Kathryn Joyce - Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement

I bought Quiverfull a month ago after having read Infidel and wanting to know more about the situation of women in religions other than Islam. It was a very good book, but I don't have a lot to say about it.

As I read Quiverfull I consistently felt a combination of horror and disgust at the idea that not only is there a growing movement that insists that women be subservient to (and essentially property of) men but that it is enthusiastically embraced by many women. Equally horrifying to me is the sheltered subculture that has been created as part of this movement in which children are being raised with limited exposure to ideas that contradict their own. These children are part of enormous families that their parents hope will become a new army of the lord that triumphs through sheer numbers. The girls, meanwhile, are raised as the property of their fathers until such time as he gives them to a "suitable" husband. As terrible as this way of raising children is, however, even worse is the idea of the submission of wives to their husbands to the point of condoning spousal abuse. Joyce's numerous illustrations of women being told that the emotional and physical abuse that their husbands were inflicting was their fault for not properly submitting to them left me cold.

The one criticism I had of the book was the people that Joyce focused on as examples of former members of the movement. She focuses on two families in particular, but both of those families came to the Quiverfull movement later in life, embraced it for a time, and then left. I would have liked to see Joyce examine the situations of people (particularly women) who left the movement after having been raised in it. It is possible that it was impossible to find such examples, but even if this was so that fact alone would have been interesting enough to merit a mention of the way in which the movement takes over one's life and makes escape (or even the desire to escape) impossible.

Overall I would highly recommend Quiverfull as an incredibly interesting and somewhat frightening read.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Infidel

I bought Infidel the other day because it had been highly recommended in a number of other books that I've read recently. I don't have much to say about it other than that it was an amazingly interesting book that everyone should read.

There were a couple of particularly interesting points in the book. The first was that contrary to some of the reviews I've read the book does not paint all Muslims with the same brush. Ali makes no attempt to argue that all Muslim people believe the same things. As an example, her father believed that female genital mutilation and beating his wife were barbaric, but still saw no problem in arranging his daughter's wedding without her consent.

The biggest strength of Infidel in my opinion is its denunciation of moral relativism in her argument that Holland's attempt at complete respect for the cultures of refugees allows cultural traditions that are harmful for members of society to survive and thrive. I recently had an argument in class with a friend on the issue of moral relativism, and I'd like to show him the passages in Infidel where Ali talks about genital mutilation and spousal abuse. The mutilation sections in particular would provide especially strong evidence in support of my argument that just because a practice comes from a tradition that is foreign to me does not mean that it cannot be criticized. The protection of the vulnerable regardless of who they are or where they are from is far more important than not offending someone by speaking out against their beliefs or practices. Just because someone is born into a culture that treats them like near-valueless property does not mean that they are any less worthy of protection and basic rights than someone who is born into our culture.

Infidel was an incredible book, and I would highly recommend it. I would especially recommend it to those liberals who feel like criticizing the cultural or religious traditions of others is an unbreakable taboo. As Sam Harris puts it, currently the only ones loudly denouncing the ills in other cultures are those on the extreme right, who do so with the wrong motivations and the wrong methods.

Michelle Goldberg - Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism

I bought Kingdom Coming the other day because it looked like it would be an interesting take on the political aspirations of the Christian far right in the United States, and it definitely was. Goldberg made a number of good points, although the fact that the book is now seven years old means that some of her arguments are somewhat out of date.

What I found most interesting about Kingdom Coming was Goldberg's look at the various strategies used by Christian nationalists to gain power in the United States. She makes very good observations about issues ranging from the problems of children home schooled by Christian nationalist parents to the extensive use of revisionist history to "prove" that America was founded as a Christian nation and that only recently has it become secular.

Much of the book was dedicated to looking at the various fronts of the so-called culture wars in the United States. I thought that Goldberg made a very interesting point by arguing that with anti-Semitism and racism largely pushed to the side by Christian nationalists (it is still present, just not officially acknowledged or supported) the idea of a "homosexual agenda" has filled the void left by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion prior to World War Two. When discussing the battles over teaching intelligent design and abstinence-only in classrooms despite the scientific evidence against both, Goldberg made excellent points regarding the evangelical Christian use of "truth." In the case of sex education, she quotes proponents of abstinence-only programs as saying that they don't care whether or not the programs prevent pregnancy or the spread of STDs, only that students are taught the "truth" about the consequences of sin. For intelligent design's supporters the argument seems to be that it doesn't matter how much scientific evidence is against them, the only way to actually have the truth is through references to the divine.

Goldberg's closing section on how those on the secular left can push back against Christian nationalists outlined a number of very interesting strategies that involve a complete reformation of the American electoral system and a call for those on the left to become just as politically organized (especially on local levels) and as loud as those on the right.

Since the book was written about seven years ago a lot has changed, and some of this is reflected in the epilogue written in December 2006 after the American mid-term elections. Not only has a Democratic president been elected twice since then, but political support for marriage equality, which Goldberg described as political suicide in 2006, has become commonplace among Democrats and has started to creep into Republican ranks as well. I would be very interested to see an updated and revised version of the book published with current developments taken into consideration.

Kingdom Coming presents a terrifying vision of what America might become if the religious right continues to gain power, but thankfully it looks like that tide has turned somewhat. I would definitely recommend the book despite it being somewhat out of date.

Nicholson Baker - Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

I decided to take a break from atheism-related books for a day and turn back to World War Two. I bought Human Smoke years ago when I still had some vestiges of pacifism from my Mennonite upbringing. I wanted to see if there were any good pacifist arguments against the war, but Human Smoke provided none. Instead it provided a huge number of out of context quotes and incidents that generally placed the blame for the war on Great Britain and America. There were so many things wrong with this book that it is difficult to know where to start except to say that it is very easy to prove any point you want when you only use carefully selected snippets, and even easier when you provide a bibliography but absolutely no in-text citations to show where your quotes and anecdotes are from. Baker's style of using these snippets with no personal interpretation allows him to portray the book as being an unbiased look at just the facts, but his failure to examine all of the facts quickly shows his biases. Overall, Human Smoke is designed to give the impression that the Allies were the true mass butchers of the war, while the Germans only hurt the Jews and truly wanted peace and the Japanese were dragged into a war against their will after barely harming anyone. All of this is of course completely ludicrous.

I will start by looking at Baker's perspective that the war was the fault of the Allies, specifically Churchill and Roosevelt. Baker provides huge numbers of quotes to show that Churchill and Roosevelt were both eager to get into the war against the Axis. All of this is true, they did want to get into the war, but this eagerness and their work towards it does not mean that it was wrong for those countries to go to war. Quite the contrary, as I will look at below. Frequently throughout the book Baker tries to paint a picture that Germany and Japan did not want to get into the war, but that they were pushed into it by the Allies. Bakers claim that the German high command had no taste for war is bullshit, what they had no taste for was the idea that a corporal would take their power and lead a war. They were perfectly happy both when Hitler was rearming them and when the Germans were initially successful in the war. The crowning moment of Baker's willful blindness comes when he states that Hitler's peace offer to Great Britain just after conquering France was the dictator's "last appeal to reason." Painting Hitler as a man of reason who badly wanted peace that Britain wouldn't give him is not only factually incorrect, it is disgusting. Baker is equally bad when discussing the Japanese. He claims through his selective quotations that the Japanese had no taste for war with the United States because they didn't want war at all, when the truth is that they didn't want to fight the Americans because they were not certain that they could win. His claim that the American oil embargo on Japan forced Japan to attack the United States is correct on the surface, but he ignores the atrocities in China that Japan had been using that oil to perpetrate. He further claims that the Japanese navy ignored the "provocation" of American oil tankers sailing past them to Russia but leaves the impression that they did so because they didn't want war, not because attacking those tankers would have been a strategically idiotic move to make.

Another of Baker's major faults in Human Smoke is his wholehearted acceptance of the naivete of pacifism, specifically Gandhi's brand of it. His frequent mention of Gandhi gives the impression that satyagraha would have worked, when it clearly would not have. Gandhi's brand of resistance is extremely effective, but only when directed at a society that is unwilling to engage in mass slaughter. The British were willing to imprison tens of thousands of resisters, fire upon demonstrators, and kill some innocent people, but under no circumstances would they have rounded up thousands of resisters and executed them on the spot. Having that line meant that Gandhi's protest could be successful because the British were eventually pushed to a point where they either had to cross the line or give in to India's demands. Under no circumstances would that have worked against Hitler or the Japanese who both showed that they had no problems with rounding up and murdering people by the thousands in full view of the world. Another major flaw with Baker's use of pacifist arguments is that he seems to think that war could have been avoided if only Britain had made peace with Germany or the United States had disarmed and been friendly towards the Japanese. It is true that had the Allies done these things the Second World War as we know it would not have happened. Instead, the Germans would have swept through Europe and Africa with little resistance and would likely have had enough resources to push back against Russia, finishing their Final Solution, enslaving the Slavs of Eastern Europe, and setting up an empire that would have been unequaled in the world. The Japanese would have been able to continue their march through Asia unabated raping and slaughtering as they went. The point is that Britain and America becoming pacifist nations wouldn't have saved lives, it would just have exposed different lives to death (and probably more of them). Baker seems also to ignore that Chamberlain tried the peaceful approach before the war began but all that did was encourage Hitler to keep going. Had the Allies stepped in to enforce the Versailles Treaty or if they had put their feet down to stop the Anschluss or the invasion of Czechoslovakia the war in Europe might have been over before it began. It is remarkable how seldom Baker shows actual proof of pacifist actions by German or Japanese citizens the way he does British or American. Clearly this is because such actions were extremely rare despite Baker's claims that those countries really only wanted peace. Baker's portrayal of pacifism in Human Smoke does no more than convince me that when applied on a national scale (as opposed to individually with conscientious objectors) it is a position of profound selfishness. Those pacifists clamoring for the American government to disarm and stop the Japanese embargo or stop the Lend-Lease program and make peace with Hitler were doing no more than saying that so long as they didn't have to die or kill it was perfectly alright for other people that they would never meet to die instead.

Finally, I want to look at another theme that runs through Human Smoke, that of the Allies as butchers. It is completely true that the Allies committed what can only be termed atrocities, as it is that Churchill was a profoundly bad peacetime leader who bungled the handling of Indian independence and often acted with savagery. It remains true however that regardless of the bad decisions made and atrocities committed during the war, not having gone to war would have been undoubtedly worse for the world as a whole. The choice was not, as Baker implies towards the beginning of the book, between accepting Churchill's decisions and having war or rejecting them and not. The choice was between accepting the decisions of a flawed leader and having a war that in the end stopped Nazism and Japanese imperialism and rejecting the war and allowing the horrors of Hitler and Hirohito to run rampant over the world.

Baker ends the book by saying that the pacifists of the 1940s "failed, but they were right." I would rephrase that to say that they failed because of their ludicrous level of naivete about human nature and how the world works. Pacifism is a great concept that fails as soon as the other guy isn't a pacifist and but is content to let you sit there spouting your platitudes while he slaughters others. I'm not sure that I can really recommend Human Smoke, but it was certainly interesting to see how easy it is to put together a revisionist history that is on the surface supported by carefully chosen facts.

David Mills - Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism

As with Godless, I picked up Atheist Universe a few weeks ago on the advise of Amazon. Overall, I was disappointed by the book. While I agreed with many of Mills' conclusions, I found that his writing style was often poor and that his arguments were not fully thought out or well presented.

The book starts out badly, with Mills engaged in a hypothetical interview in which his atheism is questioned. The "interview" is rather tedious and although it raises some good points and refutes some common misconceptions, Mills also uses it to make somewhat bizarre claims. In response to a question about whether or not atheists celebrate Christmas, he asserts that we instead "celebrate the Winter Solstice." I have never met anyone, atheist or otherwise, who celebrates the Winter Solstice (although I'm sure some people do), but I do know many atheists who celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday. As the book progresses, Mills also outlines what he claims to be creationist arguments but are for the most part generalities. Certainly his hypothetical arguments represent the views of some creationists, but he generally chooses to illustrate the most simplistic of creationist arguments. It does not help the case of atheism to set up creationist straw men.

His biggest failed argument in my opinion is his discussion of the existence of hell. I am not entirely sure why the discussion of whether hell exists or not is included in the book, since this argument is entirely based on the belief that god exists in the first place, but Mills has for some reason devoted a chapter to it. Taking a look at the chapter on the basis of evaluation the merits of its arguments shows a number of places where his logic fails. First, he uses the analogy of a boy who deliberately breaks a window and whose mother promises to punish him. There are two possible reasons for the punishment, according to Mills; either to punish him for his actions or to deter him from doing it again. Since only the latter option serves a practical purpose, Mills believes that option two is the real reason why the boy is punished. This is ridiculous, as punishment based on retribution is extremely common. One only has to look at the vindictive nature of gang conflict or the legal practices in many Islamist states (in Saudi Arabia, for example, a man was recently sentenced to paralysis in punishment for accidentally paralyzing his friend). The second major flaw in his logic comes when he applies the lessons he has drawn from the window analogy to the actions of god. He states that since hell serves no purpose either to rehabilitate (since the people there are not getting out) or to deter future crimes by the person (again, they're there for the long haul) then its only purpose is retribution. Since this serves no logical purpose then god would not have created it and therefore hell doesn't exist (I would argue that since god doesn't exist then neither does hell, but apparently that's too easy for Mills). There are numerous problems with this line of argument. First, if one accepts the existence of god and therefore the possibility of hell, then hell could hypothetically be serving the same purpose as the death penalty, namely to deter others from committing the crime that the guilty party has (this doesn't work, but it that doesn't seem to matter to the proponents of either capital punishment or hell). Second, there is no reason to think, as Mills apparently does, that the Judeo-Christian god would not create hell solely as a place to punish the guilty with no further purpose in terms of either rehabilitation or deterrence of the guilty or the public. The old testament is rife with examples that prove Yahweh to be a petty, jealous, and vindictive god capable of wiping out whole cities for not believing in him or of tearing children limb from limb via bears for insulting his prophets. Such a god would surely be only to happy to create a place to eternally torture those who disobey him.

All of this is not to say that Mills does not make some good arguments. He does a good job of pointing out the hypocrisy of believing in miracles by (as he puts it) counting the hits and ignoring the misses. It is common for people to claim that miraculous healings are god's will, while sudden deaths are either put down to random chance or are part of a "divine plan." He also does a good job of pointing out that liberal Christians and proponents of intelligent design (as opposed to creationism) are arbitrarily choosing which parts of the bible to acknowledge as truth and which to ignore for their own convenience.

In general I disliked Atheist Universe. It was by turns tedious and poorly argued and in my opinion does not really advance the critical scholarship in support of atheism. Setting up straw men and logically flawed arguments only serves to allow christian apologists to claim victory in debate when they should not be able to. I would not recommend the book as a tool in convincing a believer that their beliefs are untrue.

Dan Barker - Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists

I bought Godless a few weeks ago after it was recommended to me on Amazon, and I have mixed feelings about it. I really enjoyed the beginning and end where Barker talked about his own life, but I didn't care for the arguments in the middle terribly much. Partially this was because he is repeating the same arguments that I have read in so many other books lately, and partially because I did not find his style of argument nearly as interesting as Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, or Russell.

By far the most interesting part of Godless is Barker's retrospective look on his life as an evangelical preacher. It was fascinating to see the inner workings of so-called faith healings as well as how Barker's belief that the world would soon end coloured his worldview. His tiny shifts in opinion from being a fundamentalist to a liberal Christian to an atheist were also very interesting, particularly as he talked about how he didn't really realize that he was changing.

As I said, his arguments were not as interesting to me as those made in other books, but he did make two very compelling points. First was his look at how if god exists and justifies his orders to humans then he is appealing to a force or ethic outside of himself and is therefore not the source of morality, but that if he does not justify his orders then he is no more than a petty tyrant. The second compelling point was his look at how the Jesus story fits the pattern of other legends. For one thing, it has many of the same elements that older mythologies had (messiah figure born of a virgin, death and resurrection of the messiah figure, etc). Second, the growth of the miraculous elements in the story as time went by follows the typical pattern of legend growth. The earliest accounts of Jesus' life (written by Paul) have no miracles, the next (the Gospel of Mark) has a few, all the way until the most recent (John) which has many. Finally, for those who claim that the growth of Christianity occurred far too fast for it to have been based on a legend Barker points out a variety of quick-spreading legends that have influenced many including the Millerites (now Seventh Day Adventists) and the Mormons.

In general I enjoyed Godless, but I wish that Barker had devoted more time and detail to his life within Christianity and his path to leaving it rather than on his arguments against the existence of God.

Charles P. Pierce - Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free

I found Idiot America through a list of recommended books on Amazon, and I decided that I would give it a chance despite being somewhat leery of the title. For the most part I enjoyed it and I didn't really disagree with many of Pierce's arguments. However, I found that it dragged on somewhat and at times Pierce belabored his point.

Pierce's basic premise is that the rise of anti-intellectualism in the United States coupled with a redefinition of what is the truth (essentially truth has become anything that sells, is believed by a large number of people, and is said loudly enough) has led to a dangerous decline in America. Pierce gives an interesting background on what he says is the history of public "cranks" in America, essentially those individuals who expressed ludicrous ideas and attracted some attention, but who were generally ignored and were therefore harmless. According to Pierce, the existence of mass media has allowed those cranks to gain exposure to a wide audience and a platform that gives them authority, which places them in positions of influence and power that they should not occupy. This situation is exacerbated by the tendency of many major TV networks and other news outlets to give equal or greater time to self-professed "experts" on topics that they are not qualified to speak about as they do to actual experts.

Pierce looks at a number of issues to illustrate just how truth is easily redefined. He uses the example of the non-existent NAFTA super-highway as one issue that went from being a crazy conspiracy to a national discussion (and had influence in federal elections) because of the vicious cycle of the news media giving it coverage because people were interested, which made more people interested, which fueled more coverage. Pierce also looks at the right-wing dominated medium of talk radio as an area where truth is redefined by talking heads who have a wide audience eager to lap up what they dish out.

Pierce then goes on to illustrate how this redefinition of truth has given rise to what he calls "Idiot America," which is manipulated by those in power (particularly the right) to drown out opposition and sell their spin on issues. He surveys everything from the Terry Schiavo case to creationism to global warming deniers to the Iraq War. In general I found this to be the least interesting section of the book. It was well written and researched, but Pierce at times seemed to be beating his point into the reader, which got somewhat tedious. This is especially true in the lengthy section on the Iraq War, although that might have been because many of his points have been made repeatedly over the last decade by a wide range of other people.

Overall I enjoyed Idiot America, but I definitely found the first half or so of the book to be better than the last half. It also was definitely not a book that I think would change many minds on the issue, it was more in the style of preaching to the choir.

Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

I bought The Greatest Show on Earth the other day on the advice of a guy working in the bookstore, and I quite enjoyed it. I have very little to say about it, however, largely because while it was interesting I didn't find anything terribly controversial that I would want to highlight or disagree with.

Dawkins does an excellent job of outlining the way in which evolution works and why it is the logical answer for how life developed. He also effectively debunks the idea of creationism (not that it really needed any more debunking). One of the most interesting things about the book was how Dawkins pointed out that the creationist argument about "missing links" in the fossil record was faulty not just because there aren't nearly as many missing links as creationists would like to believe but also because the evidence for evolution would be overwhelming even if no fossils had ever been recovered. He also points out that this is a side to the argument that creationists avoid, hammering away instead at the fact that there is not a complete fossil record.

The Greatest Show on Earth was an incredibly interesting read, and I would recommend it not just to those who question the validity of evolution but also those who know that evolution is a fact but need more resources to effectively argue their case.

Bertrand Russell - Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

I bought Why I Am Not a Christian earlier this week, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was particularly struck by the fact that despite the essays being written 70-90 years ago they were not just still relevant today but were also surprisingly progressive in terms of sexual ethics and other controversial topics.

One of the major points that Russell argues against is the idea that Christianity is the best source for morality in society. Firstly, he points out that the morals taught in the bible are not really the best morals for society, but rather than focusing on the old testament laws like so many critics do he looks at the new testament. He argues that even if Jesus actually said everything he is claimed to have said (which Russell says is very unlikely), he was neither very wise (he incorrectly predicted that he would return during the lifetimes of those alive when he was) or very kind (as he fully endorses the idea of eternal damnation). Second, Russell argues that despite what it claims, the church endorses an ethic of abandoning one's family as evidenced by Jesus' requirement that his disciples do so and Jesus' own disrespectful treatment of his mother. Third, Russell makes the claim that religion has in fact been a major source of cruelty and harm in the world, pointing out that the more religious a society is the more likely it is that that society is cruel. For evidence of this he points to events ranging from the Inquisition to witch hunts to the persecution of Christians by other Christians during the Reformation. Eighty years later, this argument is echoed by Harris' commentary on the Islamic countries of the Middle East. Finally, Russell counters the arguments of those who say that non-Christian dogmas like Nazism and Soviet communism do more harm than religion by arguing that it is unlikely that those dogmas would have received as wide a following as they did if their adherents had not been trained as children in unquestioning obedience to religious dogma. He says that Hitler and Stalin merely replaced one totalitarian dogma for another, and often used the same strategies.

Russell also takes aim at the legitimacy of religion itself, and argues that religious belief stems not from evidence but from fear (like children looking for the reassurance of an adult when things go wrong), a desire to be important (in the cosmic scale of things we are unimportant, but flatter ourselves that an all-powerful being takes an interest in the minutiae of our lives), and hatred (the desire to judge others in order to feel superior). He also points out that increasingly (in his time, although this still occurs frequently today) the religious argue for the existence of god based on their belief that it makes their lives and the world a better place, rather than on actual evidence that it is true. This is what Dawkins refers to as the belief in belief.

Why I Am Not a Christian was a brilliant book, and I could clearly see the arguments that likely inspired later writers like Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris. I would definitely recommend it, especially to people who are beginning to question their faith.

Sam Harris - Letter to a Christian Nation

I picked up Letter to a Christian Nation today because I wanted to read more of what Harris had to say after reading The End of Faith. Specifically, because so much of The End of Faith was about Islam, I wanted to read more of his opinion about Christianity. Although much of what Harris says in Letter to a Christian Nation was very similar to what he said in The End of Faith, I enjoyed the book very much.

One of the biggest arguments in Letter to a Christian Nation is about morality. Harris approaches this argument from several directions. First, he argues that contrary to what Christian fundamentalists claim they do not truly get their morals from the bible (which is the same argument that Dawkins made in The God Delusion). For example, he looks at the issue of slavery. Not only is slavery acceptable and widespread in the bible, both the Old and New Testaments give guidance for how slaves should be treated and how they should act. Those slave owners in the 1800s who argued in favour of slavery using the bible as justification were correctly citing their text, but it is now agreed by the vast majority of people (including the fundamentalists) that slavery is morally wrong. In other words, society has labelled something as morally repugnant even though the bible says that it is not. He goes further in order to address protests by moderate Christians by saying that while it is possible to cherry-pick arguments from the bible that go against things like slavery, a thorough reading of the entire text does not justify their moderate beliefs. His second argument about morality is directed at those who wish to control the morals of others even when it means causing harm. He outlines the standard arguments, including that missionaries and NGOs discouraging condom use in Africa contributes to the spread of HIV/AIDS, and that the attempt to force the teaching of abstinence in schools as the only option has caused America to have extremely high teenage pregnancy and STD rates when compared to other developed countries. Overall, Harris argues that following the morals of the fundamentalist Christian community does far more harm to society than good. Finally, Harris argues that contrary to popular Christian fundamentalist belief, being a "Christian" society does not lead to greater happiness or morality. On the contrary, societies with less religion (both countries such as Sweden or Norway and areas of the US like the northeastern states) tend to be happier, wealthier, and have less crime than those that are highly religious.

Discussions of morality took up the majority of Letter to a Christian Nation, but Harris also takes the opportunity to examine the validity of Christian belief itself. First, he points out that the bible was fairly obviously written by people with very limited understanding of how the world worked rather than by people inspired by an omniscient god who had created the earth and should presumably know how it worked. There are lots of discussions about slaves and menstruation in the Old Testament, but not a lot of knowledge of germs or cancer (or stars, or the sun, or really anything else that science has discovered). In addition, the "prophecies" that are sprinkled throughout the bible are oddly unspecific for an omniscient god who could have presumably predicted things with extreme accuracy but chose instead to speak in vague generalities that are not overly difficult to fulfill (rather like a carnival psychic). Harris also points out the various illogical natural things in the world, such as fetuses growing a coat temporary of hair or snakes that have pelvises to point out that so-called intelligent design does not really appear all that intelligent.

I really enjoyed Letter to a Christian Nation. It was a fairly quick read, and makes strong arguments against the beliefs of fundamentalist Christians (it is explicitly not directed at moderate or liberal Christians, who Harris does not have terribly much respect for). I would highly recommend it.

Sam Harris - The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

I bought The End of Faith a few weeks ago when I went out and bought a number of other atheist books. Unlike The God Delusion or God is Not Great I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Harris' work. He makes quite a few strong points about the harm that is done by religion, specifically Islam, and although I agree with much of his logic I don't particularly like agreeing with him.

This dislike of agreeing with Harris likely stems from my own general worldview that people and their belief systems should be treated more or less equally mixed with a conscious desire to avoid the appearance of racism. Harris, on the other hand, confidently asserts that of all the world religions, Islam is the worst in terms of the harm that it does both to its adherents and those outside of the faith. He argues that Islam is the only major religion that has a holy book where one is hard-pressed to find justifications to not be violent, and that while religions like Christianity and Judaism have certainly done terrible things, they at least have traditions that can be used to justify peace. He also states that while this idea that Islam is a particularly bad religion might make people uncomfortable when said out loud (it certainly did for me) it is not racism to impartially look at the facts and reach a conclusion. I think that my discomfort stems from the fact that Harris' conclusions sound very close to those espoused by so many right-wing fundamentalist Christians. The difference of course is that while those people argue that Islam is inherently violent and that Christianity is the only alternative as a peaceful, "true" religion, Harris (and I, I suppose) would argue that Islam is inherently violent and that other religions are not much better, and that no religions should have an influential political say in the world.

Harris also makes a compelling argument against religious moderates. For one, he believes that those who claim to be religiously moderate are doing so in response to cultural norms as opposed to justification from their holy books. This lines up nicely with what Dawkins says in The God Delusion, which is that most modern people do not truly get their morals from their scriptures, they pick and choose from them to find those that they agree with. Harris also makes the claim as Hitchens and Dawkins have that moderates in religion are partially responsible for the atrocities committed in the name of their religion because of their general unwillingness to stop the extremists. Once again, Harris looks specifically at Muslims, this time those who claim that it is only Muslims in non-Western countries that are fundamentalist extremists. Harris points out that not only is that claim false (there are sharia law courts in Britain as well as plenty of so-called homegrown terrorists) but that it is meaningless, since minorities tend to be "tolerant" of the majority since the majority are the ones with the power.

Although much of Harris' focus is on Islam, he does not spare other religions. Specifically, Harris looks at the Christian influence in the United States under Bush and says that the United States government comes dangerously close to being a theocracy. In addition to repeated references to god by all sorts of government leaders, Harris points out the dangerous amount of influence that Christian fundamentalists have in shaping public policy. He criticizes the prohibition of drugs and laws against same-sex marriage and sexual "immorality" as having very little practical purpose and stemming from a desire to regulate the morals of the people based on an interpretation of a holy book that not everyone subscribes to. Harris also strongly criticizes the interference of religion with science, starting with the insistence in many places in the US that creationism and evolution be given equal weight in the science classroom. Harris' strongest criticism comes when looking at the interference of Christian lobbies with scientific advances that could significantly help humanity such as stem cell research. Out of concern for harming five-day-old embryos consisting of a hundred or so cells, fundamentalists are inhibiting research that has the potential to end or reduce the suffering of countless sentient human beings.

In general, I agreed with Harris' main points. In the case of Christian fundamentalism in the United States I agreed readily, while in the case of his criticisms of Islam I agreed after being dragged along kicking and screaming. In retrospect this makes very little sense, since it is patently obvious that the harm being done by Islamist states to their own citizens as well as others is considerably more than the harm being done by other states, and is likely the effect of my conditioning that to criticize the belief systems of others (even when what they are doing is fundamentally wrong) is tantamount to racism and intolerance. This is not to say that Islam is guilty while other religions are not, since Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and other fundamentalism does a great deal of harm as well (and has done an enormous amount of harm historically). I would highly recommend The End of Faith, since it made me do a great deal of thinking about how I view the world.

Christopher Hitchens - God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

I bought God is Not Great a couple of weeks ago unsure of whether or not I would enjoy it. Although I generally agree with what Hitchens had to say, I'm not always a fan of his style, so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the book. In particular, I liked how the book was divided into a series of short essays on different topics all pointing towards the central thesis that religion poisons everything.

I found it quite interesting that towards the beginning of the book Hitchens states that even if he had the power to do so he would not want to ban all religions from the world. All he wanted was to be left alone by religion, and for others to have the same right. A major problem with religion, according to him, is that it has an overwhelming desire to force its version of what is "right" on others and is not content to leave others to believe what they want. While this is certainly not true of all religions, it is for a vast number of them, especially those that enjoy power today (the Islamic governments in the Middle East, for instance, or the Evangelical churches in America).

One of my favourite essays in God is Not Great was on the relationship between religion and health, as I found that it made one of Hitchens' strongest points in favour of the idea that religion poisons everything. In it, he looks at a number of ways in which modern religions interfere with healthcare and thereby increase suffering. For one, he looks at the Catholic opposition to birth control as a contributing factor towards the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa, along with the opposition of some Muslim authorities to vaccines (such as the one for polio). He goes further by examining practices such as female genital mutilation and faith healing in lieu of actual medical care as religious practices that cause serious health problems for those unlucky enough to be victims of them. Finally, he points out that many of the things that modern religions take as sacred stories from their religions' history would, if they occurred today, be taken as signs of serious mental illness. I have heard that exact same statement from the other side of the argument decrying the state of modern society and bemoaning that if Jesus were to return today society would so cynical that it would not believe him but would have him committed as mentally ill. I tend to agree that if someone came around declaring themselves to be the son of god and encouraging people to abandon their families to wander with him they would be placed under psychiatric care, and rightly so.

Hitchens also responds to the argument that many religious people make that their religions should not be judged on the actions in their past. Firstly, if we are to believe that what is stated in the bible is the literal truth then absolutely god and those who follow the teachings of the bible should be judged on the past. Even if god existed, I do not think that I would willingly wish to obey someone who ordered on multiple occasions that all of the inhabitants of a city, regardless of age be put to death (or, for a bit of variation, that all the males and non-virgin women be put to death, with the virgin girls distributed amongst the slaughterers for their own entertainment). In addition, Hitchens points out that just because modern Christianity for the most part now tries to sell itself as a religion of personal salvation and relief, one should never forget how it acted when it actually held power (hint: it was a lot like how Islam acts when it is in power now).

A good portion of God is Not Great is dedicated to confronting the argument that atheists have done just as much harm in the last century as religious people, if not more. Interestingly, he does not make the same argument as Dawkins, which is that while much of the violence done by the religious is done in the name of religion and with religious justifications, very little violence by atheists is done on behalf of atheism; it is generally for reasons like greed or power. Instead, Hitchens makes two points. First, Hitler, who is often named as one of the major "atheist" killers of the twentieth century was not in fact atheist and he (along with most of his fascist colleagues) had quite a bit of religious support. Second, he points out that the two major atheist slaughterers of the last century (Stalin and Mao) weren't really interested in destroying religion, just in replacing it with new dogmas. They created their own religions centered on themselves via cults of personality which in many cases (and especially with Mao) still exist today and have been emulated in Cuba, North Korea, and elsewhere. Therefore what they were killing in the name of was not atheism, it was their own egos and personality cults.

Hitchens also briefly makes a number of very good points that I want to mention. First, he does a good job of examining a variety of Eastern traditions to show that contrary to much modern thought (as casually following various Hindu or Buddhist practices is increasingly trendy) they are not really much better morally or historically than Western religions. They too have histories of violence and oppression. Second, he also makes a good point about religious indoctrination as child abuse. Specifically, he states that by terrifying children with the idea of outlandish punishments (vivid descriptions of hell, for example, or the idea that a wide variety of natural impulses are in fact grievous sins) children suffer psychological harm that is not justifiable.

There was only one point in God is Not Great where I disagreed with Hitchens. In one section he discusses the case of Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army as well as a religious charity that worked with those who had been harmed by the LRA. Hitchens states that while a secular charity could do the same work as the religious charity and do it just as well, to do what Kony is doing requires faith. I do not really agree with this. I believe that it is more accurate to human nature to say that to do something as abhorrent as the actions of the LRA one needs a cause, but that cause does not necessarily have to be religious faith. It simply needs to be blind, unquestioning obedience to an authority figure.

I very much enjoyed God is Not Great. Hitchens lays out an excellent series of arguments and does a great job of proving his argument that religion poisons everything. I would highly recommend it.

Jenna Miscavige Hill - Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape

I bought Beyond Belief last week because I've been curious about Scientology for a while now, but hadn't gotten around to reading much about it. I was not disappointed, as Miscavige Hill does an excellent job of outlining what life is like for a child who grows up within the "religion."

I was struck by the sheer amount of brainwashing and other cult behaviour that Miscavige Hill described, including the seeming ease with which her parents essentially abandoned her at a young age in the belief that they were serving the "greater good." The brainwashing brought to mind a number of parallels, including the disturbing similarities to the Hitler Youth in forcing children to spy and report on one another. In addition, the complete lack of access to information critical of Scientology (and Miscavige Hill's comment that she grew up thinking that everyone admired L. Ron Hubbard) made me think of the strict controls on outside information in North Korea and the cult of personality developed about its leaders.

What disturbed me the most was the amount of control that Scientology has over the lives of its Sea Org members, especially the children. If the conditions of life at the Ranch described by Miscavige Hill are accurate (including huge amounts of manual labour) then that definitely crosses the line into child abuse. As well, the ability of the church to force members to do manual labour for punishment and restrain them if they try to leave their sessions seems incredibly dubious legally. Finally, it seemed to me that much of the "training" that the young members of the Sea Org were doing was nothing more than servant work for the higher ups, who are the ones collecting large amounts of money and who have the freedom of movement denied to those who are lower down.

Beyond Belief was an incredibly interesting book, and I would highly recommend it. It definitely pushed me further into thinking that Scientology is a dangerous cult (as it is classified in much of Europe) rather than just a ridiculous pseudo-religion.

Bart D. Ehrman - Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are

Forged, by Bart D. Ehrman, is an attempt to prove to a wider audience what many biblical scholars have known for a long time, that many of the books in the bible were not written by who we think they were. While I liked portions of the book, and it was certainly informative, in many places I found it to drag and become somewhat boring.

One point that Ehrman made repeatedly that I appreciated was that contrary to what some people claim, forgery did exist in antiquity and was soundly condemned when it was discovered. He goes on to point out that those who claim that forgery didn't really exist, or that the writers didn't mean to deceive anyone, or that it was common practice to sign one's work with the name of one's teacher as a sign of honour and humility, are basing those claims on absolutely no evidence. I remember very clearly being told in a first year new testament class at my bible college that even though many of the books were not written by the people whose names are on them, it wasn't really forgery because that type of attribution was common during those times. I remember thinking that that was a weird practice, but accepting it as the truth. It's nice to see that it in fact was not the truth.

Ehrman has a wealth of evidence that many of the books in the new testament were not written by those who claim to have written them, ranging from differences in writing styles, the coverage of topics that were not relevant until decades after the deaths of the supposed authors, and perhaps most interestingly the fact that those books were written in a highly educated style of Greek (employing Greek rhetorical argument styles) that it is very unlikely that people like Peter or Paul possessed. I also found it very interesting that many of the books, including the gospels, do not claim an author, and what were originally anonymous works had authors imposed on them centuries later when church authorities realized that in order for those books to be authoritative they needed famous authors like the apostles.

Ehrman does however spend a large amount of time examining forgeries that never made into the canon and that everyone acknowledges are forgeries. While that was interesting to a point, it began to drag on considerably. That is merely personal preference, however, as I would have liked Ehrman to have examined more possible forgeries in the bible itself (perhaps in the old testament, which he hardly touches on). I also had a few problems with Ehrman's acceptance of much of the bible as historical fact. He discusses the "genuine" Pauline letters, but does not provide the evidence he uses that they are in fact genuine. In addition, while he does look at historical inaccuracies (like the idea of an empire-wide census at the time of Jesus' birth) he does not look at the inclusion of the supernatural in the gospels and discuss the improbabilities of them (and the reasons why they were included, obvious as they might be).

Overall, Forged was a generally interesting book, although there were definitely some parts that were considerably more interesting than others.

Christopher Hitchens - The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

I bought The Missionary Position today after seeing a report on the news about a Canadian study that reached the same conclusion about Mother Teresa as Hitchens did; namely that she did very little to actually alleviate suffering but instead ran a massive propaganda machine that benefited from the plight of the poor and saw their suffering as noble. I expected the book to be virulently anti-Catholic, but it wasn't. Hitchens uses for evidence almost entirely Mother Teresa's own words and actions, with some reliance on former members of her order.

One of the strongest pieces of evidence that Hitchens has to support his thesis is the sheer amount of money that Missionaries of Charity took in compared to how much was spent on things like doctors and medical equipment. The results are staggering, and show a woman who was far more concerned with her own dogma than with actually relieving the suffering of the poor. Her hypocrisy is also stunning, as Hitchens points out that while supposedly advocating for the poor she hobnobbed with a variety of dictators whose regimes were supported on the backs of the poor and oppressed. It also bears mentioning that while she refused to provide adequate medical equipment or care for the suffering under her care, when she was faced with health problems she had nothing but the best medical attention.

My biggest problem with Mother Teresa is one that I had before reading The Missionary Position, although the book helped to solidify it. Namely, it is that Mother Teresa was more concerned with the so-called holiness of suffering experienced by the poor than with alleviating their pain (as evidenced by her telling a man who was wracked with pain that he was being kissed by Jesus rather than spending money on painkillers or doctors to help him). Her care for their souls far outstripped her care for their suffering, as one former member of her order has claimed that she authorized secret baptisms of non-Catholics without their permission. In addition, her own words condemn her as someone who was ultimately unconcerned with the poor. She explicitly said that caring for the poor was not an end in and of itself (she actually referred to this way of thinking as a danger!), but that caring for them was a way to reach heaven. This is important: she was not caring for them because they were suffering, or even because she wanted to help them get into heaven. She worked with them so that she herself could get into heaven.

Hitchens does a masterful job of exposing Mother Teresa's hypocrisy by doing what he set out to do: judging her reputation by her actions rather than her actions by her reputation.

Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion

I bought The God Delusion a few days ago after realizing that I had read very little by any of the great atheist scholars of our time, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Dawkins does an excellent job of disproving the existence of a god as well as showing how religion is in general a negative or at least not a positive force in the world.

Dawkins looks at quite a few controversial issues, but one that I especially appreciated was his examination of why religion is somehow granted an automatic respect where other personal beliefs (such as politics) are not. People feel free to argue against other peoples' political viewpoints, but see religion as a taboo, which translates into a tolerance for the extreme elements present in many religions (he uses the example of authorities turning a blind eye to female circumcision in Britain so as to not upset the fundamentalist Islamic community there). He also makes a strong argument against the indoctrination of children in religious beliefs, arguing that children should be taught how to think, not what to think.

Dawkins also examines a number of misconceptions about atheism and scientific belief. First, he makes the obvious point that natural selection is not random chance. He points out that the common religious argument that chance is an impossible method for life to have emerged on earth is correct, but that unlike what they assert, chance is not the only alternative to intelligent design; natural selection is. He also raises the common religious argument that those who do not believe in a higher power see no point in life by stating that because atheists believe that we have no more chances at life that we see life as even more worth living to the fullest. Finally, he also looks at the commonly asserted belief that atheists who argue their points are just as much fundamentalists as religious extremists. Dawkins refutes this by pointing out that passion does not equal fundamentalism, and that while a religious fundamentalist will not change their mind regardless of the evidence presented to them, a passionate scientist will change their mind when provided with new evidence.

In arguing against the existence of the supernatural, Dawkins makes a number of very solid points, including the obvious one of pointing out the great many contradictions in the bible. He also examines Thomas Aquinas' argument of infinite regress halted by god (everything has a cause, leading back in a long line of causes until they reach god) and makes the same point that I did when reviewing Lewis' God in the Dock: if god is the cause of all these things, what caused god? He also takes aim at the idea that human morality has a divine source, and that atheist morality is flawed because there is no god to provide an ultimate definition of good and evil. First, he argues that clearly modern human morals do not come from the bible, since no one in the modern world follows every precept in the bible. Therefore, just as atheists choose which morals and values they adhere to, so too do Christians. Second, he points out what he calls the "debate stopper:" if there is no morality without god, then people are naturally immoral and would, without the restraint of god's presence, be rampant murderers, rapists, and looters. If it is not the case that people would rampantly commit crimes without god's presence, then god is clearly not required for morality. This brought to mind the argument that those who blame women for being sexually assaulted (because they were dressed "indecently") are not just blaming the victim, but also insulting men in general, since it assumes that men are naturally rapists who are only able to restrain themselves if women dress "modestly" (incidentally, that is essentially what fundamentalist Muslim doctrine is saying when it forces it women to cover themselves from head to toe).

Overall, I greatly enjoyed The God Delusion. Dawkins makes a number of excellent points both disproving the existence of a god and arguing against religion in general. I would highly recommend this book.

Marcus Brotherton - We Who Are Alive and Remain: Untold Stories From The Band of Brothers

I bought We Who Are Alive and Remain a few months back after reading Dick Winters' Beyond Band of Brothers because I thought it would be interesting to learn the stories of the men of Easy Company who hadn't been featured in Winters' memoirs, Ambrose's Band of Brothers book, or the mini-series.

The stories themselves were very interesting, but the format of the book left something to be desired. Brotherton organizes the book according to themes (such as motivations for joining the army, or the journey across the Atlantic), and includes snippets from each man he interviewed providing their perspective. The problem is that this fragments the individual mens' stories, making the narratives that they provide sometimes hard to follow. Brotherton also acts on the assumption that his readers have either read Ambrose's book or have seen the mini-series, because he provides virtually no information to buttress the accounts of the veterans he interviewed, including when they reference the names or activities of men seen in Band of Brothers but not featured in Brotherton's book.

There were a number of things that I really liked about We Who Are Alive and Remain, however. One is the perspective of the replacement troops who came into Easy Company after Normandy. Band of Brothers doesn't really focus on them at all, so it was nice to see their stories, how they came to be in Easy Company, and what their experience as replacement troops was like. Perhaps the best part of the book for me was the last section, in which the children of three members of Easy Company who survived the war but have since died shared the stories of their fathers.

One of those soldiers was Herbert Sobel, who was featured in Ambrose's book, the mini-series, and Winters' memoirs as an incompetent jerk. Sobel's son shares his recollections about his father, which were entirely positive. More interestingly, to me, was that almost all of the veterans interviewed by Brotherton had good only good things to say about Sobel. By contrast, the vast majority of the men interviewed by Ambrose disliked him, including Winters, who admitted to a hatred of Sobel. Obviously there were serious problems with Sobel's command or he wouldn't have sparked the sergeants' near-mutiny featured in the mini-series, but there is clearly more to the story than Ambrose and HBO showed. It makes me wonder a little bit about how Ambrose chose which veterans to interview, that they would all share the same view.

Overall, We Who Are Alive and Remain was quite a good book, but it should only be read after having read or watched Band of Brothers, otherwise the reader will be left with a lot of questions.

Edward Crankshaw - Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny

 
I don't remember buying Gestapo, but I'm glad I did, as it was quite an interesting read. Crankshaw's goal with the book was not to give a full history of the Gestapo and its activities (although he did give a very good summary of the history) but rather to show the extent of the Gestapo's crimes and the extent to which the Gestapo was integrated with other elements of the SS, the Wehrmacht, and German society in general. Crankshaw's point in doing so was to show how widespread the crimes of Nazi Germany really were, and to prevent the guilty from pointing at the Gestapo and claiming that they were solely responsible for all of the crimes that occurred.

Perhaps the biggest strength of the book lies in how well Crankshaw outlined the key figures of the Gestapo as well as the structure of the organization and how it fit in with other Nazi organizations. The formation of the Gestapo, SS, SD, and other Nazi groups was very complex as various people jockeyed for power, but Crankshaw does an excellent job in showing exactly how the Gestapo was formed, who was in control of the various aspects of it, and how it was interconnected with other parts of the Nazi power structure, therefore implicating each department in the crimes of the others.

I definitely appreciated how Crankshaw refused to subscribe to the myths of Wehrmacht innocence that are still prevalent today. He showed quite clearly that the German generals had ample opportunity to stop Hitler from reaching power in the early days but chose not to (even after seeing his brutality in dealing with the SA) because they believed that regaining their weapons and military was the most important thing for them. Crankshaw also does a good job of refuting the popular theory that the Wehrmacht was not involved in carrying out the Holocaust. To the contrary, they were well aware of what was going on, were under orders to facilitate the SS in carrying it out (providing accommodations, transport, etc), and in some cases participated in the slaughter. On the rare occasions in which a Wehrmacht officer did protest, it was often more because he was concerned for his own mens' mental well-being than for the lives of the Jewish people being murdered.

Crankshaw also advanced the interesting theory that in Germany people were willing to carry out the orders of the sadists in power because their education system had drilled into them from childhood that they should obey the instructions of those in authority without question. He says that this is a more plausible explanation than the theory which believes that teaching Germans that Jews were subhumans allowed them to justify to themselves killing them, since in America black people are regarded as subhuman and in Britain many of the colonized peoples are regarded as subhuman (the book was originally written in the 1950s), but in neither case is there genocide directed against them. I would disagree with that slightly and say that in America and Britain in the 1950s those people were regarded as inferior humans, but not subhumans, and that in cases where others were regarded as subhumans (such as the attitude in America towards Native Americans several centuries ago) there were in fact widespread slaughters that were seen as justified. I believe that Crankshaw's argument about the rigidness of German education helps to explain the mechanics of the Holocaust but cannot be seen as the sole contributing factor.

Overall, I very much enjoyed Gestapo. It does an excellent job of proving its main argument, that of the guilt of people and organizations outside the SS/Gestapo, and was very interesting to read. I would highly recommend it.

Carlos Alberto Montaner - Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution

I bought Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution a few years ago, but didn't get around to reading it. Written originally in the 1970s, Montaner last updated it in the 1980s before the fall of the USSR, so there are a number of arguments that he makes that are no longer really relevant, and it would be interesting to see an updated version especially now that Raul Castro is at least nominally in charge of Cuba.


One of the things that I most appreciated about the book was that Montaner addresses his biases against the Castro regime upfront, and spends a fair amount of time confronting the anticipated arguments against his point of view. As someone who participated in anti-Castro actions and is now living in exile he is quite biased (as is evidenced by his somewhat tedious use of sarcasm throughout the book) but overall I think that he did a fair job of looking at the struggles that Cuba was undergoing. I especially liked that he spent an entire chapter examining the claims of progress that Castro claims Cuba had made. He admits that for some people (specifically the very poor and the black community) standards of living are indeed better than they had been, but he counters that this has been achieved by a drastic reduction in the quality of life for everyone else, including not just the rich and middle class but also the working poor. For each of the so-called successes (such as education, healthcare, race relations, and gender equality), Montaner devotes a section to looking at what has actually improved, what has been manipulated by propaganda, and what has deteriorated.

I would have liked if Montaner had spent more time examining resistance to Castro within Cuba. He spent quite a bit of space discussing how the average Cuban is dissatisfied with the regime and how many of them have fled or attempted to flee, but very little time to actual resistance. What few resistance movements he does examine are entirely ones that were backed by the US decades ago. He does not clarify whether or not with the cessation of US support for Cuban resistance all resistance ended, or if there are still some resistance movements.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book was the last chapter, in which Montaner examines what he believes might happen to Cuba in the decades to come. He looked at what the consequences for Cuba might be if the USSR and USA ended up on friendlier terms, but does not discuss the possibility of the complete collapse of the USSR. The closing section of the book is eerily prescient, as Montaner predicts a time in which Fidel fades into the background of Cuban governance, giving control of day-to-day operations to Raul, after which Raul begins a period of slow liberalization.

Overall, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution was a very good book. It started off somewhat slowly, and there are sections that drag, but in general it is a very interesting look at Cuban society between 1959 and 1989, and I would highly recommend it.

James Brabazon - My Friend the Mercenary

I bought this book a few weeks ago mostly at random, as it looked interesting and was on a subject that I knew very little about. It follows James Brabazon, a British journalist, as he ventures into Liberia during the Second Liberian Civil War alongside Nick du Toit, a South African mercenary he had hired to protect him. The story follows the two of them through a number of trips to Liberia and then concludes with a botched coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea partially led by du Toit that Brabazon was supposed to have come along to film.


Overall, it was a very interesting book. It was fascinating to see how Brabazon evolved from a rather naive journalist struggling to reconcile his role in the conflict (as an observer to atrocities that he could do nothing to prevent but that he was profiting from) to someone who was in many respects a mercenary himself (seen in helping to coordinate a Liberian rebel ambush, referring to the Liberian rebels as "we" and "us," and being relieved that Charles Taylor wasn't arrested during the conflict because that would have meant the end of the war and therefore the end of Brabazon's story). I also found it very interesting how by the end Brabazon admits that it has become impossible for him to be a neutral journalist in the Equatorial Guinea affair, as his friendship with du Toit has compromised his neutrality. This also led me to question whether or not there might be things about du Toit or the conflict that Brabazon did not talk about in order to protect his friend's reputation, although he did talk about du Toit's questionable past as a part of the South African special forces during Apartheid.

In general, My Friend the Mercenary was an excellent book, and I would highly recommend reading it.

Dominique Enright - The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill

I picked up The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill a few days ago as a way to pass the time while waiting to meet friends. It was exactly what I hoped it would be, a light read that collected the many quips attributed to Churchill and not the more portentous things that he said over his career.


I don't really have much to say about the book, other than that I quite enjoyed it. I appreciated that it also included quotes by others about Churchill (not all of which were complimentary), and that the introduction gave a relatively balanced look at him rather than fall into the blind hero worship that too often accompanies Churchill. My only complaints about Wicked Wit are that not all of the quotes can be verified (as admitted by the editor) and that for some reason in a small number of quotes the editor has chosen to try to imitate the slur in Churchill's speech.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, it was a quick and light read that was quite interesting.

C.S. Lewis - The Problem of Pain

Like my other C.S. Lewis book on theology God in the Dock, I was given The Problem of Pain by my aunt and uncle when they were getting rid of some of their old books. As with God in the Dock, I had very little desire to read it but decided to just get it over with.


In general, I had fewer objections to The Problem of Pain than I did to God in the Dock, largely because while the latter was billed as a book designed to provide arguments in favour of the existence of God to the unbeliever and failed to do so, the former was seemingly designed to provide believers with an argument on why pain exists in the world if God is good. As the arguments in The Problem of Pain are therefore not directed at me, most of my objections are with the lack of consistency that is present in Lewis' arguments. For example, he argues that God is omnipotent in the sense that he created everything, including free will, and therefore does not interfere with humanity's choices except in select circumstances, which are rare and wondrous enough to be called miracles. This clashes somewhat with his arguments in later chapters. In one, Lewis claims that "whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we think we want." If this claim is true, then does this not mean that far from allowing us our own choices, God is in fact interfering with our lives at every turn? In a similar vein in a later chapter, Lewis argues that God wants us to be happy in him, and that he therefore strips away our false happiness (which is when we experience pain) until we turn to him, which is the only way to be truly happy. As with the last argument, if this is true, then how can it be said that God interferes only in select circumstances? If he is in fact stripping away all "false" happiness, then it would seem to me that he is interfering with our free will down to the minutiae of our lives.

Although most of the book was aimed at doubting or questioning believers, there were a number of arguments towards the beginning of the book that were seemingly aimed at atheists. His first argument is that it is implausible that humanity would have imagined a just and good creator when surrounded by the horrors of a harsh and unjust world. The major problem with this is of course that for the most part religion did not begin with people imagining a just and good god. Instead, it began with people believing in the power of nature (with the sun, moon, wind, rain, etc all existing as deities). Even once early forms of Judaism emerged there was still not a belief in a just and good god. Instead, there was a god who was incredibly jealous ("Thou shalt have no other god before me"), who demanded that his followers obey a seemingly random assortment of laws (no shellfish, no contact with menstruating women, etc), and who commanded his followers to fall upon their enemies and slaughter all those living within towns who opposed them. The idea of a loving god who wanted his people to know joy through him was a much later development.

Lewis' second argument against atheism follows the same pattern as his arguments in God in the Dock by constructing straw men. In particular, Lewis claims that there are only two alternatives concerning Jesus. Either he was an "abominable raving lunatic" or he was who he said he was, but that there is no middle ground. According to Lewis, since the records bear out that Jesus was not a raving lunatic, he must logically be who he said he was. Ignoring the fact that the only "record" that can be consulted on this matter has a rather vested interest in proving that Jesus was not in fact a lunatic, there are still several alternatives that Lewis conveniently ignores. First, there is the possibility that Jesus never existed, and is instead the product of the human propensity for inventing myths that justify their own actions. Second (and what I tend to believe), there is the possibility that a man named Jesus did live roughly 2,000 years ago, taught a large number of followers to believe what he had to say without it necessarily being the truth, and was executed as a disturber of the peace, and that after his death his followers exploited and expanded his legacy in order to gain their own followers and increase their own influence. For those Christians who argue that the spread of Christianity on such a scale would have been impossible without it being a divinely inspired and aided truth, I would point out that if you are Christian and therefore believe that other religions are false, how can you explain their spread to large numbers of people without divine assistance? The truth is that many people are eager to believe in something larger than themselves, and are therefore easily led to believe what they want to believe.

I did not particularly enjoy The Problem of Pain, but I did not really expect to. Lewis' arguments have a number of logical holes which he does not bother to address, and I am not sure that even were I a Christian that I would accept them as they are.

Kazik - Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter

I got Memoirs for Christmas this year because it looked very interesting, but I had a difficult time getting into it. It was well-written and interesting, but lacked quite a bit of detail.


Often when I was reading Memoirs I was struck by the thought that I would really like to read a book about Kazik that was not written by him. Largely this is because he tells the story as though writing for people who already know the people and places that he is talking about. As a result, he leaves out quite a bit of the back story of the people involved, which makes it somewhat difficult to follow in places. The editor does their best to add footnotes explaining who people are and what happened to them, but the result is a somewhat disjointed narrative, taking the reader out of Kazik's story and into a dry mini-biography of the person in question. Another reason why I would be interested in reading an expanded account of Kazik's story is because he goes into very little detail about himself and his own motivations. It is left unclear why he joined the fighting when so many didn't, and how he specifically came to be a leader in the movement.

All of that being said, Memoirs was still quite interesting. The personal stories, while sometimes told out of context, were riveting, as was Kazik's perspective on life within the Warsaw Ghetto.