Homework

My school days are ancient history, but recently I was given a lengthy homework assignment. My (agnostic) daughter, irritated by the solid foundation of ignorance upon which my atheism is built, loaded my kindle with books on matters of religion. She threw in a few paper copies for a good measure. Little did I know what a wild trip it would be...

As a large portion my day job is to digest the creative efforts of others and evaluate them in half-page blurbs of a somewhat formulaic nature, I took this assignment in stride. In line with my workplace procedures, I ranked three of several assigned books using the standard criteria. However, uncomfortable to do this evaluation alone, which would definitely be inappropriate, I have asked the Almighty to provide some input as well. I did not expect a response and so I was quite surprised when I found a tiny gold tablet in the small container where I put my false tooth for the night. It turned out to be a SIM card with four messages. Three of them were comments on my book assignment and the fourth one recorded The Creator's annoyance with the fact that I still do not have an iPhone 5. Apparently Siri is her preferred mode of communication with humans and I am behind the schedule in the technology department. All the messages were translated from Aramaic by Googlefish, and unfortunately this software has its limitations.

Christopher Hitchens, God is not great, Kindle edition

Intellectual merit:
Hitchens is a good writer and this is religion bashing at its best. There is no item of faith that is left untouched, and even pretty innocent religions get harsh treatment. Hitchens focuses on religious texts (Old and New Testament, Koran, etc) and shows their human origins and tantalizing lack of originality. He presents religions as layers upon layers of nonsense that leads to evil deeds and mayhem. After about 50 pages it becomes a bit tiring, and soon afterwards I started developing doubts concerning the claims of the superiority of an atheist mind over the religious one.
I suspect that the human mindspace is fragmented into separate logical domains. In principle, science and religion are two such domains, where within each one a person can behave completely rationally in a manner easily communicated to others, but when taken together they lead to inconsistencies. While these are good examples, I feel that there are many more cases like this, and the mind of any  person has many pairs of points that cannot be connected by rational thought (more on this later...). 

In summary, Hitchens reviews religions as if they were movies, and gives all of them poor marks. Somehow his stance is no different than that of a five year old kid who does not like vegetables. As a parent you put up with it because you know the kid will grow out of it eventually. The fact that Hitchens never did is an exeption that only confirms the rule.

Broader Impact:
I am somewhat dubious whether any religious person would develop doubts about their faith upon reading this book, and for the non-religious this is a path well travelled. Consequently, the book is not particularly useful for any audience. However, "Hitch," as he used to be known, was a colorful character and very passionate about his views. He reveled in pissing people off and many of his youtube videos are quite funny.

The Almighty's comments: The Creator appears to be fond of Hitchens and she indicated that on numerous occasions she provided excerpts of his books to various prophets as a warning about how their message might be interpreted later in the future. Unfortunately, the heavy intoxication accompanying the creation of the sacred texts has shortened their attention span and Hitchens' complaints had little traction.

Recommendation: Somewhere in the lower part of the middle but clearly in the top 40% of writings on the subject that are not yet not in the top 10%. Got it?

 

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, paper copy (not on my daughter's list)

Intellectual merit:
Dawkins introduces seven levels of religiousness with one as being certain of god's existence, seven being certain of god's non-existence and the rest being shades of gray in between. Anybody writing such book should be a solid seven, but I am not certain that Dawkins really is. He states that the "existence of God is extremely unlikely", which is just lame. Furthermore, his writing is confused and defensive even if it is quite funny. He seems to be unable to detach his thinking from his emotions. All of this lowers the Intellectual Merit factor significantly.

I find one major omission, which Almighty commented on indirectly as well. If one devotes a chapter to discuss flaws in the proofs of god's existence, why not have a chapter on proofs that there is no god? These are much more compelling and easier to come by. Just to illustrate, let me give an example of what he is missing out on.
Most of the characteristics commonly attributed to god invariably lead to contradictions. Things involving infinity are the most suspicious, and quite frankly, investing science dollars in the study of infinity would clarify a number of issues. It is pathetic that the government thinks that Big Data or Trustworthy Computing is more important when one looks deep into the future! Anyway, this is obviously my personal pet peeve, so let's stay focused.
Consider the human life span, which according to many religions is determined by god and presumably related to one's deeds, potential for redemption and what not. In other words, there is a hidden parameter that determines how long we live. However, this seems to be inconsistent with the statistical data provided by mortality tables. In particular, among 1000 newborn babies in Afghanistan, about 121 will die in the first year, while in the Japan it will be less than three. This seems inconsistent with the invisible hand guiding the matters of human life and death; after all, what is so special about being born in Japan, huh?

Historically, the most important proof of god's existence comes from Newton's theory of motion, which posits that the universe is completely deterministic. Personally I was somewhat worried when I first heard about it. Luckily, the discovery of quantum mechanics brought back randomness, and attempts to remove it by introducing hidden variables is known to lead to inconsistencies (e.g. Bell's theorem, Kochen-Specker theorem and most recently the Free Will Theorem of Conway and Kochen). All these indicate that the universe is endowed with true randomness. This is at odds with god's ability to see the future, isn't it? 

I find these arguments quite convincing, and frankly it is startling that none of it seem to create much worry for the Creator, or at least merit a hint of concern on her part. Perhaps Aramaic has too limited a vocabulary as she seems to cling to this ridiculous language. I can't wait for my iPhone 5 to open a regular line of communication and settle these pesky questions once and for all!

Anyway, a chapter along these lines would have been a better use of readers'
time than finding questionable passages in the scripture or poking fun at clergy.

The second omission really points to a serious knowledge gap. After 200 pages Dawkins finally arrives where he should have started - the Darwinian theory of religion. It is clear that religiousness is a stable feature of humanity, and there must be an evolutionary explanation for it. Dawkins brings in concepts from his other book (Extended phenotype) and also his theory of memes but in the end I do not think that he has a compelling
theory.

In fact I am dubious that he has got it right at all. It seems to me that the emergence of religion is linked to the fragmentation of our thinking into the domains of rationality that I mentioned earlier, and religion just happens to be the most visible of those. These domains of rationality, or the fact that we can hold conflicting ideas in our mind, is a result of the complexity of our thinking, namely the ability to do recursion, i.e. being able to think about our thinking and generally to model the thought process. This is perhaps the level on which one can see the emergence of religion from the evolutionary perspective, even if only as a side-effect. 

Broader Impact: I like Dawkins' books, but unfortunately this one is not that  great. Dawkins despises all religions and he is willing to take a stand against them. The book is full of sarcastic remarks on various aspects of religion. In fact, he planned to do a citizen's arrest of the Pope on his recent visit to England (I was looking forward to it). Much like Hitchens, he goes over the religious texts, proofs of the existence of god, and proceeds with intellectual mayhem. Dawkins is a popular writer, visible in the community. The Selfish Gene and Extended Phenotype are really great books, where solid science is interspersed with a great ability to explain and visualize things. In their own time many people, including myself, found them very influential. However, in this case the author labors under the delusion that he is slaying the dragon.

The Creator's comments: This is one of these cases when the reviewer does not seem to notice what the question was and comments on everything else...
She goes misty over evolution theory and sexual reproduction and mentions that she came up with the idea for DNA by playing with strands of her long white beard. What? White beard? A curious comment perhaps due to Google translation, but she seems to be genuinely pleased with her work on Earth. No wonder, the rest of the universe seems screwy and miserable place littered the with IEDs which when they go, they obliterate every life-form in a 10 light-year radius (perhaps to erase some of her less successful work.)
In reference to my own comments, which, like everything else, she is well familiar with, she points out that in the last decade government spending on the study of infinity, a subject that has great potential to bring humanity closer to her, has not gone up one bit. Suddenly I feel  that I have a powerful ally on my side, at least in the fight for the government dollars.

As I said, there is not one reference to Dawkins in the whole message. Given  the prominence of the reviewer, it is a mark down, isn't it?

Recommendation: A notch below Hitchens.

Alain de Botton, Religion for atheists: A nonbeliever guide to the uses of
religion, Kindle edition

Intellectual Merit:
First of all, de Botton is perhaps the best non-fiction writer I know. The writing is unbelievably smooth. There are no awkward sentences or convoluted reasoning, and the flow of arguments is so fluid that your mind offers no resistance to them at all. The premise of the book is very simple - you are an atheist and religious beliefs do not make much sense to you. Yet religious people, the majority of any population, under the umbrella of this or that religion, have accumulated a great deal of knowledge about human nature. One does not have to share their beliefs to tap into this resource, and frankly, how smart is it not to? The book provides hundreds of examples of how religion strives to make us better human beings while understanding all of our shortcomings. Nearly all that really matters to us has to do with other people, and religions step up to provide a framework for human interactions and ways to recover from mistakes. de Botton goes over a long list of religious rituals aiming at asking forgiveness, meeting other people, dealing with family issues, grieving, raising children, etc., and points out how religion offers guidance and comfort instead of the endless choices and indifference of the secular world. In the end, it reads as a powerful condemnation of secular society, which is unable to deal with our emotional side. I just loved this book, and it influenced me a great deal. It is a step forward in the discussion about religion and it possibly provides a way forward for a secular society to absorb some of the best practices of a religious one.

Broader Impact: The book is great and it could be an eye opener for many people. Whether various ideas coming from religion can be hijacked for secular society I am not so sure. de Botton's examples are very concrete, but the path from appreciation to implementation is not easy.

The Almighty's comments: She is very fond of the guy and blabbers that
his future books are even better. A solid plus for the Broader Impact!