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From Arts and Letters Daily, http://www.aldaily.org , an online service of the Chronicle for Higher Education (a university ‘rag’)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/books/22kaku.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

The reviewer notes a couple of Paulos’ arguments. At least one of the theist arguments Paulos refutes is a straw-man version.

It’s a little amazing that Paulos has decided we need this book from him, when the innumeracy he alerted us to in the 80’s is still with us unabated. Further, there are plenty enough books by popular authors that stump against religion. (Does he think Dawkins and Dennett and Shermer aren’t good enough or popular enough? For instance, every one of them at some point has dealt with the First Cause argument, i believe.)

Kirk

People wrting books don’t have to ask whether the public “needs” what they are writing.  Different authors have different ways of presenting the same points, and we are enriched by having more books rather than fewer.  It would be valuable for you to critique his ideas, including identifying the “straw man” to which you refer.  Your other statements are not valuable contributions to a discussion.

Dick, hi.

But what do you think of the review? Have you read the book?

But to expand on my comment, to make it a bit clearer. No, the world does not need another hastily-written book, and no-one was waiting for it to come out. Books that promote one’s own point of view aren’t just thereby good books; and poorly-written books, no matter how popular and ‘exciting’, ultimately confuse people who don’t catch the mistakes in reasoning, ultimately mar the work for those who do, and generally darken counsel. There are plenty of good books being unread. As to mathematical arguments in particular, Paulos can sometimes be accused of mathematicizing arguments that already worked just fine. Books being published by scientists or those who speak for science and reason ought to be held by a very high standard indeed, and none better than a mathematician knows this. Paulos writes for his own reasons, but it’s legitimate to criticise it.

None of this is a personal attack against you; and we are free to comment as we like within reason, and I chose to comment on the book and its content as a whole rather than bring up one or the other of its separate arguments. If you’d like to do that, which one interests you? Do you yourself see any weak points in them?

Also, I notice there’s a lot of snarky talk on this forum. Why attack my style on th very first go? I can point to much, much worse with no censure to show for it.

Kirk

Here is a comment I put in another thread [comment 1]

The book     Irreligion:  A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up

Review and discussion on

[ richarddawkins.net] —positive; 150+ comments in discussion.

Review in Sunday NY Times Book Review
[ by Jim Holt in NY Times Sunday Book Review ]  attacks Paulos as a new atheist. To paraphrase the reviewer,  “New Atheist” means you don’t reference historical theology enough—if Descrates, Leibniz, and Hegel (what about Newton?) thought the classic arguments for God were nontrivial why is Paulos trashing them a la Dawkins?

NY Times has the first chapter at
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/books/chapters/1st-chapter-irreligion.html

I think that you will find, as I did, that the first chapter speaks for itself.  I think this book complements the God Delusion. But then I’m a mathematician…

I believe that the only “new atheist” book that got a decent review from the NYTimes was Hitchens’s, for some odd reason. I think it was more “literary”.

Dear Inthegobi,

I have not read the book.  I do not think my comment was in any way a snarky personal attack.  I do think you comments were a putdown of Poulos and not a real critique of the book, as I indicated.  For all I know the book may be terrible, but I would like particulars rather than a broad brush attack.

I am new on this forum, but I have been a longtime poster on Internet Infidels, and, now that I have discovered this site, I have posted in the style I have always used.  I criticize people’s posts, but not people and try to be serious (usually).

Dick

Dear Inthegobi,

I have not read the book.  I do not think my comment was in any way a snarky personal attack.  I do think you comments were a putdown of Poulos and not a real critique of the book, as I indicated.  For all I know the book may be terrible, but I would like particulars rather than a broad brush attack.

I am new on this forum, but I have been a longtime poster on Internet Infidels, and, now that I have discovered this site, I have posted in the style I have always used.  I criticize people’s posts, but not people and try to be serious (usually).

Dick

Only the first three pages of the actual book are available online - naturally enough, since the book’s new, but there’s no actual argument presented in that introduction.

On the other hand, the reviewer *does* review one of the arguments Paulos gives, and critiques it. Assume the reviewer has represented Paulos accurately (he does quote the author); can a reasonable man then conclude along with Jim Holt that Paulos fails in his proof?

I’ll note that Holt has written on other science topics (according to a little bio I found) and has a forthcoming (if not now out) book on infinitesimals. He doesn’t sound like a mere hatchet-man.

So far there’s been no good reason to avoid criticizing Paulos for writing a badly-argued book, if the first proof as Holt reviews it is any indication. And as to criticism, Paulos is not like you or I - he’s willing to put himself out in the public eye and open to public opinion, and to invite public criticism and comment on his published works. And again, he’s a mathematician, and if we cannot trust them to have iron-clad proofs, we can trust no-one.

Well, to be strict, Dick, your comments had me as their subject, and my attitudes as their object. Sorry if I provoked anger in you. However, me and my attitudes are not relevant to the matter of Paulos’ book, or even to my particular criticisms. I based my critique on the review. I’ve been trying to find a review in a mathematician’s journal; but I think a review by a mathematically savvy journalist is good enough to make a probable decision about its worth.

Kirk

Another review, from the Toronto Star, more positive than the NYT one:

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/297564

To pursue my (crabby) point about good and bad books. For a little decisive evidence, let’s use this more positive review from the Star. Sorry for the length:

(1) Paulos gives advice about debating, only to ignore it:

“It’s repellent for atheists or agnostics,” he admonishes, “to personally and aggressively question others’ faith or pejoratively label it as benighted flapdoodle or something worse. Those who do are rightfully seen as arrogant and overbearing.”
That doesn’t prevent him from doffing the gloves. The ontological argument is “logical abracadabra.’’ The design, or teleological argument, is a “creationist Ponzi scheme’’ that “quickly leads to metaphysical bankruptcy.’‘
Much of theology is “a kind of verbal magic show.’’ A claim that a holy book is inerrant because the book itself says so is another logical black hole.

Objection: ‘Abracadabra’, ‘creationist’, ‘Ponzi scheme’, ‘bankruptcy’ and ‘magic show’ are all things that humans do or make - none of them are properties of arguments. That may appear a very small point, but consider. First, Paulos admonished folk against just such personal attacks, and the fact that the book employs them as qualities of arguments or beliefs is obscuring the personal attacks, not avoiding them. (Sure, we might well ask if creationists are setting up an intellectual Ponzi scheme and so forth - but none of that interesting discussion would be about arguments pro and con God’s existence). Secondly, none of those terms are exact - all are metaphorical at best. None of them have any mathematical rigor - and what other, lesser kind of rigor was I to expect?

Paulos is a fine writer, as Innumeracy and other books attest. Therefore he has more choices in his writer’s toolkit than ‘write like an utterly boring textbook’ and ‘write with a lot of pin-pricks against various opponents, and a lot of hazy but exciting metaphors.’

(2) Here is a rather subtle example:

Those and other efforts remind one of the story, perhaps apocryphal, of Catherine the Great’s request of the German mathematical giant Leonhard Euler to confront atheist French philosopher Denis Diderot with evidence of God. The visiting Euler agreed, and at the meeting, strode forward to proclaim to the innumerate Frenchman: “Sir, (a+bn)/n = x, hence God exists. Reply!”
Diderot was said to be so dumbfounded, he immediately returned to Paris.
To Paulos, the tale is a great example of “how easily nonsense proffered in an earnest and profound manner can browbeat someone into acquiescence.”

It seems obvious that Euler didn’t believe the argument he made, even if he believed each of its parts (i.e. that (a+bn)/n = x, and that God exists). And Euler didn’t claim to have won, even if Diderot *may* have acquiesced. Once more, Paulos hasn’t told us exactly about arguments, but about browbeaters - again, he’s on about certain people. Okay, down with browbeaters. But this isn’t what a mathematician as such thinks, but rather what you can find any shmo atheist saying. And he took a whole story to say it, and mis-used the story a bit, too.

A better interpretation is that Euler was having fun with both Catherine and Diderot: “You, Catherine, dont’ know enough math to know there’s no proof within it for or against God, and you, Diderot, are also too innumerate to even pretend you know if my argument is good or not.’ To be fair, Paulos makes that point too; however he forgets to attach it to the Euler/Diderot story where it makes better sense.

Here is an example from the Star review of an appeal to authority that shifts ground (two fallacies in one):

As for the problem of good and evil, he defers to fellow atheist, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg: “With or without religion, good people will do good, and evil people will do evil. But for good people to do evil, that takes religion.”

To defer to another person, whose arguments aren’t reviewed, is to appeal to an authority - it’s an appeal rather than a legitimate argument from authority because the ‘popular’ audience intended for the book won’t all agree with Weinberg. Okay, forget those people - the book’s just for atheists. But then whither it being popular? That means ‘for the people’ - the average person at least. If the book’s just for atheists and militant agnostics, that’s just preachign to the choir.

Further, even if Paulos’ claim from Weinberg may be true, it is not obvious, and it’s poorly phrased - is Weinberg talking about people who belive in a God or in a separate moral realm whatever that may be (and thus ‘religion’ is a paraphrase), or rather about an organized church (and so contra religion as such)? To move from ‘god’ to ‘religion’ is a shift in ground.

So the whole passage is confused, and shifts ground (inadvertantly) from the original book’s thrust (arguments pro and con *God*), while employing as extra evidence a not wholly relevant and rathe rdifferent set of arguments (those pro and con organized beliefs about God).

So: hastily written, at best, and containing ‘arguments’ that may well make the right troops feel good about themselves, but ultimately have no inner strength.

I’m not here to argue on God’s behalf. I’ll settle for defending a more strict worship of the goddess Reason. So far, Paulos’ book looks scrappy and uneven, and full of logical holes - maybe they’re not fatal holes to his general argument - we shall see - but they certainly eat at his authority, and they can get lodged in people’s minds as mistakes in reasoning will do.

We could well add to this from the NYT review by Holt. I ask the reader just to put aside which ‘horse’ he’s betting on, and treat each argument like a horse-doctor. So to speak.

Kirk

Dear Inthegobi,

I am not now and never have been angry about this.  I did take your response to my first post as indicating that somehow you regarded it as a personal attack, which was the last thing I intended.  Further comments here indicate that your attitude about the book was justified and I dont expect to buy it.  I was only objecting to the lack of any specifics in what you said.  Hatchet buried.

Dick

No, i never mentioned anger. But nothing to worry about - and I assumed too quickly that all i had to do was point, and it would be obvious.

Kirk

Another review, from the Toronto Star

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/297564

I finally got around to the interview. I think D.J. did a terrific job and that his interviews are a good complement to the new books.

I like the quick summary of the ‘ontological argument’ in the Toronto Star review:

(crudely, that if we can conceive of God, then God exists)

  I think Paulos is spot on that a lot of the so-called theological discussion is nonsense and that the ‘new atheists’ get criticized for not familiarizing themselves with centuries of discussion of the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Kirk, here is the first chapter to read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/books/chapters/1st-chapter-irreligion.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Kirk, here is the first chapter to read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/books/chapters/1st-chapter-irreligion.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I only see the first 3 pages - is that the whole first chapter? If so, there really isn’t a single proof in those three pages (which isn’t bad in itself - it’s just an introduction). That’s no more than I could see without registering (I hate to register for these things, and I feel just a tiny bit cheated by the NYT - not by you -  for giving me no more than I got before I coughed up some basic info.)

You’ve told me about your feelings about the book, and that they agree with Paulos. But what about the content as revealed by the two reviews?

cheers,

Kirk

Just a reminder: I’m discussing the content of the book, and expressing my dissatisfaction with it as a teacher and someone who is very interested in popular expositions of difficult thought. While one may speak sharply, the sharpness is directed at the bad arguments, not on ‘Is Paulos a nice guy?’ or ‘Will another book by an atheist make other atheists sing, and theists grind their teeth in dismay?’ I’m sure he is, and I’m sure it will produce all the usual good and bad feelings. None of that is - to me - exactly on-topic when reviewing and judging a book. I might as well ‘praise’ Behe for ‘raising awareness’ about the existence of God. If his arguments have severe and fatal flaws, then his book’s no credit. Likewise with any book at all that purports to give proofs and justified arguments.

So while I sympathise with all the opinions of feeling about the book and its writer, it’s obscure how that counts as a critique of the book and its arguments per se.

Kirk

Kirk,

It appears your critiques of this book are that it doesn’t appeal to the upper echelon of logical reasoning.  I missed the point where this was Paulos intention.  As I understood, this book is not written for the logically infallible, but for the layman with an interest in statistics and equation based logic.  I have not read the whole book, so I can’t offer rigorous critique of any logical fallacies.  I can say that your argument sounds an offal lot like a case for throwing out the baby with the bathwater.  Not to mention, you repeat that this book was hastily written, while it appears your critique of this book falls victim to the same logic.

I don’t doubt that after you read this book you can find errors.  My argument is that sometimes errors are necessary to make a specific message (such as the goddess of reason) palpable and set an individual on the right course for further inquiry.  Remember, many of the people this book is targeting are bombarded by illogical arguments and fall victim to these fallacies.  Some ideas are thorny enough that it takes a variety of books before the reader elevates their consciousness and critical thinking skills.  Given the goal of promoting reason lets look at these two cases:

(1) a book that is based 5% on logical fallacies that makes a reader 20% less likely to fall victim to a logical fallacy.

(2) a book that is based 1% on logical fallacies that makes a reader 5% less likely to fall victim to a logical fallacy.

I would argue that they are both helpful books and a world that has both choices is better off than a world that has just one.

Also along this point, what peaks some people’s interest to open a book may not work for others.  For instance, I have some ex-college roommates who have shown increasing interest towards atheist literature.  A few of them have a background in computer engineering and the logic of following code, and another friend who is obsessed with the statistics of poker and the edge that knowledge gives him over other emotionally driven players.  I think Paulos book will resonate more with their statistical and formula related backgrounds and interests than the other popular atheist author’s points of view.  Likewise, I have a couple other college buddies who have economics degrees; I think Shermer’s Mind of the Market would be the best gift for them.  Once these books give them an interest in the topic of reason they may be interested in more thorough and “un-hastily” written books from Bertrand Russell, A. J. Ayer etc.

Scott

I like the quick summary of the ‘ontological argument’ in the Toronto Star review:

(crudely, that if we can conceive of God, then God exists)

  I think Paulos is spot on that a lot of the so-called theological discussion is nonsense and that the ‘new atheists’ get criticized for not familiarizing themselves with centuries of discussion of the Emperor’s New Clothes.

I couldn’t agree more. I think Paulos’s book is worthless as the theological discussion is worthless… it is no need to be familiar with every little detail of nonsense to realize that something is nonsense.

But what about the content as revealed by the two reviews?
cheers,
Kirk

Again I thought the interview was good. It overlaps with chapter 1 (i.e. strawberry shortcake) but D.J. has an O.K. format.

Here is another review, with some exceprts including an example of a refutation of one of those pesky ‘proofs’ of God’s existence:
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2008/01/a-mathematical.html

Or consider [ NY Times ‘Freaknomics’ Blog] where they also ask about all the ‘atheist’ books lately. I think there is clearly an interest in this area (based on the sales of some of the books) and it’s not surprising to see more published in this category. 

I think that another book and another perspective should be welcomed.  Think of this as another talented person stepping up and attesting to the the good news of rationality.

New member.  First post.

There was a point in the interview when Paulos said something that really struck me: The analogy of the deck of cards as it relates to biology.  Either I don’t understand what he’s getting at (which is possible) or his comment betrays a naiveté which is rather startling in a person with such good credentials.

As I understood his argument, he says that the extreme unlikelihood of the order we see in biology having been produced by chance mutations is irrelevant because biology has to look like something.  A specific biological process or configuration might seem prohibitively unlikely, but if we consider the very large pool of possible configurations and processes, we see that one of them is a certainty.

The analogy of the deck of cards illustrates this.  You are very unlikely to get any certain sequence of 52 cards by shuffling them, but you are assured of getting a sequence.  The biology we see is simply the hand of cards nature happens to have dealt.  It could have been a different hand, but it would have been a hand nonetheless.

I think I got that right?  If so, the argument is obviously and fatally flawed.

Surely Paulos is aware that simply getting an arrangement of biological parts is no more useful than getting just any old hand of cards.  In any card game, you aren’t after a hand.  You’re after a winning hand.  The vast majority of hands are weak or worthless (which is what makes the game possible).  Similarly, the vast majority of arrangements of biological matter are non-functional (as evidenced by any roadkill you might pass on your morning commute).

If you deal out cards, you’ll get a hand, sure, but it will most likely be a losing hand.  Paulos speaks as though every hand is a royal flush.

Does anyone else see this analogy as deeply flawed?

Well, there are a number of possible arguments he could be attacking here. You’re right that his argument doesn’t relate to the “747 from a junkyard” argument (that one is dealt with much better by Dawkins in Blind Watchmaker IIRC). Rather he’s attacking the argument that there’s such a vanishingly small probability that there would be humans on earth that it must have all been planned from the start.

That sort of inchoate argument is akin to saying that it’s so vanishingly improbable that I dealt out these 52 cards in precisely that sequence that it must have been planned from the start.

That’s only true if we regard all sequences as being equal.  If we define criteria for winning or losing sequences, the story changes very quickly.

 

Does anyone else see this analogy as deeply flawed?

Yeah, well I agree it has that weakness but I also know the thread he’s trying to connect to. He returned to it later that people see patterns in the Bible text if they look hard enough—or people see a vision of the Virgin Mary in the shadows on the wall, etc.  I agree the evolution one doesn’t really work.

A lot of the stories in the news rely on reporting something unusual that happened that day—something unusual happens every day, so they report on it, and it’s a particularly unusual day without any unusual occurences.

On a mathematical example I remember a number of years back there was a story in the NYT about a woman who had won the lottery for the 2nd time. Incredible you say!  Just calculate the odds.  This is exactly like the deck of cards.  When you estimate how many lottery tickets had been sold over how long a time, it was just about time for the first person to have won twice.  Basically there had been enough lottery winners that it was no longer improbable that someone win it twice.

Paulos speaks as though every hand is a royal flush.

Nope. Paulos speaks as if every hand is a hand. That’s all. In a card game we decide what is the winning hand, in life the decision is made by natural selection.

That’s only true if we regard all sequences as being equal.  If we define criteria for winning or losing sequences, the story changes very quickly.

Why?. The point is that we cannot calculate probabilities after the fact because any final state would be very improbable, no matter if the sequence is a winning sequence or a losing one. And, of course, trying to calculate probabilities having just one sample is ridiculous.

Paulos speaks as though every hand is a royal flush.

Nope. Paulos speaks as if every hand is a hand. That’s all. In a card game we decide what is the winning hand, in life the decision is made by natural selection.

That’s not how natural selection works.  Natural selection is only able to distinguish between the best of a group of winners.  If a group of functional configurations is provided, then the most functional will be naturally selected, but amongst a group of non-functional ones there is nothing to select.  If you have a billion configurations that don’t work, none of them has any survival advantage over any of the others.  In life, you’ve got a card game with an infinite number of losing hands and a relative few that win.

For instance, it’s very easy to get an organism to mutate.  Mutation happens all the time, even under the most normal circumstances.  That’s dealing out hands.  But most of those hands are losers, as evidenced by people with Down’s Syndrome (etc).  Natural selection is good at picking out the best of any beneficial mutations, but it can’t make such mutations more likely.  It recognizes the winning hands, but it doesn’t produce them.

Cards are actually a good analogy.  Take the game of solitaire.  In this game, there are many winning and many losing hands.  Of the winning hands, some are better than others.  An exceptionally good hand will allow the player to win with just a few moves, while one that isn’t as good will allow a win only after a lot of tedious rearranging.  Among the winners, we can define which are best, which is what natural selection does.  But is any of the losing hands better than another?

Only winners are eligible for selection.

That’s not how natural selection works.  Natural selection is only able to distinguish between the best of a group of winners.

I’m not exactly sure if I agree or not—it could be the wording here. At any rate, natural selection doesn’t distinguish between a group of winners. It distinguishes between a group of organisms, and the ones who reproduce more are the winners.

That is, unless you are using “higher fitness” to mean “winners”. That’s OK generally, except that there are cases in which the lower fitness organism ends up winning. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. E.g., the stronger animal may get struck by lightning and the weaker one reproduces.

It’s not easy to tell a priori which are the traits which provide higher fitness, BTW, and it cannot be done without also looking to the environment. That’s to say, it might well be that in some environments having Down’s Syndrome is a positive benefit, that is, one that provides higher fitness.

As I say, I am not precisely following your post so not sure if this makes a difference to what you’re arguing.

The original context of the cards analogy was as a refutation of the claim that the formation of biological features by random processes is prohibitively unlikely.

No matter how you peel out the deck, whatever results is going to be extremely unlikely.  That’s another thing connected to the creationist misuse of probability.  They say ‘Well, to go from A to B, from this biological entity to that one, you’d have to have this mutation which has a certain probability, that one which has a certain probability and so on,’ this whole sequence of probabilities.  The likelihood of all those mutations occurring (assuming independence) is the product of all those probabilities, which is extremely low.  So they say ‘Okay, that couldn’t have happened.’  But, again, something’s got to happen and the fact that any particular thing is unlikely doesn’t mean that the whole process is therefore dubious.

So a “winning hand” in this case is a working biological feature.  (It doesn’t matter specifically what the feature is, so long as it works and benefits the organism.)

Paulos essentially claims that any series of mutations will yield a useful feature (“something’s got to happen”).  Every hand is a winner.  That is simply ignorant.

Hmm. I interpret the quoted paragraph differently. He’s not trying to refute the claim that the formation of biological features by random processes is unlikely. He’s trying to refute the claim that the formation of this particular biological feature is unlikely. E.g., it’s supposedly unlikely since in order for us to get this particular feature we had to go through a particular sequence of mutation events, every one of which is itself of low probability.

His point is that no matter what final state we get to, no matter what collection of biological features we have, each one will appear in retrospect to have been vanishingly unlikely. Or as SJ Gould would say, if you turned back the clock and re-ran the whole thing again, it’d be vanishingly unlikely to get precisely the biological features you see around you now.

As for the question of useful features ... again, what makes a feature useful is its particular environment, which includes its competition. A feature that might appear suboptimal in our environment (Down’s Syndrome, let’s say) might in fact be a “winning hand” in some other environment. Perhaps all the other humans are infertile, for example. I’m just saying this for clarification, since I’m not sure it bears on the argument.

Prof. Paulos’ mention of the “Yeah” religion reminds me of the religion I started a couple of months ago which I called “LOTU” for “Laws OF The Universe”. It’s a religion for atheists and critical thinkers. http://thelotu.com/

Kirk,

Sorry not to have replied sooner. Most all the parts of your reply were important, hence the length.

It appears your critiques of this book are that it doesn’t appeal to the upper echelon of logical reasoning.  I missed the point where this was Paulos intention.

To ask that the things offered as proofs are in fact proofs as written isn’t asking for much. Otherwise, I have to take Paulos’ arguments in the book on his say-so.

I can’t offer rigorous critique of any logical fallacies.

You are *much* too modest. You had the ability to understood the Pythagorean Theorem in eighth grade or earlier. If mathematical-style arguments *can* be understood by any inteligent person, then there is no-one better than Paulos alive to do it. Otherwise, we must accept mathematical proofs on the mere authority of mathematicians. I thought a slogan around here was ‘on the word of no-one’? Well, just because Paulos agrees with you or me or anyone doesn’t mean he’s given a single good argument; and just because you (and Steve Weinberg for that matter) *like* the conclusions of his arguments is a very weak reason to *accept* them - although to accept the word of authorities isn’t a *terrible* ground for believing, just a weak one.

I can say that your argument sounds an offal lot like a case for throwing out the baby with the bathwater.  Not to mention, you repeat that this book was hastily written, while it appears your critique of this book falls victim to the same logic.

An offal lot, eh? You accidental poet, you. True, the reviewer mentioned ‘hasty’ - i shouldn’t have. It doesn’t matter to a reader how long it took to write the book - good or bad is good or bad.

I don’t doubt that after you read this book you can find errors.  My argument is that sometimes errors are necessary to make a specific message palpable and set an individual on the right course for further inquiry.

No, that’s about as wrong-headed as it can get. Deliberate or lazy errors don’t reliably promote the truth no matter how small the ratio of error to truth. Perhaps you only meant “Don’t pick at small details; sometimes boring material needs punching up.” That *may* be so. All my professional life I’ve sold things - shirts, chemistry, George Berkeley - and i never had to lie about my products, nor has making mistakes encouraged the common . But if *you* insist that errors are *necessary* at times to enlighten people, it may indeed be so.

(1) a book that is based 5% on logical fallacies that makes a reader 20% less likely to fall victim to a logical fallacy.
(2) a book that is based 1% on logical fallacies that makes a reader 5% less likely to fall victim to a logical fallacy.

I would argue that they are both helpful books and a world that has both choices is better off than a world that has just one.

Alas, how do we know that either of these profiles match the book Irreligion? In fact it seems the ratio is much higher than 5%. Just on the arguments presented in the text reviews shown here, even the extract from the *sympathetic* choices have deep and confusing problems. The cracks in the book are pretty deep and neither about little things nor just for specialists to chew over. You understood the critiques i’d made, and those reviewers who pointed out problems, didn’t you?

Also along this point, what peaks some people’s interest to open a book may not work for others.  For instance, I have some ex-college roommates who have shown increasing interest towards atheist literature.

Scott, this is exactly why i’ve jumped into this thread. But I’m the teacher who’s being asked to recommend a book. It doesn’t really matter to me that i’m a theist, and my student’s not. I still want to recommend a book that *works* - if by ‘work’ is meant it purports to have arguments and proofs, well then I cannot recommend *Irreligion*. That’s a pity: the books I do recommend to young atheists are not so interesting to read, although they are more informative.

Bertrand Russell is a good choice, btw. Try also John Perry. He has a decent website too. He also has a little book from Hackett Publications called Dialogue on Good, Evil and the Existence of God. I happen to think that has the best exposition of a good atheistic argument about suffering. He also makes use of statistics in his argument, and correctly identifies the difference between a population and its members, a difficult concept for non-specialists to keep straight. Perry’s also a Sartre scholar, too: there’s a funny picture on his webpage of him on a flume ride as ‘John Perry descends into nothingness’.

Now then! As a theist, and as a putative expert (ho ho, har har) on reasoning, i happen to think it has all the defects of any of those non-theistic arguments, and its criticism of the theistic position is also defective. However!! I would indeed recommend it to a student.

So, there’s no good reason to recommend this book. First, there’s at least one other easy-to-read book out there (Perry’s) that does it better on at least one mathematical argument; second, it’s a little strange to further atheism and freethinking at the expense of argumentation, and at the expense of muddling a person’s head with things that are called proofs but aren’t. Lastly, the book might help make more atheists. But if the sampling of arguments from the reviews is any indication, then a fat lot of good *Irreligion* will do for a freethinker, unless he wants to fall back on an authority, and how free is that?

Kirk

I believe that the only “new atheist” book that got a decent review from the NYTimes was Hitchens’s, for some odd reason. I think it was more “literary”.

Paulos has a letter to the editor responding to his book review
[Here - Feb 3 2008 NYT Book Review Letters Section]

I first read it in the paper but had a hard time finding the electronic version to post a link —couldn’t find it from NY Times WWW site.

Paulos responds specifically to the charge that he is “innocent of theology”, and I think gives a good analogy with an astronomer saying astrology is ridiculous—and no one really expects the astronomer to be able to draw up horoscopes and know the arcania…

I had to find it from his page—couldn’t find it from NY Times WWW site.

Well, it was published in the Book Review.

Paulos has a letter to the editor responding to his book review
[Here - Feb 3 2008 NYT Book Review Letters Section]
Paulos responds specifically to the charge that he is “innocent of theology”, and I think gives a good analogy with an astronomer saying astrology is ridiculous—and no one really expects the astronomer to be able to draw up horoscopes and know the arcania…

To continue your analogy: While it is true that it would be burdensome to expect that most astronomers know astrology, there is one astronomer who ought to know - the one who writes a book entitled ‘Why the Arguments For Astrological Influence Don’t Add Up.’ That astronomer, when he publically declares not just his ignorance of astrology but his pride in that ignorance, would be considered grossly incompetent to publish a book on astrology. Does this analogy still hold?

I shall pass over in silence the fact that comparing all theology to astrology is extreme - a move that ensures the book will lose most of its religious audience, who presumably need this book more than the atheists do. (After all, they’re the benighted ones.) It’s just another example that despite the book’s admonition to play nice with the religious folk, a New Atheist can hardly help but step on their feet and grind the heel in a bit more.

If young atheists need to anoint another secular saint, by all means; but freethinkers might want to think again.

There’s one crumb of comfort for the theist. This book will hardly *influence* anyone to be *effective* in arguing against theists and theologians with real bite.

Kirk