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The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions | 
 enlarge | Author: David Berlinski
Publisher: Crown Forum
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 624
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.1
ISBN: 0307396266
Dewey Decimal Number: 215
EAN: 9780307396266
ASIN: 0307396266
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
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Product Description
Militant atheism is on the rise. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have dominated bestseller lists with books denigrating religious belief as dangerous foolishness. And these authors are merely the leading edge of a far larger movement–one that now includes much of the scientific community.
“The attack on traditional religious thought,” writes David Berlinski in The Devil’s Delusion, “marks the consolidation in our time of science as the single system of belief in which rational men and women might place their faith, and if not their faith, then certainly their devotion.”
A secular Jew, Berlinski nonetheless delivers a biting defense of religious thought. An acclaimed author who has spent his career writing about mathematics and the sciences, he turns the scientific community’s cherished skepticism back on itself, daring to ask and answer some rather embarrassing questions:
Has anyone provided a proof of God’s inexistence?
Not even close.
Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here?
Not even close.
Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life?
Not even close.
Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought?
Close enough.
Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral?
Not close enough.
Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good?
Not even close to being close.
Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences?
Close enough.
Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational?
Not even ballpark.
Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt?
Dead on.
Berlinski does not dismiss the achievements of western science. The great physical theories, he observes, are among the treasures of the human race. But they do nothing to answer the questions that religion asks, and they fail to offer a coherent description of the cosmos or the methods by which it might be investigated.
This brilliant, incisive, and funny book explores the limits of science and the pretensions of those who insist it can be–indeed must be–the ultimate touchstone for understanding our world and ourselves.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 26 more reviews...
 Required reading for the thinking skeptic May 16, 2008
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
Atheist Michael Ruse lamented that the current crop of atheist books are woefully bad, and that Dawkins, on issues of history and philosophy, is a man "truly out of his depth." But here, a secular Jew (i.e. nonreligious - his religious education "didn't take") skewers Dawkins, Hitchens, Pinker, Harris, and their co-religionists for their general and demonstrable lack of reasoning power. (I don't mean that atheists aren't intelligent; I do mean that, as this book shows with much humor, that they don't really *think* about what they are saying or believing. Present company excepted, of course.)
This book is full of gems. "If rural atheism is familiar, it is also irrelevant. Religious men and women, having long accommodated the village idiot, have long accommodated the village atheist." And after reading Berlinski (or Flew, for that matter), it's easy to see the difference in the quality of thought of these "village atheists". Most atheists today style themselves "skeptics" but are merely religious Darwinists who dare not question their received dogma. There are notable exceptions, such as Stove and Milton, but they are the rarity; and when one encounters their honest skepticism, again the contrast with the "village" variety is shocking.
Or another: "Why should a limited and finite organ such as the human brain have the power to see into the heart of matter or mathematics? These are subjects that have nothing to do with the Darwinian business of scrabbling up the greasy pole of life. It is as if the liver, in addition to producing bile, were to demonstrate an unexpected ability to play the violin." A complete repudiation of the metanarrative of evolutionism, yet not even on the radar of most junior atheists.
Considering a famous atheist's rosy assessment of modern times, "Here is rather a more accurate assessment of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Anyone persuaded that they represent a "shockingly happy picture" should make the modest imaginative effort to discern the immense weight of human misery conveyed by these statistics ..." followed by a rather long list of horrors of which atheists seem totally unaware, such as ... WW2.
By way of explanation, "What Hitler did not believe and what Stalin did not believe and what Mao did not believe and what the SS did not believe and what the Gestapo did not believe and what the NKVD did not believe and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, gauleiters, and a thousand party hacks did not believe was that God was watching what they were doing. And as far as we can tell, very few of those carrying out the horrors of the twentieth century worried overmuch that God was watching what they were doing either. That is, after all, the meaning of a secular society."
Berlinski is devastatingly clear-headed when it comes to Darwinism. "A sinister current of influence ran from Darwin's theory of evolution to Hitler's policy of extermination. A generation of German biologists had read Darwin and concluded that competition between species was reflected in human affairs by competition between races."
He also raises questions for Christians. "If, on the other hand, God chooses the right or the good because it is right or good, then the power of his imperative has its source in the law, and not in his will. "Thou shall not kill," we may imagine God saying to the ancient Hebrews, "because it is wrong. I am here only to convey the message."" I have been pondering this for the last few days. I think the answer has to do with the origins of sentient beings. If they evolved naturalistically, morality is simply an invention that has no meaning apart from some sum of preferred rules of behavior. But if they are created by another sentient being, the picture changes, as they have some other source of worth, and therefore their choices in relation to one another also have real meaning. This may be the nature of moral law itself - dependent on intelligent creation, nonexistent or absurd otherwise.
Like I said, it's only been a few days. I may be wrong.
Anyway, it's always pleasurable to read other gems like these: "in a sense, Hebrews 11.1 ratifies a triviality. We can make no sense either of daily life or the physical sciences in terms of things that are seen. The past has gone to the place where the past goes; the future has not arrived. We remember the one; we count on the other. If this is not faith, what, then, is it?" Again, things most atheists seem not to wonder about, but accept blindly. "It is wrong, the nineteenth-century British mathematician W. K. Clifford affirmed, "always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." I am guessing that Clifford believed what he wrote, but what evidence he had for his belief, he did not say."
With Flew, this book is devastating for atheism, inasmuch as some atheists dare read forbidden literature. Of course there are hard questions for theism, but they recede into the distance compared with the bugbears on display here, many of which cannot be answered - at least not intelligently.
A Put-up Jbo May 14, 2008
5 out of 42 found this review helpful
The Devil's Delusion
The title is an allusion to Richard Dawkins' international bestseller, The God Delusion. David Berlinski, a secular Jew and renowned scientist, suggests that Dawkins and the current wave of atheistic manifestoes are diabolical because they have made science into another religion. (And we naively imagined science was a disinterested pursuit of the truth.)
In the first paragraph of the first chapter, Berlinski sets the tone for his "defense of religious thought and sentiment." He is dogmatic and disdainful, trenchant and sometimes comedic. He begins with his premise by quoting Albert Einstein's aphorism that "Science without religion is lame while religion without science is blind." In short, Dawkins' polemic is lame: it does not admit the Socratic paradox that science has made the world MORE mysterious: "We [scientists today] know better than we did what we do not know and have not grasped."
Dogmatic:
"After studying the resonances of carbon during nucleosynthesis, Fred Hoyle, an avowed atheist, grumbled: `it looks like a put-up job.''" Berlinski adds: "The universe looks like a put-up job because it IS a put-up job." (p. 111-2)
Disdainful:
"Considering the cosmological argument, the physicist Victor Stenger scoffs that it is the "last resort of the theist who seeks to argue for the existence of God from science when he finds all his other arguments fail." Sheer chutzpah, if I may use the Greek for cheek. It is STENGER who is arguing against he existence of God "from science." (p. 95)
Trenchant:
"Physicists have placed their faith in the idea that deep down the universe is coordinated by a great plan, a rational system of organization, a hidden but accessible scheme, one that when finally seen in all its limpid but austere elegance, will flood the soul with gratitude."
(p. 45) Such was Einstein's life-long search.
Comedic:
"When asked what he was in awe of, Christopher (God-is-not-Great) Hitchens responded that his definition of an educated person is that you have some idea how ignorant you are. This seems very much as if Hitchens were in awe of his own ignorance, in which case he has surely found an object worthy of his veneration." (p. 208)
What is Berlinski's conclusion about scientists who regard religious belief with frivolous contempt? As a secular Jew and agnostic, he affirms:
"If science in the twentieth century has demonstrated anything, it is that there are limits to what we can know: No one has provided proof of God's nonexistence. Quantum cosm-ology has not explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here. A narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion exists within the sciences. Nothing in the sciences justifies the claim that religious belief is irrational. Scientific atheism is itself a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt." (p. 218)
victormoeller@comcast.net
 Berlinski's Bizarre Thoughts Say So Much May 13, 2008
42 out of 57 found this review helpful
Guess there are times like these when we need to scold atheists,
And read the truth from agnostic inane savants like Berlinski.
Guess there are times like these when we ought to listen to the
Discovery Institute, 'cause folks like them know every reason why we oughta believe in the One True God.
Turn 'em on, turn 'em on, read Berlinski's bizarre thoughts.
When all hope is gone, there's his mendacious intellectual pornography to hang on.
He takes atheists to task for their breathtaking inanity,
while ignoring his....
When all hope is gone, Berlinski's bizarre thoughts say so much.
If Berlinski knew his science, he would have said so.
Instead he give us Christian apologetics.
And his undying devotion to ID and to his pal Bill Dembski.
He even thinks the world of irreducible complexity.
So turn 'em on, turn 'em on, read Berlinski's bizarre thoughts.
When all hope is gone, there's his mendacious intellectual pornography to hang on.
He takes atheists to task for breathtaking inanity
while ignoring his...
When all hope is gone, Berlinski's bizarre thoughts say so much.
When all hope is gone, Berlinski's bizarre thoughts say so much...
Oooh la la la.... oooh la la la....
When every little bit of hope is gone....
Berlinski's bizarre thoughts say so much.
(With apologies to the person formerly known as Reg Dwight and his long-time friend, Bernie Taupin)
Puerile hocum May 10, 2008
41 out of 55 found this review helpful
Disappointing book that could perhaps have been much better done.
Occasionally Berlinski finds a logical flaw in the writings of scientific athiests. They aren't philosophers or logicians, and occasionally they show it, and moreso when they stray away from science and toward philosophy. Mostly, however, Berlinski only managest to prove that he's a much worse philosopher still.
His arguments are seldom even clear, much less persuasive. I imagine the folks whose beliefs the scientific athiests trash might get some kicks from Berlinski's puerile sarcasm and overdone irony, but all other readers, I'd suggest you pass on this one.
Witty and pointed May 6, 2008
7 out of 46 found this review helpful
Berlinski seems to pride himself on being a contrarian. Although he claims no commitment to a theistic faith, he knows bad arguments (and unsupported assertions) when he sees them, and takes many of the "new atheists" to task on their scientific and philosophical assertions. The new atheists such as Richard Dawkins can be poor when it comes to philosophical justification, and Berlinski takes advantage of this weakness.
Berlinski is good at knocking down the "wrong" or "unsupportable" answers, but he does not claim to have any good answers himself. He writes respectfully of theistic religions in general, though he is clearly not convinced that they have the ultimate answers to questions about creation or morality. This is a fun and informative book.
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