Humanist/Freethought Books

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Unintelligent Design

by Mark Perakh

Amherst, NY Prometheus 2004

Review, by Ken Wright

In recent years, numerous books promoting the creationist view have appeared and have found a ready sale, especially in the USA. In his bibliography, Perakh lists 24 such books published since 1989, as well as journal articles and online publications. From these, he has selected a dozen authors for a detailed examination of their arguments.

The quality of those arguments varies enormously. The most challenging are those presented by William Dembski and Michael Behe, who have raised the age-old 'argument from design' to a new level of sophistication. Appropriately, Perakh deals with them in his first two chapters, the longest in the book.

The issue is whether the universe displays features that could only have resulted from intelligent design. To answer this question, Dembski utilizes his 'Law of Small Probability.' 'Specified events of low probability do not occur by chance.' The formal proof of this assertion is couched in an impressive array of symbolic logic.

Clearly much depends on what constitutes a 'specified event.' In defining his concept of specification, Dembski introduces the concepts of detachability, conditional independence of background knowledge, tractability, and delimitation. Not surprisingly, it takes Perakh many pages to cut his way through this jungle of concepts and expose the weakness of the underlying argument.

Michael Behe, a biochemist, argues that the spontaneous emergence of life is too improbable to be taken seriously. The key concept employed by him is the irreducible complexity of biochemical systems. What he means by this expression is that the removal of any element of such a system destroys its functionality. He then calculates the probability of all the elements of the system coming together simultaneously through purely random events, and finds it to be an extremely low number.

Perakh begins by criticizing the assumption that the whole biological edifice was created in a single step from a primordial soup: obviously there are much more probable paths by which it could have been assembled. He then challenges the very basis of Behe's argument: if damage to a single protein does indeed make the entire system dysfunctional, as Behe asserts, it is a very serious flaw in the alleged design, rendering the designer's intelligence suspect. (In reality, of course, most biological systems display redundancy rather than irreducibility, since redundancy facilitates survival in an evolutionary context.)

Having dealt with the 'argument from design', Perakh goes on to discuss a number of writers who seek to reconcile bible stories with scientific data. Their efforts take three main forms:

Perakh parades these writers before us in seven chapters, mostly at the rate of one per chapter. Disproving their arguments is not a difficult task, so that the fascination of this part of the book lies more in observing the mental acrobatics in which the writers engage than in seeing their arguments refuted. The quality of those arguments may be gauged from the following selection.

Hugh Ross maintains that, due to an alleged paucity of words for different time intervals in the Hebrew language, the teller of the creation story had to write the word for 'day (yom) when he meant 'epoch.' This explanation may impress people who have no Hebrew, but not Perakh who has lived and worked in Israel.

Next, we have Grant Jeffrey and Fred Heeren, each of whom claims that the second Law of Thermodynamics proves the theory of evolution to be nonsense. Perakh, a physicist, has no trouble in disposing of that claim. Heeren also proves the existence of God by the self-contradictory argument that, since everything has a cause, there must be an uncaused First Cause. He then asserts, without further proof, that this First Cause must be spiritual, omniscient, and have personhood, leading him eventually to the conclusion that God loves us.

Nathan Aviezer provides an argument based on the anthropic principle, which is the observation that the universe is extremely fine-tuned for the existence of life. Acceptance of this principle leaves open the question of whether this fine-tuning arises from natural or supernatural causes. According to modern physics, the atoms of the elements constituting human bodies are the result of nuclear reactions within stars. From this, Aviezer concludes that the stars were created specifically to make possible the existence of humans. Perakh shows, however, that the inference from the anthropic principle to a supernatural creator is an example of circular reasoning.

Gerald Schroeder provides a novel interpretation of the six days of creation, using a concept of time dilation based on the theory of relativity. By assuming a particular form of time dilation, he manages to convert the six days into 15.75 billion years. Perakh points out that the selected formula is quite arbitrary, and that in any case Schroeder (who holds a PhD in physics) has misunderstood the theory of relativity.

Schroeder also points out that the date which bible chronology gives for Tuval-Cain corresponds to the start of the Bronze Age as estimated by archaeologists. He ignores the fact that Tuval-Cain is described in Genesis as 'smith of all cutting tools of copper and iron', and that the Iron Age started fifteen centuries after the discovery of bronze.

Many attacks on the Darwinian theory of evolution involve a misunderstanding or misuse of event probabilities. This has led Perakh to provide an entire chapter explaining the use and misuse of probability theory.

Another chapter deals with the 'Bible Code.' This refers to the claim that the text of Genesis contains a secret code, and that cracking the code reveals predictions of events that occurred thousands of years after the book was written. Perakh shows that predictions of equal quality can be obtained by similar methods from non-sacred texts.

If you enjoy watching a first-rate mind at work, you will get a lot of pleasure from reading this book.

God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They are Wrong

by S.T.Joshi

Prometheus Books, New York. 2003

Review, by David Milan

In the preface to one of his books, our own Terry Lane issues a caution. He advises those intending readers who are secure and confident in their Christian faith to read no further, lest they become unsettled, anxious, or worse, send off a flurry of abusive letters. S.T. Joshi gives no such warning. The tenor of his book is quickly recognised by his provocative, unapologetic broadside - 'I contend that religion is of no value in modern society.' He is a man with fire in his belly and is quite indifferent to the religious sensibilities of any Christian foolhardy enough to tackle God's Defenders, indeed, I feel sure Joshi earnestly hopes that 'believers' everywhere will read his book and agree with his conclusion that the claims made on behalf of religion are, at best, suspect and, in all probability, 'monumentally unlikely to be true.'

Joshi is well credentialed to author this book. Raised within a committed secularist family, he holds a master's degree in classics and philosophy from Brown University. He is a writer by profession, biographer and critical essayist who has become a respected literary contributor within his chosen field. A life-long, passionate atheist, Joshi is outspoken in his denunciation of religious folly and obfuscation and his book takes seriously the charge, given by George Sterling to H.L. Mencken, 'We non-believers have been taking it lying down, and what this country needs is a good, hot religious war, with a pen, not the sword.'

It is clear that Joshi is cross with those defining themselves as 'agnostic', describing such folk as 'unsatisfactory fence-sitters', moreover, he rebukes secularists in general 'for being in part to blame for allowing religion to dominate the moral sphere.' It is absurd, he contends, to maintain a 'don't know' stance as to the existence of god in the face of the massive evidence against theism, quoting, in support, H.P. Lovecraft - 'the chance of theism's truth being so microscopically small, I would be a pedant and hypocrite to call myself anything else than an atheist.' In chiding secularists for our passivity and timidity, Joshi proclaims a call to arms, urging us all to become more assertive in 'combating religious mummery and obscurantism.' Paradoxically, he says he has no particular interest in 'evangelical' atheism and has no desire to proselytise, but, obviously, that does not preclude his call to secularists to stand up and be counted whenever religious apologists strut their fatuous stuff. So, lily-livered agnostics we be, but Joshi and his book want to set things to rights and, leading by example, show us the way forward!

High reputation or popularity guarantee no exemption from Joshi's acerbic critique and his ten chosen apologists must face down a formidable adversary indeed! His 'targets' include an eclectic range of people whose religious views vary considerably. Beginning with the renowned American philosopher, William James (Varieties of Religious Experience), who maintained that tired old canard that 'we ought to believe in God because, if we don't, we shall not behave well', Joshi next shifts his relentless focus to G.K. Chesterton, man of letters and militant apologist for conservative Roman Catholicism. Distinguished literati T.S.Eliot and the redoubtable C.S.Lewis appear next on the 'hit-list', Lewis being, arguably, the world's best known Christian apologist and, far and away, the most widely read. Interestingly, 40 years after his death, Lewis is enjoying a remarkable renaissance in North America, his booming book sales evidence that the current generation of conservative Christians, of the more cerebral variety, have discovered a new hero. Joshi, however, is unimpressed by the erudite professor's post mortem popularity, and in subjecting him to his usual penetrating dissection, discloses inconsistencies and alarming leaps of logic.

World renowned thanologist, Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross next attracts Joshi's merciless spotlight, and the worthy doctor's late-life venture into mysticism and a world peopled by ghosts, discarnate spirits and near death experiences fail his ruthless examination criteria of sustainable logic and evidence. Notwithstanding, Dr. Kubler-Ross's 'true believers' will be unimpressed and will, no doubt, continue to flock to her side seeking the consolation and solace her bizarre theories offer to the credulous. And so, throughout this book, Joshi's patient, methodical demolition of religious supernaturalism continues. There are other notables confronted, including arch-religious and dogmatic hero of the extreme right, William F. Buckley, ('a pedlar of gibberish'), who has written a 'long-winded and syncopantic defence of Senator Joseph McCarthy.' Joshi comprehensively reduces Buckley's flimsy and illogical arguments to rubble. The phenomenally popular Neale Donald (Conversations with God) Walsch also receives the Joshi treatment (a little more kindly than Buckley's), and of the remaining luminaries, who should gain mention (to his own great surprise, I suspect) is none other than Jerry 'fire and brimstone' Falwell - surely an intellectual lightweight amongst this exalted company! The Falwellian pen is, in the opinion of Joshi, 'illiterate, pompous, evasive and self-important' and this sets the tone for his treatment of the 'moral majority's' founder. Joshi's conclusion, however, is that 'all share an underlying unwillingness, or inability to answer the crucial question, Is religion true?'

One might speculate by asking how this book will be received. Humanists will welcome, relish and (hopefully) deem it worthy of a place on the bookshelf. You certainly won't find any copies straying into the so-called 'Christian Bookshops.' Your average Sunday pew-dweller will be disinclined to risk a read because it will prove intimidatory and disquieting, and who wants long-held beliefs disturbed by the rantings of a despicable atheist?

The best potential readership, I feel, will come from thoughtful, uncommitted people whose personal credo is certainly NOT 'don't confuse me with facts, my mind's made up.' One value this book does offer is by clearly proving the case that non-belief is an intellectually-sound, persuasive alternative to the sea of superstition which besets our society. With that point, I conclude with a statement by none other than Bob Santamaria (yes, that's right!) who, during an interview made not long before his death said, 'I think that the arguments for religious disbelief, for agnosticism, are very strong, and anyone who denies the force of those arguments is a fool.'

H. L. Mencken On Religion

selected by S. T. Joshi

Prometheus Books, Amherst NY, 2002.

Review, by S. N. Stuart

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) was the most influential as well as the wittiest American journalist of his time. He was a mordant cultural critic. In unfashionable agreement with Alexis de Tocqueville (1835), he deplored that current of American democracy which pressed the individual to conform to majority opinion and behaviour. Democracy, he reflected, was a kind of cancer in the social organism. As a libertarian he regretted that 'Most people want security in this world, not liberty.' In the era of Prohibition, he noted, 'The lust to standardize and regulate extends to the most trivial minutia of private life.' And famously he made the provocative observation, 'No one in this world ... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.'

The Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 was a major sensation. The right of the State of Tennessee to ban the teaching of Darwinian evolution in its schools was upheld by the court, and the law stood until 1967. In the well known play that dramatized the case, Inherit the Wind (1955), Mencken appears in the character of the opinionated newspaperman Hornbeck (the role given to Gene Kelly in the cinema version, directed by Stanley Kramer, 1960). In the book under review, all of Mencken's excoriating reportage of the trial and its aftermath, syndicated across the nation, has been collected. By no means a disinterested observer, he depicted the trial as a crucial confrontation with the dark forces of religious obscurantism, and forcefully urged civilized rationality against rustic superstition. His contemptuous description of the town as 'this bright, shining buckle of the Bible belt' could well be the earliest documented instance of the phrase.

Quitting the trial in disgust, when the judge refused to hear any of the scientific witnesses, Mencken unfortunately missed the climactic interrogation, in which attorney Clarence Darrow exposed the absurd and even desperate fundamentalist belief of his demagogic opponent William Jennings Bryan (Spencer Tracy and Fredric March, in the movie). Bryan staggered and shortly died, and Mencken quipped, 'God must have hurled a thunderbolt to strike Darrow but got Bryan by mistake.' (Darrow's opinions are gathered in the book, Why I am an Agnostic and Other Essays. Prometheus Books, 1995.)

The proper response to religious folly is not outrage but amused contempt, as editor Joshi interprets. Mencken had a sure nose for humbug. The right-thinking reader of this book will get a vicarious thrill from Mencken's masterly demolition of Christian Science, of which he wrote (in 1916), 'It is not merely erroneous; it is imbecile.' He is also entertaining on the founding mother of theosophy, H. P. Blavatsky, 'a fraud deliberate, unconscionable and unmitigated' (1931).

Mencken described himself (during 1924-25) as 'A student of the sacred sciences all my life,' 'almost completely devoid of religious prejudices,' not particularly christian but 'not blind, nevertheless, to the comfort that Christianity gives to other men.' The Bible he knew, rich and barbarous, was great literature. It was the evangelical churches that really roused his indignation: 'Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.' Fundamentalism underpinned the rampant Ku Klux Klan. Wowserism (he embraced the Australian term) encroached offensively on the separation of church and state, epitomized in the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution (Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; 1791). 'Man will never be wholly civilized', he declared, 'until he ceases to intrude his snout into the shy, mysterious, highly private recesses of his brother's soul.' Religious teachings must be open to public criticism:

'The common doctrine that religious ideas have a sacrosanct character and are not to be discussed freely and realistically, even when they take the form of schemes to oppress and intimidate those who reject them - in this doctrine I can see nothing save a hollow bombast. Whenever it is entertained human progress is immensely retarded. Nor is there any appreciable gain for religion itself. It becomes the common enemy of all enlightened men, and soon or late, watching their chance, they rise against it and try to destroy it utterly. History is full of examples - and there is not a single compensatory example, at least in civilization, of a theocracy that has endured.' (1925.)

He took up that thread again when reflecting on the Scopes trial:

'True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge.'

Puritanism, he roundly hoped, was doomed: 'The day can't be far off when all men pretending to be civilized will look back upon it as they now look back upon witchcraft, human sacrifice and cannibalism.' The trouble with religion was the persistent 'anthropocentric vanities' that formed the nucleus of it all. The beliefs that he respected were based on impartial evidence, on science, and for the rest he was sceptical: 'For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.' He had a low regard for missionaries, politicians and communists and was quite defeatist about well-intentioned schemes for public instruction. Thus, 'I am, indeed, against all proselyters, whether they be on my side or on some other side. ... Next to a missionary, a convert is the most abhorrent shape I can imagine. I dislike persons who change their basic ideas, and I dislike them when they change them for good reasons quite as much as when they change them for bad ones. A convert to a good idea is simply a man who confesses that he was formerly an ass - and is probably one still.'

This book offers many sociological insights on American religion. More generally, Mencken's warnings of the pernicious effects of religion on society, including the recurring itch to put down heresy by force, remain salutary, especially today as we contemplate the apocalyptic insanity of ideological war using weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately for Humanism such a message is unlikely to carry very far, in spite of this book, because society ever demands conformity and marginalizes freethinking.

Mencken's analysis of personal religion - 'nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for' - is limited and has been superseded, I should think, by the new evolutionary perspective, which points to religion having an existential function.

Mencke's smart-alec style is out of favour these days; he sounds conceited, but we need not doubt his sincerity. Although at odds with the common ideology of his day, he retained a typically American individualism. He summarized his personal credo, in 1930, very simply: 'I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than to be ignorant.' Should we disagree?

Terror Laws: ASIO, Counter-Terrorism and the Threat to Democracy

by Jenny Hocking

UNSW Press book. 2004

Review, by James Gerrand

This book is a wake-up call to Australians to be aware that the current Federal Government is countering terrorism by enacting new laws that define for the first time the concept of 'terrorism.' Under the ASIO Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act people can be detained without charge indefinitely, organisations banned without trial; children taken off the street, strip-searched and interrogated without charge.

Hocking, Director of the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University, traces the extraordinary expansion of Australia's security legislation. It began with the hesitant formation of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) by the Chifley Government in 1949, following strong political pressure from Britain and the USA to establish a permanent peace-time organisation. Such a body had only hitherto been formed in Australia in an ad hoc fashion in response to war-time contingencies. ASIO was seen as part of Australia's defence system, linked to the climate of Cold War politics.

The Menzies government changed the emphasis of ASIO to domestic security and then to political surveillance. Also, whereas the Chifley government put a civilian, Justice Reed, in charge of ASIO, the Menzies government put a Military Intelligence officer, Brigadier Spry, in charge. ASIO became a political police force. The Menzies government tried, as a measure of domestic security, to outlaw the Communist Party, enacting the Communist Party Dissolution Act. This Act sought to declare the CPA an illegal organisation; to reverse the traditional onus of proof; to ban Communists from holding public service or trade union positions; to give the Executive the power to 'name' communists. However the High Court ruled the Act invalid so Menzies decided to hold a referendum to change the Constitution to make the Act valid. Largely through Evatt, then parliamentary Labor Leader, this referendum was defeated in 1951. In 1956 the Menzies government normalised the political procedures which had now become part of ASIO with the ASIO Act 1956. The two significant changes were firstly that its Director-General would now decide what were matters 'relevant to security' and 'security' was now defined as 'the protection of the Commonwealth ...... from acts of espionage, sabotage or subversion, whether directed from, or intended to be committed, within the Commonwealth or not.' This Act meant that no one in Australia would be exempt from ASIO surveillance.

Hocking then records the change of ASIO concern from subversion to terrorism. Investigations of the Whitlam government, elected in 1972, revealed how ASIO had supported members of the Croatian Utashi terrorist movement because they were anti-communist, whilst keeping Cairns, Labor Deputy Leader under surveillance for 'generating extra-parliamentary opposition to the parliamentary system.' This was ASIO's interpretation of Cairns' leading opposition to Australia's involvement in the US-run Vietnam War.

In her book Hocking gives coverage to the two judicial investigations were carried out in the 1970s. The Royal Commission into Intelligence and Security under Justice Hope was set up by the Whitlam Government in 1974 and the Inquiry into the Security Records of the South Australian Special Branch under Justice White by the Dunstan State Government in 1977.

The Hope Report recommended confining subversion to criminal offences, and making three sweeping exemptions from ministerial control of his director-general's actions. Such recommendations, accepted by the Fraser government, enabled ASIO to impinge on areas properly the domain of government policy.

The White Inquiry revealed that the SA Special Branch maintained, on behalf of ASIO, security records on thousands of individuals and organisations wrongly claimed to be possibly subversive. This imposition on personal liberties has not been matched by the discovery of a single subversive or security risk among them.

Hocking also discusses how Britain, Germany, Sweden, Ireland introduced exceptional counter-terrorism legislation in the 1970s. These exceptions include vesting in the government the power to proscribe organisations, a reversal of 'innocent until proven guilty' and an extension of the permissible period of detention. All such legislation was introduced as a temporary measure to meet an emergency situation but has continued.

Terror Laws is a well researched book, providing valuable details to those concerned about how our civil liberties are being eroded.

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