Why Think? Evolution and the Rational Mind

This is a delightful book, in which de Sousa articulates some challenging convictions concerning the role of rationality in human thought, while also retaining and making deft use of some of his longest-held views.

De Sousa's title is literal.  He means to address the very question of why thought -- that is, rational thought -- is useful.  In offering an answer, de Sousa characterizes rationality and irrationality; describes the role of rationality in human action; explores those features of mind, such as emotions, that play important roles in rational action; explores some examples of systematic irrationality; and lays out some of the implications of evolution for the skills that enable rationality.  The end result is a surprisingly rich book given its brevity.

Throughout, de Sousa is careful to distinguish normative and descriptive senses of "rational" and "rationality."  He calls descriptive rationality thecategorial sense of "rationality."  This is the sense in which humans can be said to be rational animals.  Categorial rationality is characterized in part by thoughts that are a kind of computation, which de Sousa understands to be a process of manipulating digital representations.  This requires that we have a system of thought (that is, one or more brain modules) that has as its purpose taking representations as digital.

God, The Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory

In this book Niall Shanks aims to debunk thoroughly “intelligent design theory” (henceforth IDT). The aim of proponents of IDT, Shanks warns us (p. xi), “is to insinuate into public consciousness a new version of science – supernatural science – in which the God of Christianity (carefully not directly mentioned for legal and political reasons) is portrayed as the intelligent designer of the universe and its contents.” He thinks the answer to the two basic questions about IDT – “Is intelligent design theory a scientific theory? Is there any credible evidence to support its claims?” (p. xii) – is an emphatic “no.” Such a response, Shanks thinks, is urgent, because IDT is just the thin edge of a wedge; “at the fat end of the wedge lurks the specter of a fundamentalist Christian theocracy” (p. xii).

Such overblown rhetoric peppers Shanks’ book, particularly in the sections in which he engages in political and social analysis of IDT (“Introduction: The Many Designs of the Intelligent Design Movement” and “Conclusion: Intelligent Designs on Society”). It sours what is in other respects a helpful book. IDT certainly merits severe criticism, on social and political grounds as well as philosophical ones. But do we really need to be told page after page that IDT proponents are “extremist” and “fundamentalist”? Entitling a chapter “The Evolution of Intelligent Design Arguments” is a good bit of fun – payback, perhaps, for creationists who write about “the faith of the evolutionist” and “the church of Darwin” – but did Shanks really need to say design arguments “survive, like tenacious weeds, in the minds of men” (p. 19)? In his discussion of Christian morality (pp. 232-3) did he really need to drop references to “pedophile priests,” “twisted televangelists,” white supremacists, and Adolf Hitler? If you want to read this sort of thing, buy a copy of Hillary’s Scheme: Inside the Next Clinton’s Ruthless Agenda to Take the White House. I expect better from a philosophy book.

In Defense of Atheism :The Case against Christianity, Judaism and Islam

This book was an enjoyable read, but in the end Onfray did not prove his thesis. After the preface, which fished me in, the first third of the book was a bit of a slog. I have to admit after he used the word ontological three times in the first few pages, I had to get my dictionary to look it up.

The preface describes a trip to the middle east where he visited with desert nomads – ignorant people whose way of life, and thinking, had not changed in thousands of years. These people were the very model of the founders of monotheism. And, why would their insights into the world have any relevance to today. The short answer … it wouldn’t.

The second half of the book makes a damning case against the big three monotheisms. They are big fat targets that are incredibly easy to ridicule. But I don’t think he has made a convincing case for atheism. More on that later.

He spends a great number of pages lamenting the fact that atheism is a negative term “a” - “theism” ie. against or not theistic. The theisms all have positive names: the big three names in the subtitle, plus an endless list of nouns and proper nouns: deist, pantheist, monotheist, polytheist, animists, Catholics, Protestants, Lutherans, Calvinists, Shiite, Sunni, etc. He claims that language lacks a noun that describes our beliefs with a positive construction. He doesn’t deal with what I think are positive and suitable descriptors: realist, humanist, scientist, observationalist. But I will grant him that we do not commonly label people such as myself with a name other than “atheist".

A History of God

This is a very information-rich book. Armstrong tackles a history of the three major Western religions, covering the evolution of philosophy and theology in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam since the time of Abraham. Unless you've taken a particularly good history of religion course, you will likely learn quite a lot from A History of God, particularly if you were educated in the United States where the history of Islam and post-Christianity Judaism are sadly neglected.

The biggest problem with this book is that, sadly, it's not presented in a way that makes it easy to read. Despite the complexity of her interwoven history and the dizzying but necessary barrage of names and dates, the book is presented as relentlessly uninterrupted prose. Other than the chapter breaks between the eleven chapters and a few paragraphs of summary at the end of each chapter, the most decoration the prose receives is the occasional indented quote.

God: The Failed Hypothesis

Given how much science has had to say about nearly everything else in our lives and how successful science has been in transforming nearly every aspect of them, it is at the very least initially implausible that science can and should be excluded from debates about the existence of gods. Then there is the fact that theists themselves frequently trot out arguments that rely upon scientific data — or at least misrepresentations of scientific data — in order to bolster their positions. Finally, we must face the fact that any alleged god that matters will have some sort of impact on our lives, our planet, and our universe.

Only a completely irrelevant god could leave no trace or imprint whatsoever, so if there is a god and it does matter, then it should be detectable even by a science that is completely limited to observations about the natural, material world. Indeed, most believers — and especially adherents of the three prominent monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — posit precisely such a god that is active, detectable, and relevant to our material universe.