two book talk

Book talk is usually pariah on this blog, which is more stuff-talk or family-talk. But I just can't help myself. So here are two books of interest for an afternoon.

First, I couldn’t help but notice the book by neurophysicist and author Sam Harris’ book, The End of Faith, featured at #5 on the Bestsellers chart in a February edition of Publishers Weekly. Harris makes hay, and a few greenbacks, out of tried-and-true Hume-and-Voltaire-era atheism. “Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for all eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.” This book won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction, with its bordering-on-hate-speech message that “even moderate religion is a menace because it leads us to respect ‘and cherish the idea that certain fantastic propositions can be believed without evidence.’ ” As Harris writes, “Anyone who seriously claims to be a practicing alchemist today will have disqualified himself for positions of responsibility in our society. Faith-based religion must suffer the same slide into obsolescence.” And what would he put in the place of religious faith? Why, the American religion of choice today, a syncretic mix of Eastern mysticism, philosophy, common sense and neuroscience. (What was that critique that Schweitzer made about the first Search?) Apparently, Mr. Harris is setting himself up to be this generation’s Bertrand Russel. As John Derbyshire of the New York Sun says in his review article, “To sometimes Russell devotees, this is a trip down Memory Lane. . . . Old Bertie would be proud.”

Second is a marvelous little volume by D. Q. McInerny, Merton scholar and lecturer in logic at Notre Dame and the University of Kentucky, entitled Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking. I purchased it on Tuesday afternoon, when I had hours of nothing ahead of me and a bookstore around me (Gadamer and Heidegger weren’t available). McIndery manages to survey logic, review basic argumentation, and point out hazards to good thinking all in 130 pages. Yet, his style is what charms. William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White are the godparents of this cogniscenti rudimenti, as in, “I hope that Being Logical might in some degree succeed in doing for the cause of good thinking what The Elements of Style has done for that of good writing.” Being Logical finds a place right next to D. A. Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies on my shelf. Both should be read before every meal and at bedtime (and one should consider purchasing audiobooks). Here’s an excerpt of Being Logical from the Random House website.