Tag Archives: naturalism

David Berlinski’s The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

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This review will be regrettably brief since, for some reason, I have waited a very long time to write this since finishing David Berlinski’s The Devil’s Delusion.  Even so, I wanted to post at least a strong recommendation of the work because of the significant contribution I believe it makes to the literature responding to the so-called “New Atheism.”  In fact, I would count Berlinski’s work up there with (though still beneath) David Bentley Hart’s insofar as responses to atheism go, though the works are very different in so many ways.

It is a perplexing and intriguing book from a modern polymath.  Berlinski is not a Christian and claims no particular religious beliefs at all, other than, I presume, theism.  He is Jewish by birth and a mathematician by profession.  He possesses a frequently humorous, sometimes eccentric and oftentimes dazzling intellect that probably warrants him the admittedly overused monikor of “rennaissance man.” He speaks of mathematics, philosophy, science, physics and theology in ways that reveal significant study in these field, and, refreshigly, he does so with an often-moving literary flourish.

Essentially, Berlinski is skewering the pretentiousness and patronizing absurdities of the assumptions of modernity, and, particularly, of scientific modernity, in this work.  He paints a picture of theories-run-amuck in many quarters of the scientific community.  These theories are then dogmatized, Berlinski suggests, by a thin-skinned and tight-knit community which utilizes a slick media machine to demonize any who dare to question the assumptions and conclusions of this machine.  The victims, he argues, are an unsuspecting public who cower before the double barrell approach of scientific obfuscation and media aggressiveness.

In saying these things, Berlinski is not pandering to ignorant, anti-science bigots who want to be shielded from uncomfortable conclusions.  Rather, he demonstrates his thesis in profound and provocative ways that I can only encourage you to read.  You may or may not agree with all of Berlinski’s conclusions, but I daresay you cannot read this work without appreciating his case that a great many of the mantras of modernity, scientific and philosophical, are buttressed by establishment-driven and media-propagated agendas.

Read this book.

 

Alister and Joanna Collicut McGrath’s The Dawkins Delusion?

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Subtitled, Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine, Alister McGrath and his wife Joanna Collicut have written a real gem of a book in The Dawkins Delusion? Written primarily by Alister McGrath, one of Evanglicalism’s shining intellectual lights, this small book is a significant contribution to the Christian response to the work of famed British atheist Richard Dawkins.

It is intriguing for many reasons.  I found McGrath’s revelation of the frustration that many atheist academics feel toward Dawkins and his work to be insightful and intriguing.  In short, many of Dawkins’ own colleagues find the frankly unfettered hatred that Dawkins shows religion to be unnecessary and injurious to their cause.  Many also seem to feel that Dawkins’ own form of atheist fundamentalism is not very thoughtful.  Along these same lines, I was struck by Dawkin’s dismissal of significant scientific voices who dare to say that science, by its very nature, cannot dismiss with the possibility of God.

McGrath’s handling of the charge that religion leads men to do evil things was even-handed and thoughtful.  He persuasively demonstrates the fundamental fallacies of such a notion and rightly calls Dawkins to task for such a sweeping and naive assertion.

In all, though, McGrath is strongest in his discussion of the nature of science and its limits.  He did work in chemistry and molecular biophysics at Oxford and speaks with helpful insight to these questions.

If you would like a relatively brief but thought-provoking assesment of Dawkins’ main arguments and the problems inherent therein, check out McGrath’s book.  It is very helpful and very well done.