Book Review: The Case for God (Armstrong)

Armstrong, Karen The Case for God (2009) Armstrong's summary book about the history of theology, in which she argues that the West has lost its theological bearings. Science and religion have become antagonists because people think they speak about and to the same human problems and questions. Myth is no longer understood as a story that both expresses and creates meaning. Belief has become mere assent to some proposition, and such assent is seen as foolish at best and evil at worst when it is given without reasonable grounds. We have forgotten how to think symbolically, and so have forgotten that religion is not a matter of speech, but of action.

     A good book, if somewhat overlong, and generally too academic in tone. Armstrong does, I think, hold some beliefs in the old sense of making/letting them form and transform her life, but this means she is unwilling to argue for or against a given creed. Rather she argues that we must remake our understanding of the creeds so that they become symbols, not descriptions. Faith is not assent to some verbal formulas, but the action of relating to and dealing with other people. To take this a step further: How you deal with other people is your faith. That's all there is to it.
     She does express disappointment and sometimes annoyance at the ways in which modern people of all creeds have made idols of their conceptions of God. She is a believer, but not a religionist. In the Epilogue she comes closest to a homiletic statement, and ends with a parable worth quoting in full:
     One day a Brahmin priest came across the Buddha sitting in contemplation under a tree and was astonished by his serene stillness and self discipline. The impression of immense strength channelled creatively into an extraordinary peace reminded him of a great tusker elephant. "Are you a god, sir?" the priest asked. "Are you an angel... or a spirit?" No, the Buddha replied. He explained that he had simply revealed a new potential in human nature. It was possible to live in a world of conflict and pain at peace and in harmony with one's fellow creatures. There was no point in merely believing it; you would discover its truth only if you practised his method, systematically cutting off egoism at the root. You would then live at the peak of your capacity, activate parts of the psyche that normally lie dormant, and become a fully enlightened human being. "Remember me," the Buddha told the curious priest, "as someone who is awake."
     Armstrong strives to make this insight alive for her readers, to bring them through the history of humans' encounters with God to a place where they are both awake and aware of their utter ignorance of God's nature. She tries to show that faith is an active verb. To the extent that readers can feel the reality of that search for awareness with knowledge, they will make sense of this book.
     Worth reading for many other reasons, too, such as a clear summary of the history of religions, and why Dawkins is partly right and mostly wrong in his atheism, because the God he denies is a mere idol. Thus Dawkins himself is an idolater, because, like the religionists he tries to cure of their superstition, he believes that the Bible is to be read literally, and so must be either true or false. But a myth is neither true nor false. A myth either makes meaning for the hearer, or it doesn't. It is either alive or dead. ***

Edited for style and clarity 2020-10-15/2021-10-05.

Fred has moved

Having become much too accustomed to his perch on the book case, Fred moved over to the right hand speaker next to the TV screen. He can now watch us watching TV. He knows the TV shows pretty well, since he had a good view of them from his former vantage point. I suspect his purpose is to gather data about our reactiosn to TV, which will aid him in fathoming the mysteries of human nature. His own owly nature he will keep carefully hidden. All we know so far is that owls are curious, and patient.

A picture

This is a locomotive leased by the Huron Central Railway, which operates the CPR's Sudbury-Sault Ste Marie line. The line was built when the Liberals were in power during the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Liberals didn't want to spend the money for an all-Canadian route. The line was to go south of Lake Superior via Sault Ste Marie. When MacDonald's Conservatives came back, they scotched that idea, and the north of Superior route was built. It's still one of the most spectacular railway lines in the world, but only freight trains use it now. The line through Blind River is in very bad shape, several levels of government are supposed to spend money to fix it up so that coiled steel can be shipped by rail rather than truck. The Feds are dragging their heels, perhaps because this part of Ontario is definitely not Conservative country.

Book Review: Mice in the Beer (Ward)

Ward, Norman Mice in the Beer (1960; reprint 1986) Western Producer of Regina, publisher of a magazine for farmers, occasionally reprints or publishes books of miscellaneous interest. Ward, a professor of political science, lived most of his working life in Saskatchewan, which I suspect is one reason this collection of occasional pieces was reprinted. He has a sly wit, very much like Leacock: he's a master of the offhand remark that contains a bomb. He won the Leacock Medal for Humour, and on the evidence here deserved it. His humour is gentler than Leacock's (whose reputation as a gentle satirist rests on superficial reading.) Ward's persona often plays straight man to "Uncle Bob", a surprisingly good-humoured curmudgeon whose musings often lead logically into absurdities. Like Davies' Marchbanks, there are few one-liners. The humour depends on the slow and careful construction of context. Here's an example:

A friend of mine who, more or less as a hobby, runs in elections as the standard-bearer for one of our more obscure political parties, confided in me recently that he was working on a new way to build up his party's fortunes. I'm not quite sure what his opinion is worth, for judging from the number of votes he polls on election day the post he holds in his organization can't be much higher than rank of corporal. But the years of wandering beyond the wilderness have given his views a twist not found among conventional politicians.

"Look," he said, "at Social Credit and all the other small parties. From the beginning they've been loaded to the gunwales with clergymen, school teachers, and other taxpayers of oppressive respectability. Their spokesmen are moral to point of morbidity, and nobody can guess how low they could sink if they got in power. And look at my outfit! How," he demanded, "can we expect to get our party off the ground if all the drinkers are Liberals and Conservatives?"

All in all, a good read. **-1/2

Book Review: The Loch Ness Story (Mitchell)

Mitchell, Nicholas The Loch Ness Story (1974) A “revised” edition published by Penguin, this book contains a typically credulous account of the creatures supposed to live in Loch Ness. In the 60s and 70s several people used the best available underwater technology they could afford in order to find Nessie, and of course came up empty. There’s no question IMO in that Nessie is a compound of hoax, wishful thinking, and carefully ambiguous publicity aimed at tourists. Tourist pamphlets from before the first world war do not mention Nessie, which I think is evidence enough that she’s a very recent “discovery”.

Mitchell’s tone is that of a believer: any possible fact turns into reality within a sentence or two. He makes snide remarks about the skeptics and critics, often identified with a shadowy scientific establishment of some sort, who have closed their minds against this most momentous discovery. I read about halfway through the book, by which time Mitchell is referring to Nessie as a prehistoric animal, possibly a saurian, that has somehow survived for millions of years. Notions such a minimum sustainable population, of geological and climatic changes that would reduce the odds of survival, etc, appear to be beyond him. Grainy photos, out of focus blobs in the middle of out of focus snapshots, eye-witness accounts of things seen in the gloaming or against a background of sun-glistering water (there’s a photo of one of these sightings) – all these are for him irrefutable evidence, not only that Nessie is real, but that (s)he’s a reptile of some sort.

A wonderful, often amusing, but finally tedious read, like so many of these books, it will merely confirm both the believer and the skeptic in their opposing beliefs. The pictures are the usual ones, often reprinted, and to my skeptical eye are utterly unconvincing. The fact that they are badly printed doesn’t help. **

Update 2020-03-03: The most recent research has found a great deal of eel DNA in the Loch. No trace of saurians. This BBC link is one of many you'll find if you search on "eel DNA on Loch Ness." The BBC uses the standard (faked) photos of Nessie.
 

Book Review: Remaking the World (Petroski)

Petroski, Henry Remaking the World (1999) Jon gave me this book for Christmas. Petroski wrote historical essays for American Scientist, a magazine that appears to carry on the original intent of Scientific American, which was much more focussed on technology (and even DIY) than the current version. His essays are very much like Gould’s, but the style is somewhat more neutral and pedestrian. I get little sense of Petroski’s personality, which is a pity, since his choice of subjects indicates a lively mind and wide range of interest.

His emphasis on the non-technical aspects of engineering is important. Most people lack scientific and technical insight (we need a word like “illiteracy” for this), which means that the context of engineering works is often incomplete. The yearning for quick fixes prompts politicians and their constituents to trust the technocrats too much (see the “heightening” of “security measures” at airports recently). On the other hand, nimbyism and paranoid Ludditism result in know-nothing rejection of economically viable and ecologically effective solutions (see the resistance to H1N1 vaccination.)

All in all, a good book, with useful nuggets of information here and there. For example, “bug” as a glitch or unexpected flaw in design predates computers. Petroski quotes a note in Edison’s diary, in which Edison refers to “Bugs – as such little faults and difficulties are called –”. I’ve suspected that the “insect in the electronic works” was a story a little too pat to be true, and am happy to have my suspicion confirmed. ***

Book Review: Pohlstars (Frederik Pohl)

Pohl, Frederik Pohlstars (1984) Most of these stories are Pohl's darker visions, more like Harry Harrison or Roald Dahl. Pohl, like Poul Anderson, usually writes about swaggering, libertarian, free-enterprise types, often crossing the line between legal and illegal (sometimes venturing into crime), in order to succeed. But in the end, they not only do well, but good.

Unlike Anderson, Pohl has a strong tragic streak in his makeup, sometimes tending to elegiac sentimentality. The first tale is a novella, I sampled it but did not read it. The short stories range from the mildly funny (a driving instructor is unaware that one of his pupils is setting up an invasion of Terran territory) to the horrific (a convicted murderer is purchased by aliens to conduct their business; when they decide they want to know what human sex is about, they make him reenact the crime for which he was condemned, and he kills his lover.) All have a more or less obvious theme; Pohl is one of the most tendentious SF writers ever. In A Day at the Lottery Fair he attacks the "pro-life" movement. A Day in the Life of Able Charlie tells how an artificial intelligence program is used for market research. Second Coming sends up the literalists who expect Jesus to return from the sky - he does, but decides he wants to go back to the zoo where the space people have kept him, it's a nicer place than Earth. The book will be added to my collection of Pohls, but not because it's his best work. **