by Terry Scambray<\/p>\n
New Oxford Review<\/em><\/p>\n Review of\u00a0The Devil\u2019s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions<\/em>\u00a0by David Berlinski (Crown Forum, 2008. 225 pp).<\/strong><\/p>\n David Berlinski is a skeptical man. He doesn\u2019t believe in Darwinian evolution as well as certain other dogmas of so-called science. Equally skeptical of religion, he writes, \u201cI am a secular Jew.\u00a0 My religious education did not take.\u201d Even his spare, unadorned style reflects his reluctance to use his penetrating wit and his assorted literary gifts to go beyond the plain and the provable.<\/p>\n Yet Berlinski also realizes that skepticism is selective: deep down everyone is soft on something.\u00a0 Or as he puts it: \u201cWhat a man rejects as distasteful must always be measured against what he is prepared eagerly to swallow.\u201d<\/p>\n And \u201cthe new atheists,\u201d his targets in this book, do swallow a lot of strange, \u201cscientific\u201d concoctions, in order to eliminate God.<\/p>\n In the first place, physicists, like evolutionary biologists, need a lot of wiggle room for their theories to make sense. One such is string theory which seeks to replace Democritus\u2019 atoms with gyrating strings as the fundamental particles of matter.<\/p>\n Apparently some versions of string theory require more than the mere three or four dimensions of our, apparently, too parsimonious universe. So one must imagine a universe of many dimensions, say up to twenty-six, to accommodate string theory. As Berlinski writes: \u201c. . . the conflict between the demands of the theory [Get me those extra dimensions] and the constraints of common sense [No extra dimensions here, Boss, and we looked] was not easily resolved.\u201d<\/p>\n Apparently our universe, a mere 10 billion years old and 10 billion light years across, is too picayunish to accommodate such boundless ideas.\u00a0 Berlinski quotes the respected physicist, Leonard Susskind, to the effect that our universe \u201cis giving away to something far bigger and pregnant with new possibilities.\u201d As Berlinski mockingly responds, \u201cFar bigger? And pregnant too?\u201d<\/p>\n The answer is, yes. And on both counts. For Susskind has written that \u201cphysicists and cosmologists are coming to see our ten billion light years as an infinitesimal pocket of a stupendous megaverse.\u201d<\/p>\n Realizing the\u00a0de classe<\/em>\u00a0associations with the suffix \u2018mega\u201d as in \u201cmega-blockbuster or \u201cmega-mall\u201d, Susskind rechristened the megaverse, \u201cthe Landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n But if everything is so vast and we humans are so insignificant and unlikely, why are we here to read all about it?<\/p>\n Well, as the answer goes: In an infinite sea of possibilities, we are inevitable, me writing this and you reading it. Besides, as Berlinski puts it, if you weren\u2019t here, you would be nowhere. \u201cAnd yet here you are. What did you expect?\u201d<\/p>\n See, it\u2019s all pretty obvious, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n But, despite all the scientific savvy that has gone into preparing these rarified intellectual delicacies, do they make sense?<\/p>\n Think about it: If everything that could ever happen has happened along with all the variations on the variations, then we are talking about infinity. To take one infinitesimal example, this very sentence will have to have been written with all possible sloppiness as well as with all possible elegance, countless different ways. And you would have to have read this sentence in an endless variety of ways in an endless variety of circumstances. This is\u00a0Twilight Zone<\/em>stuff, incomprehensible and unreal.<\/p>\n Additionally in order for this scheme to get cooking, there has to be an assumed set of laws. So everything is possible and wildly unexpected when one is committed to the Landscape. Except when one wishes to explain the existence of constants like forces and chemicals, and of human observers, like cosmologists, which are needed to give some intelligibility to \u201csuch stuff as dreams are made of\u201d to cite Shakespeare from another but dreamily applicable context.<\/p>\n But is the preparation of such victuals energized less by \u201cthe desire to discover a new idea than to avoid an old one . . . that it is better to have many worlds than to have one God\u201d?<\/p>\n A\u00a0more comprehensible way to approach cosmology is to begin with something supported by the preponderance of evidence \u2014 which is to say, the Big Bang, two words which suggest \u201cthe most ancient of human intuitions . . . the connection between sexual and cosmic energies.\u201d<\/p>\n The Big Bang also \u201csuggests an old idea in thought: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.\u201d Arnold Penzias, Nobel laureate, says that the Big Bang is \u201cexactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of the Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n Though Darwinism is a fossil of 19th-century progressive thought, it is eagerly embraced by the neo-atheists in their quest to appear scientific. But Darwin\u2019s mechanism of progress, natural selection, has never been shown to create anything close to the improvements in organisms necessary to get us where we are right now, such improvements as wings in birds or brains in humans.<\/p>\n Thus, the Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins argues that such changes must, therefore, be the work of covert critters called, \u201cselfish genes\u201d. These Ayn Rand like rascals relentlessly compete for survival, the implacable goal of all organisms according to Darwin. So Dawkins hopes that when we observe people behaving, say, altruistically we will believe that the selfish gene fable explains their behavior and not what our own eyes and common sense tell us.<\/p>\n Like the many worlds hypothesis, such explanatory gimmicks cannot be disproven, they can only be parodied. Berlinski joins the fun by remarking: \u201cThe thesis that we are all nothing more than vehicles for a number of \u2018selfish genes\u2019 has accordingly entered deeply into the simian gabble of academic life, where together with materialism and moral relativism it now seems as self-evident as the law of affirmative action.\u201d<\/p>\n Steven Pinker, the Harvard evolutionary psychologist, is another prominent exponent of the death of God, and man, by scientific strangulation.\u00a0 His work is devoted to showing that, \u201cEvery aspect of thought and emotion is rooted in brain structure and function.\u201d\u00a0 Indeed, as an American geneticist has written, \u201ca person\u2019s capacity to believe in God is linked to his brain chemicals.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Berlinski\u2019s riposte:\u00a0 \u201cOf all things !\u00a0 Why not to his urine? . .\u00a0 . And since the door is open, why not believe that a person\u2019s capacity to believe in molecular genetics is linked to a brain chemical?\u201d<\/p>\n Not surprisingly, Pinker, like other determinists, exempts himself from the imperatives of his own reductionist explanation when he avers, \u201c.\u00a0 . . nature does not dictate what we should accept or how we should live our lives.\u201d\u00a0 Apparently, some pigs are more equal than other pigs.\u00a0\u00a0 Or, as Berlinski notes: \u201cIf evolutionary psychology is true, some form of genetic determinism must be true as well. .\u00a0 . No slippage is rationally possible.\u201d<\/p>\n But if we cannot explain the human mind by a series of mechanical devices, what then is left?\u00a0\u00a0 Berlinski responds: \u201cThere is the ordinary, very rich, infinitely moving account of mental life that without hesitation we apply to ourselves.\u00a0 It is an account frankly magical in its nature.\u00a0 The human mind registers, reacts, and responds; it forms intentions, conceives problems, and then, as Aristotle dryly noted, it acts.\u201d<\/p>\n Because it is clear that Berlinski deeply admires the great edifice of science, he has it in for those who blithely or arrogantly create concepts like \u201cthe Landscape\u201d and \u201cselfish genes,\u201d which resemble Rorschach more than they do Einstein and Edison.<\/p>\n And, furthermore, as one who knows science from the inside, Berlinski sympathizes with a great many people \u201cwho have an angry sense of being oppressed by . . . [the] endless scientific boasting\u201d of smart alecks like Dawkins and Pinker who insist that science has obliterated religion.<\/p>\n Berlinski\u2019s defense of religion is engagingly straightforward: \u201cWhile science has nothing of value to say on the great and aching questions of life, death, love and meaning, what the religious traditions of mankind have said forms a coherent body of thought. . . . There is recompense for suffering.\u00a0 A principle beyond selfishness is at work in the cosmos. .\u00a0 . I do not know whether any of this is true.\u00a0 I am certain that the scientific community does not know that it is false.\u201d<\/p>\n For Berlinski, there are only four truly scientific theories: Newtonian mechanics, Maxwell\u2019s theory of the electromagnetic field, special and general relativity and quantum mechanics.\u00a0 None of these mentions anything about God.\u00a0 As Berlinski wryly insists: \u201cI have checked this carefully.\u201d<\/p>\n As with other achievements in science, however, these four monumental theories have served to make \u201cthe world more mysterious than it ever was.\u201d\u00a0 For one thing, no one has been able to unify such disparate peaks of achievement into a single unifying principle.\u00a0 Assorted other questions also remain: How did the universe begin?\u00a0 What is time?\u00a0\u00a0 We do not know how a baby acquires so much language so quickly.\u00a0 \u201cWe can say nothing of interest about the human soul.\u00a0 We do not know what impels us to right conduct or where the form of the good is found.\u201d<\/p>\n Berlinski concludes with a sobering parody of contemporary science.\u00a0 He describes a confused Cardinal Bellarmine, famed as Galileo\u2019s opponent, directing the construction of a great cathedral.\u00a0 Berlinski, however, reverses the situation and has the brilliant and ruthless Cardinal supervising the construction of a church to science that is now our church.<\/p>\n The spire, however, has not been built. \u201cAnd in the clear moonlight, the cathedral looks unbalanced, almost as if it were a cripple defiantly waving a stump against the sky.\u201d At this uncertain juncture, the cardinal is asked if the cathedral supports the faith placed in it.<\/p>\n \u201cDoes any cathedral?\u201d\u00a0 Berlinski responds to end the book.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Terry Scambray New Oxford Review Review of\u00a0The Devil\u2019s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions\u00a0by David Berlinski (Crown Forum, 2008. 225 pp).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[87,85,610],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-um","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3177,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-defense-of-thugs\/","url_meta":{"origin":1882,"position":0},"title":"The Defense of Thugs","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Sacco and Vanzetti case set a precedent for anti-Americanisms. by Terry Scambray The Fresno Bee Hatred for America is not a recent phenomenon. Despite the opportunities offered in America for all races, creeds and nationalities, a tradition persists that Americans are racist, superficially religious and uncomfortable with foreigners. One of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Terry Scambray"","block_context":{"text":"Terry Scambray","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/terry-scambray\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3152,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obstructed-view\/","url_meta":{"origin":1882,"position":1},"title":"Obstructed View","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Scambray Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity Science\u2019s Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism\u00a0by Cornelius Hunter. 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Nonetheless, there can't be much doubt that the president's vision of America is driven by his attitude toward the perceived sins of European colonialism and his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Retrospective"","block_context":{"text":"Retrospective","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/retrospective\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1706,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/it-takes-an-army\/","url_meta":{"origin":1882,"position":3},"title":"It Takes an Army","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 28, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Rodney Stark argues the Crusades were defensive wars by Terry Scambray The New Oxford Review A review of\u00a0God\u2019s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades\u00a0by Rodney Stark (Harper One, 2009, 260 pp.). Speaking in Egypt last June, President Obama apologized for an imagined American imperialism on territory that itself was gained\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":868,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/appeasement-bode-war-not-peace\/","url_meta":{"origin":1882,"position":4},"title":"Appeasement Bode War Not Peace","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Scambray New Oxford Review A review of\u00a0The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens, Munich, and Obama's America\u00a0by Bruce S. Thornton. (Encounter Books, 2011 pp. 283) Winston Churchill famously said, \"An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.\" In\u00a0The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":404,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/silenced-partner-two-books-on-alfred-wallace\/","url_meta":{"origin":1882,"position":5},"title":"Silenced Partner: Two Books on Alfred Wallace","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Scambray Touchstone A review of: Alfred Russel Wallace's Theory of Intelligent Evolution: How Wallace's Theory of Life Challenged Darwinism\u00a0by Michael A. Flannery (Erasmus Press, 2008.\u00a0 216 pp.) Includes an abridged version of Wallace's\u00a0The World of Life, with an Introduction by Flannery and a Forward by William A. Dembski.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1882"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1883,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1882\/revisions\/1883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}