The Case For God

The Case for God by Karen Armstrong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Armstrong makes a compelling argument against what has been called the "new atheism". Debunking the use of a literal interpretation of the Bible as something wholly modern and something that would be completely surprising and foreign to followers of the Christian faith up until at least the Enlightenment, she argues that instead religion is not an intellectual concept or dogma, but rather it is something you do. That without an active involvement, religion loses its essential value.

I find this to be a striking counter-attack to the rather tired arguments made by the new atheists, and one I'm not entirely clear how to address. From a second perspective the argument may be made this way: the act of devoting oneself actively to the pursuit of a particular religious faith, through things like prayer, meditation, and the willful act of separating oneself from a purely rational approach to understanding this world we find ourselves in may in fact have the potential of exposing us (in a mental sense) to something that we could not otherwise approach through purely rational thought. In my mind this is an argument not easily reckoned with or pushed aside.

View all my reviews

Not Even Wrong

Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory And the Search for Unity in Physical Law by Peter Woit
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A tour de force against the string theory establishment. For thirty years string theory has been the leading contender for uniting general relativity and quantum mechanics. Woit spells out in detail how string theory has failed to provide a single testable hypothesis (a fundamental requirement of the scientific method), and further how this fact seems unlikely to change at least in the foreseeable future.

Woit goes on to argue convincingly how the dynamics of modern-day academia work to continue this program, both retaining the best minds in theoretical physics and to draw top young graduate students to the topic, long after rational consideration would otherwise dictate.

View all my reviews