, disembodied but alert, he meets a pair of "greeters" who inform him that heaven, hell and purgatory?Judeo-Christian ideas pervade the narrative.  Ghosts are governed by a "Principle of Freedom." soul projects what it wishes to experience?though sometimes, as with Daniel's green refuge, projections are created by committees in order to ease the "Adjustment" from life to the formlessness of heaven. Peck's hell is a garbage can in which about 140,000 souls hide under rocks, too terrified to accept their freedom to choose a greater reality. In time, Daniel learns that purgatory has to do with clinging to mental and emotional attachments; to help the souls there, the most attentive and loving psychotherapy imaginable is provided. Several further encounters?with his deceased wife, a son, a seductive woman help Daniel let go of his own attachments until he is ready to join a committee. Though talky and lacking dramatic momentum, this story, more a consoling philosophical vision than a full-bodied novel, should appeal to Peck's readership."


I would agree that the work is more like a novella and a "consoling philosophical vision."   Definitely worth the time to read it and gain some insight into the character of a great writer and psychiatrist.  

"Nemesis" by Philip Roth completed May, 2011

I found this to be an extraordinary book.  It was the first book I've read by Roth and I'm convinced that he is a master story teller.  To read this review from Publisher's Weekly would make one think it is Roth's weakest effort.

"Roth continues his string of small, anti–Horatio Alger novels (The Humbling; etc.) with this underwhelming account of Bucky Cantor, the young playground director of the Chancellor Avenue playground in 1944 Newark. When a polio outbreak ravages the kids at the playground, Bucky, a hero to the boys, becomes spooked and gives in to the wishes of his fiancée, who wants him to take a job at the Pocono summer camp where she works. But this being a Roth novel, Bucky can't hide from his fate. Fast-forward to 1971, when Arnie Mesnikoff, the subtle narrator and one of the boys from Chancellor, runs into Bucky, now a shambles, and hears the rest of his story of piercing if needless guilt, bad luck, and poor decisions. Unfortunately, Bucky's too simple a character to drive the novel, and the traits that make him a good playground director--not very bright, quite polite, beloved, straight thinking--make him a lackluster protagonist. For Roth, it's surprisingly timid."


In my opinion, it's a well told tale about moral stamina in a very morally grey world, and quite brilliant.