Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35007 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

A defence of belief - from a non-believer
There were certain lecturers at university - Hans Kornberg springs to mind - whose lectures nobody would miss. It wasn't because they were necessarily the crucially important courses. It was because there was something about the style of the lecturer - his or her humour, perhaps, or delivery - which captivated the undergraduate audience and held it until the end of the course.

Reading this book by Berlinski reminded me of some of those lecturers. Various things about it were captivating. The layers of meaning that can be found in so many of the sentences; the deft way in which opposing opinions are dismantled; the shocking mild political incorrectnesses; the carefully-measured putdowns; the rhetorical interaction with opponents and readers.

Berlinski is writing a book in defence of belief in a god. Nothing unusual about that - Dawkins' book "The God Delusion", and similar ones, have sparked a whole publishing industry in response, many of which I've already reviewed on Amazon. What is most unusual about this book is that Berlinski is not a religious believer - and yet he is quite adamant that belief in God is not unreasonable. Furthermore, he is substantially better informed - biblically, philosophically, scientifically - than Dawkins, Hitchens or Harris.

He makes his case persuasively. For example, in response to the insistence that "miracles don't happen" by anti-theists, he points out that whilst we can understand the chemical process by which the eye "sees" something, we don't have a clue about what perception really is, and just because it is part of our everyday experience doesn't mean that it is inappropriate to describe it as a miracle. In response to the dogmatic insistence that we are no more than animals, he points out the fact that if that is what we are in biological terms, then it simply demonstrates that biology is telling us nothing useful about what it means to be human at all. He demonstrates that the theories that supposedly prove that God isn't necessary rarely do what they set out to, and say more about the presuppositions of the proponent than about the nature of the universe.

As I read the book, I found myself increasingly puzzled as to why, given his dissatisfaction with arguments against the existence of God, he should not believe in God himself. The dedication - to his father, who was lost in Auschwitz - perhaps provides one clue, and another big clue is provided in the last chapter - "The Cardinal and his Cathedral." Here he writes movingly of his life in science, and his hope - perhaps a little forlorn now - that despite its failures, science will one day provide a coherent means of understanding the world.

Two quibbles. The first is that the book could really have done with footnotes or endnotes for the many references. The second is that the odd provocative piece of political incorrectness could have been avoided - not because it does any harm in itself, but because it provides his opponents with a red herring card to play against him (to mix metaphors). But the bottom line is that this is an excellent, highly quotable book, which I intend to pass on to many other thoughtful people.

NEWSFLASH: DON QUIXOTE TILTS AT WINDMILL AND WINS
David Berlinski, mathematician, philosopher, and novelist, has produced a book of great value. He presents, in literate format, ideas from problems in evolutionary biology and many branches of physics from the perspective of a real, live human being, and not as a mere scientist vaunting his technical prowess via condescending popularism. To avoid putting anyone off, I must add that although his mathematical prowess is also clear, there are no equations or graphs herein. As Professor Hawking was once informed, each equation you add reduces your readership by half. This type of book is a major feat even done half well, but Dr. Berlinski succeeds in nearly all detail and quite largely in his overall vision.

Those interested in his best criticisms of evolutionary theory, very helpful quote-mining, and his roasting of Dawkins and Dennett (I laughed out loud at one point, but I am always disposed to laugh at them, so this may be no great feat), may want to start around page 134 and go to around page 205. No onerous read so few pages, but be forewarned that his great knowledge and flexible style enables him slip back and forth from cosmology to, say, Stephen Meyer's `The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories', in the shortest intellectual space. His scepticism of evolutionary theory as promoted from Darwin to today references an impressive array of evolutionary doubts of professional biologists, including the venerable Alfred Russel Wallace (the `other Darwin'), Richard Lewontin, Prof. Vicki Friesen, Joel Kingsolver, Eugene Koonin, Motoo Kimura, Emile Zuckerkandl, and others such as famous bone-men like Stephen Jay Gould.

On the other hand, those interested in his take on the hardest aspects of the hardest sciences, cosmology, quantum mechanics, the Standard Model, the Landscape, the Anthropic Principle, string theory, Kurt Godel, and Einstein's General Theory, will have to read, mark, and learn from page 63 to around page 134. I am no expert in any branch of mathematics, I can apply a t-test or a chi-squared test I suppose, but I am sure that even those without any real maths who want to read this will get a lot from it. It is not just that the science is surveyed, but how it is surveyed, and what it means, if anything (even the name `string theory' puts me teeth on edge), and how it is partially framed within the larger picture of human knowledge.

But the above summaries do the book a radical injustice. His approach is deeply philosophical and warmly human without being verbose or obscure, his vision is wide and clear. He wants all of our knowledge and truth to cohere. He believes that truth is one, and that though paradoxes may abound, in principle they are all resolvable. This is his credo. The apparent contradictions of science and theology simply are apparent. It is just that the mind of God may be the only place where they fully make sense. He is generous in spirit and wants the Two Cultures of the Sciences and the Humanities to bow and converse in civilised friendship. He does not assume that the vague Enlightenment faith in the values of Reason and Progress are all that there is to say in a creed for the human race in the twenty-first century.

This is the first of his books which I have read, and I am now not a Berlinski worshipper, I am merely a fan. I have one major theoretical criticism to make, which I must admit at this point only appears to me probably worth making after a single reading of his book. He is very ardent to criticise Scientism, he is happy to mock it, he does this well. [Scientism, definition: the belief that only Science, with a capital S, is to be idolised alone as the new omnipotence and omniscience which will save us all from the long dark night of pre-scientific ignorance and superstition. It is a faith and a broad church, led by a coalition of high priests in white coats over corduroy jackets, taken from disciplines such as biology, sociology , physics, philosophy, chemistry, and straw basket-weaving.] His opponents have felt the sting of his lash and have lashed back. Myself, as soon as I finished applauding, I mailed him a package containing a new bullwhip and an energy drink. But, as the serving boy said, "anon, anon Sir...": he does not stand far enough back from Science to see it for what it is. He is still a scientist with a human inside struggling to get out: essentially a scientist with a crystalline awareness that Science is not all there is to life. Values, beauties, morals, meanings, emotions, futures, and intimations of immortality are glories that no equation or gene pool ever encompassed, or ever will. All this he knows. But he fails to supply a definition of science itself sufficient to enable him to fully make his own case and achieve escape velocity from the earth to which he is bound by both gravity and a partial philosophy. His definition of science on page xiv in the preface is inductive, that is, by example only: `science is a word exhausted by its examples' - he gives four `profound' examples: Newtonian mechanics, Maxwell's field theory, Einstein's relativity, and quantum mechanics. But Plato (whom he quotes well), would have roasted him on a skewer for this. The roasting spit would be, "What is it in all examples of science that enables you to say that they are science? What principle is common in all these examples?" Mechanics obviously. Science is how things work, cause-and-effect. A scientist is a mechanic, the cleverest sort, but only a mechanic. A human being is a thing of values, reason, meaningful relationships, a soul as well as a body. A book to read, I dare you to be human.

Incendiary!
This is an incendiary attack on the New Atheism by a scientist with a quick mind and even quicker wit. Writing from the point of view of a secular Jew, Berlinski exposes the extremely tenuous arguments put up by those who have made fortunes out of selling books which say that science proves God does not exist. This book is a highly readable polemic which shows just how far the high priests of atheism are from proving their points. It also points out the historical dangers inherent in their approach. As Berlinski says: 'What Hitler did not believe and what Stalin did not believe and what Mao did not believe and what the SS did not believe and what the Gestapo did not believe and what the NKVD did not believe and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, gauleiters, and a thousand party hacks did not believe was that God was watching what they were doing. And as far as we can tell, very few of those carrying out the horrors of the twentieth century worried overmuch that God was watching what they were doing either. That is, after all, the meaning of a secular society.' An exposee of the shallowness of atheism as well as a warning from history. Highly recommended.