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Review of: Dark Menace of the Universe

BOOK REVIEW

The Dark Menace of the Universe

Tom Filsinger (with John Ettorre)

Brust Books

ISBN 0-9702631-4-7

U.S. $19.00

225 pgs.

I dreaded reading this book.

You see, I have never had the slightest interest in “gaming,” the playing of fantasy board games ala Dungeons and Dragons.

And with Tom Filsinger being one of the kings in the gaming universe with his Champions of the Galaxy and Legends of Wrestling I realized going in that much of his autobiography would be about his creations.

Thus, I was pleasantly surprised that as I poured through “Dark Menace,” I was actually sucked into Filsinger’s world and truly enjoyed what turned out to be an inspirational work.

And in the process I learned that I, too, was a “dark menace.”

You see, psychologist/professor Filsinger feels that creative people who have never gone the traditional 9 to 5 route somehow pose a threat to the world (and thus the “menace” label) “Many people are vaguely uncomfortable with genuineness and will consciously or unconsciously try to stomp it out,” he states. Filsinger even comes up with his own term, “Stomp Psychology.” Attacked by fellow professors who disagreed with his methods, he uses these unpleasant incidents to illustrate reactions to someone who chooses to go against the norm. Thus, his book becomes more than just the story of his worldwide “gaming” success, but also his life story and a study of the psychology of creativity itself. 

For a book heavy on psychology, “The Dark Menace of the Universe,” reads easily with the author bringing up fascinating points about creative people trying to cope with a world where “beasts sense vulnerability.”

     Accept the fact that you won’t fit in anywhere because — hooray — you won’t fit in everywhere! If you’re like me, you won’t be able to fit comfortably with most social groups. This may sound frustrating, but the fact is you’ll also expand your social horizons exponentially. While you won’t be able to totally immerse yourself in most groups because most groups define themselves in narrow, restrictive ways, you’ll find that you’ll be able to be on the fringes of many groups because your openness allows you to connect with many different kinds of people.

And his discussions of creative yet tormented folk like Rod Serling, Jelly Roll

Morton, Charles Schultz, Oscar Peterson and Steven King only add to the

impact of his tome. Filsinger deeply admires the legendary Stan Lee of

Marvel Comics, who ultimately became a supporter of his games. Having

grown up on Spider-Man et al., I can even see the parallels in their colorful

and likeable in-print personas as Filsinger, likeLee, clearly relishes coming off

as someone who’d do it all just for fun rather than profit. Yet with repeated

references to sales and “growth,” it seems that Filsinger is also a shrewd

businessman and marketer who deservedly enjoys the spoils of his many years

in the gaming industry (and it is an industry).

Where “Dark Menace” is at is weakest, though, is when the author seemingly mentions every friend and family member in his entire “galaxy.” Frankly, that’s what dedication pages are for. Filsinger also relies way too heavily on exclamation points to get across his generally contagious love of life; they at times prove distracting.

Despite its minor flaws, I was thoroughly engrossed in The Dark Menace of

the Universe and believe it will prove to be an inspiration to those creative

folk and dark menaces who have an offbeat hobby or passion that others “just

don’t understand.”

(Evan Ginzburg)

Review of: Coming to Peace with Science

Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds Between Faith and Biology
Darrel R. Falk
Intervarsity Press, 2004
0-8308-2742-0

by Heather Campbell

Coming to Peace with Science is written to an audience of evangelical Protestant Christians. The author is himself an evangelical Christian, one who is also a professor of biology at Point Loma Nazarene here in San Diego. Professor Falk believes that science, specifically evolution, does not negate the Bible - indeed, the beauty of biology reveals its Creator. Falk's lucid explanation of the evidence for evolution is framed in language appealing to those Christians who have historically been known for their rejection of science.

The book starts and ends with Falk's own personal experience with religion, as well quotes from a wide range of theologians who argue that it is possible to interpret Genesis less than literally without affecting core doctrines of the faith. Falk states that the Bible was not intended as a scientific treatise but rather as a way to bring people into unity with God. The message of Genesis is that God is the Creator; the length of time, or even the method, by which he brought life into being does not much matter.

Chapters 3 to 6 focus mostly on the variety of evidence for evolution and the deep age of the earth, with some religious interpretation interspersed. Falk's ability to use analogies to explain complex concepts really shines here. One example is found in the chapter Tracing Lineage by Tracking Genes: suppose that you make a photo album for your son and daughter. After putting the album together you make a copy so that each child can have one. Only then do you discover that you accidentally put two of the exact same photo into the album -- but since there's no harm in that, you leave them as is. Next, suppose that your daughter's child scribbles crayon all over one of these doubled photos, but your daughter just leaves the scribbling because one photo remains. If these photo albums become a family tradition, copied and handed down through the generations, it would be possible to trace the 'lineage' of photo albums by the presence or absence of this scribbling. Similarly, gene duplications and introns (non-coding insertions into DNA) are a powerful clue to biological heritage.

Following are some direct quotes from chapters 3 to 6.

Actually there are forty independent isotope systems used by geologists for dating minerals.
...even if we allow that the techniques may have an error margin of from 5 to 10 percent, we would still be left with an Earth that was over 4 billion years old...The fact that different and independent radiometric techniques are in relative agreement with one another...is a confirmation of their validity.

Given the overwhelming amount of evidence, it is appropriate for Christians to accept that science is revealing details of God's activity. By closing our minds to this form of revelation, we are missing the opportunity to peer into the workings of the God we love so much.

Animals, plants, and other organisms really do share common ancestors, but through a process continually under control of God's Presence, the history of life has taken the course that it has. According to this view, God is not necessarily more active at one time than another.

Since 1990, three times as many bird fossils have been found from the period of 150 million years ago up to 70 million years ago as had been found in all of recorded history.
...the 1990s ... was the greatest decade in history for the discovery of transitions.

Until just several thousand years ago, the top Australian carnivore niche was filled not by a mammal nor by a bird but by a reptile - in this case a giant dragon lizard. The lizard, Megalania, was fifteen feet long and weighed close to one thousand pounds, or the size of a Kodiak bear.

Is the instruction book for how to make a chimpanzee any less the product of God's creation because it carries with it the "scars" of gene duplications, pseudogene deletions, retroposon insertions, and old silenced instructions on how to build a virus?...Just like each specific scar on your body is a reflection of a specific event in your past, so also the distinctive changes in DNA are a reflection of the past history of organisms -- a past that stretches far back into the antiquity of biological time.

Chapter 7 starts off by addressing some common objections of creationists, then takes up the issue of human evolution. This treatment of this topic is worded carefully:

"Hence God simply told us that we, like animals, are created from the dust of the ground. And that, as you know, is the heart of the gradual creation story -- no biologist could put it more succinctly than that."

Falk suggests that the account of the creation of Adam and Eve could be interpreted as a creation of humans as spiritual beings, capable of a personal relationship with God.

The conclusion of this last chapter is a cry for unity among Christians: those who believe in sudden creation and those who believe in gradual creation should accept each other as fellow followers of Christ. This is not to say that he compromises on the science, even here emphasizing:

"If the most predominant version of sudden creation were true, the sciences of nuclear physics, astronomy, geology, and biology would all be utterly wrong. It cannot be taught in the science classroom because it is not science."

Falk feels that making creationism a litmus test for entrance into the Christian church is divisive and counterproductive. He gives a poignant account of his own eventual return to Christianity later in life -- he had been longing to reconnect to the church for years, but was hesitant because he did not know how his position on this issue would be received. Fortunately he found a congregation who opened their arms to him, but he worries that other would-be seekers might feel unwelcome elsewhere. His purpose in writing the book was not necessarily to convince the reader of gradualism, but to convince the reader that it is possible to be a sincere Christian who accepts gradualism. The church and its individual members would all benefit from an atmosphere of tolerance on this point.

If creationists are ever to come to some level of acceptance of the deep history of the universe, it will be thanks to the influence of fellow evangelicals such as Professor Falk, whose love for both God and the natural world shine from the pages of Coming to Peace with Science.

THE TWO SHEDS REVIEW by Julian Radbourne
E-mail: twosheds316@aol.com
Website: www.twoshedsreview.com

Ten years ago it was touted as the Justice League of America’s ultimate adventure. But was it? And how well does the story stand up ten years later? This is what I’m attempting to find out as I look into JLA: Rock of Ages.

Originally published as a part of the JLA comic book series, Rock of Ages is set just after the death of Wonder Woman. Lex Luthor, Superman’s perennial foe, has gathered together a team of villains, an Injustice Gang, in an attempt to destroy the League, and killing his hated nemesis in the process.

But this isn’t one of those good guys versus bad guys massive beat ‘em up kind of comics, where Luthor sends his buddies to the JLA’s base just to beat the crap out of them. The evil genius deduces that he must use corporate tactics to rid the world of the League, and he has a weapon powerful enough to help him obtain his goals.

And so the story is set in motion. With a massive cast list featuring the likes of the Joker, Plastic Man, and the evil demi-god that is Darkseid, Rock of Ages is a story that takes the reader not just on a trip around the world, but through all of time and space as well.

Rock of Ages is a perfect example of just how far comic book art has come in the past twenty years or so. Some of the battle scenes are jaw dropping, and just seem to leap out of the page at you. As for the writing, Grant Morrison’s work is excellent. As well as the usual battle scenes, we have super-heroes worrying about their place in the world, and in the League in particular. Green Lantern worries about missing deadlines in his job as an artist, while Green Arrow just worries that he’s not as powerful as some of the heavier hitters in the League.

So how does this story end? Well, the point of this review is to make you want to go out and buy this book. And you should. It may only take you a couple of hours to read, but it’s well worth the effort.

Book Review: The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand

By Tom Baule

The incompetence of Union generals was on full display when the 1700 union soldiers, including the 20th Massachusetts, crossed the river to Ball's Bluff in October, 1861 to make a "slight demonstration" on the confederate force in Leesburg Virginia. The Unions intelligence was faulty, and a substantial confederate force was waiting for them in the woods. The Union troops had left themselves no retreat route, having to descend a cliff and cross a river with only three boats. Only 800 men survived. One of those survivors was future chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. The 19 year old Oliver was hit by a mini` ball just above the heart. When he thought he was dying, as he lay critically wounded in the field hospital among the death and stench of his bloodied friends and comrades, Oliver did an extraordinary thing, he road tested his beliefs. He found that the assurance he had done his soldierly duty was wholly adequate consolation for his life, he did not require the certainty of religious faith. Uncertainty, "I am to take a leap in the dark" turned out to be all the certainty he needed.

His views persisted, when in Sept 17, 1862 13,000 thousand Union troops were massacred at Antietam, and Oliver was injured again, shot in the neck. Oliver again concludes that the professionalism and discipline of the soldier are higher merits then of any particular cause - to admire success more than the purity of faith, and that certitude leads to violence. Pragmatism, that uniquely American philosophy, rose from the ashes and filled the void left by the old ideals discredited by the failure of American democracy and the blood of 600,000 soldiers killed in the civil war.

After the war, an informal club formed in Boston called "The Metaphysical Club" where members presented ideas and discussed. Most members were affiliated with Harvard University in some capacity, and it is here that the ideals of Pragmatism were first presented, discussed, dissected and flushed out. The club was deeply influenced by the writings of Emerson, Kant, Hegel, and the 1859 publication of Darwin's "Origin of the Species." Darwin once scribbled in the margins "never use the word(s) higher & lower." The advise proved almost impossible to the letter, even for Darwin, but if anyone respected its spirit, it was club member Chauncey Wright. Chauncey was an atheist and nihilist, who "was content to serve as the local Socrates" as he managed to fail at almost every endeavor he undertook, but was a very influential club member and retained Holmes' life long admiration.

Contrary to Chauncey Wright, Henry James was the literary promoter of Pragmatism, and was chiefly concerned with its relation to religion. Like so much of 19th century philosophy, James sought to bridge the chasm between modern science and religious faith. Through Pragmatism, he was able to, as both religion and science were useful tools to him and therefore it was pragmatic to believe in both. The popular Swedenborgian mysticism was his greatest religious influence, but his religion was largely of his own creation. Although Darwin had persuaded most scientists of humans common descent, James was comfortable with a hierarchical conception of race "the inferior races who live with us." Yet the charismatic and adored James ardently believed that "certainty was moral death".

Another club member, Charles Peirce coined the term "pragmatism" borrowing it from Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason." Peirce was a philosopher and system builder who wrestled with Nominalism, Positivism, Kant, Hegel, Schiller and others, as he took the idea of pragmatism and gave it a philosophical foundation in his writings. Peirce was interested in probability, and merged his own "Law of Errors" with the prevailing ideas of the club. With so many different ideas and men, its not surprising the "The Metaphysical Club" only gathered for a few years and mostly unraveled in 1869, as new leadership arrived at Harvard, yet the ideas discussed in this brief time would change America.

The Civil war, for the people who lived through it, was a terrible and traumatic experience, it tore a hole in their lives. The war seemed not just a failure of democracy, but a failure of culture, a failure of ideas, "the civil war discredited the beliefs and assumptions of the era that preceded it." The old ideas that underpinned the first generation of this new republic had clearly failed. Into this vacuum seeped the new pragmatic ideas that mark the birth of modern America. Pragmatism is an idea about ideas, that ideas are tools, like forks, knives and microchips, that people devise to cope with the world in which the find themselves. Ideas that are useful and promote success in the real world are correct, they are useful tools.

Oliver Wendell Holmes went to fight because of his moral beliefs. The war did more than make him lose those moral beliefs, it made him lose his belief in beliefs. Justice Holmes' Pragmatism underlies many of the influential opinions he wrote while on the supreme court. Procedure was what was most important. Allowing democracy to work its way, without peremptory restriction by courts was his influential legal legacy that dominates jurisprudence today [well, in most cases anyway!]

After WWI, in 1919 and 1921, opinions put forward by Justice Holmes became judicial touchstones, and the basis for a broad expansion of First Amendment freedoms. The constitutional law of free speech is an important benefit to come out of the pragmatic ideals that emerged in the decades after the Civil War. It makes the value of an idea not its correspondence to a preexisting reality or a metaphysical truth, but simply the difference it makes in the life of the group. Holmes concept of the "marketplace of ideas" is a metaphor of probabilistic thinking; the more arrows you shoot at the target, the better sense you will have of the bull's eye. The more individual variations, the greater chances the group will survive. Thinking is a social activity, we permit free expression because we need the resources of the whole group to get us the ideas we need.

The solution has been to shift the totem of legitimacy from premises to procedures. We know an outcome is right not because it was derived from immutable principles, but because it was reached by following the correct procedures, or due process. Justice does not preexist the case at hand, justice is whatever result just procedures have led to. Holmes believed political opinion should be protected because that is the only way for democratic governments to maintain legitimacy.

John Dewey was born later and is the final personality the author focuses on, is a celebrated American atheist academic who wrote prodigiously and brilliantly to help establish Pragmatism as the American philosophy in the early twentieth century. In the nineteen fifties and sixties, other European philosophies came to the fore in American universities, but they have become unfashionable of late as Pragmatism has once again regained its preeminence in American academia on the strength of writers such as Richard Rorty. I felt the author downplayed the role of atheism and focused way too much on the religion of Henry James, but overall the author, Louis Menand provides a Pulitzer winning page turner reintroducing important ideas that shaped modern America in the context of the life and times of the men who originated them.

When Life Nearly Died: a Book Review

By Heather Campbell

Atheists generally think of themselves as skeptics, but on the topic of evolution, religionists think we're the gullible believers. Our experience with evolution could be applied to another pressing scientific issue, global climate change. As with evolution, there is quite a consensus among the scientific community (in this case, that climate change is human-induced and very real); the disagreement is over details of how and how much. Also, very similar to evolution, this basic consensus is misleadingly portrayed in the media as more of an even split, with naysayers given fairly equal time despite being in the minority.

One book I recently read, "When Life Nearly Died" (Michael J Benton, Thames and Hudson, 2003), addresses both evolution and climate change. The stated topic is the most destructive extinction event in Earth's prehistory, the one that occurred at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic periods (about 251 million years ago). This event wiped out 70-90% of marine and terrestrial species, apparently relatively suddenly. The more famous extinction 65 million years ago which saw the end of the dinosaurs was actually much less profound. According to Benton, evidence suggests that a runaway greenhouse effect was a factor in the P-T extinction.

About two thirds of "When Life Nearly Died" is devoted to an account of the scientific discovery of Earth's prehistory. That is, we start out by learning how geologists of the early 1800s came to believe that Earth was much older than previously thought, and that much flora and fauna had once thrived but somehow disappeared. This part of the book has won praise from lay readers as being a very engaging historical outline. Benton introduces a cast of characters -- some quite colorful, considering that they are geologists -- and in the process, underscores the fact that ideas of evolution and "deep time" are not just Charles Darwin's but rather were worked out by many minds as they analyzed the evidence. The case is built, brick by brick, on a firm foundation of facts.

Only the last third of the book or less deals directly with the reconstruction of the Permian-Triassic extinction. Here the line of reasoning becomes more technical, and the implications are most chilling.

Benton believes that the P-T extinction was initiated by prolonged lava flows from volcanic fields in Siberia. Such eruptions could have spewed enough sulfur dioxide to stress the vegetation, and enough carbon dioxide to raise the planetary temperature 2-3 degrees C. He presents geologic evidence for his case, and argues against the alternative theory -- that a meteorite impact caused these conditions. (I have heard a stronger case made in favor of impact from other sources, however).

The problem for scientists was that neither of these initiators would have been enough to cause the massive anoxia (lack of oxygen) seen in marine deposits in the form of black shales. Such sedimentation indicates that vegetation was no longer taking up carbon, and even dead vegetation was not being decomposed as normal; the productivity of the biosphere had profoundly collapsed.

The answer to this mystery came in the form of deposits of "gas hydrates" of methane. These deposits of methane molecules trapped in a cage of water molecules were discovered in ocean floors in the 1970s. They form in conditions of great pressure and (most often) low temperatures. Methane is 20 times as effective as CO2 at trapping infrared radiation in the atmosphere, so a major release could cause remarkable temperature increases. The carbon in methane tends to be isotopically light, and in fact the geologic record of the time shows a shift in the carbon isotope ratio towards light carbon.

The most plausible scenario, according to Benton, is a 2-3 degree temperature rise causing destabilization of gas hydrates, which pushed the temperature increase up to about 6 degrees greater than average, fairly rapidly.

What Benton does not explicitly refer to is the fact that this kind of temperature increase is at the upper end of the range predicted by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC's models apparently do not take into account possible compounding effects of gas hydrates, the deposits of which are estimated to weigh in at 10,000 gigatons.

Some basic facts of climate are not too difficult to grasp. The average temperature over the surface of the earth is 60 degrees Fahrenheit (17 or so C). If there were no greenhouse gases (such as water vapor and CO2) in our atmosphere, however, the average temperature would be about 0 degrees F. This profound effect on our temperature occurs even though greenhouse gases are present at very low concentrations - carbon dioxide is measured at 370 parts per million now. Ice core samples from land-formed glaciers show that the pre-industrial level of CO2 was 280 parts per million (air is trapped in the snow which accumulates into the glacier). A thirty percent increase in the gas which accounts for about one quarter of the greenhouse effect can be expected to push the temperature upwards.

In fact, the average temperature has increased by about half a degree C over the past century, which may not sound like much but is already changing ecosystems in the Arctic. The thickness of the ice cap at the North Pole has decreased about 30%, according to submarine readings. Over the last 100 years, global sea level has increased 4 to 14 centimeters.

In June, the CEO of Shell Oil in England, Ron Oxburgh -- who has a PhD from Princeton in the geosciences -- told the Guardian that if we don't start sequestering carbon now, he sees "very little hope for the world".

If change occurs gradually, humanity can probably adapt. However, ice core samples have shown that climate change can occur rapidly, in the space of a few decades in some cases. With gas hydrates lurking in the ocean floors, there is a possibility that we are risking extreme change in a relatively short time period. This possibility may be small, but the prospects are horrible, to say the least. Just as we wear seat belts even though the chance of an accident on any particular day is remote, we should take protective action on this issue now. Atheists and others who try to have science as a basis for our choices could contribute greatly to motivating the public.

References:

• Wolfson, Richard. Energy and Climate: Science for Citizens of Global Warming, The Teaching Company, 1997.
• Maslin, Mark. "The Coming Storm", Barron's, 2002.

Book Review: The Fiction of the Christ

By Heather Campbell

The back cover of The Jesus Puzzle (Earl Doherty, Canadian Humanist Publications) asks 4 questions:

• Why are the events of the Gospel story, and its central character Jesus of Nazareth, not found in the New Testament epistles?

• Why does Paul's divine Christ seem to have no connection to the Gospel Jesus, but closely resembles the many pagan savior gods of the time who lived only in myth?

• Why, given the spread of Christianity across the Roman Empire in the first century, did only one Christian community compose a story of Jesus' life and death -- the Gospel of Mark -- while every other Gospel simply copied and reworked the first one?

• Why is every detail in the Gospel story of Jesus' trial and crucifixion drawn from passages in the Old Testament?

These questions roughly frame the structure of the book, and Doherty has a thesis which account for the problems they raise: Jesus Christ was a literary creation, entirely without a historical human as a basis. Even among atheists this assertion comes as a surprise; we modern people unconsciously assume that gods and myths started out as legends of actual human exploits, gaining divinity in the retelling. However, the theory here is that Christ started out as a spiritual symbol that was gradually taken to be a historical fact.

Doherty takes us back to the social context and mythic worldview of the Mediterranean region of the time to show how the concept of Christ could have been synthesized without reference to a historical person. To Doherty, this idea of a literary creation explains why the non-Gospel part of the New Testament do not refer to Jesus' own (presumably fairly recent) life and ministry.

That the writers of the New Testament epistles appear to be unaware of the details of the savior that they preach is handled quite thoroughly in the first part of the book. The apostle Paul does not quote Jesus, even when it would have reinforced his argument to do so. Even in "apologetics" (defenses of the Christian doctrine) written as late as 100 C.E. there is scarce mention of a human Jesus. Doherty is aware of the logical difficulty of the argument from silence -- that is, the problem of proving non-existence -- and that this line of reasoning requires collecting every single situation where a mention of the historical Jesus would be expected, yet is not found. Even at a logical disadvantage, he builds his case well.

Doherty goes on to propose how such a literary creation could come to be. From about 200 B.C., the influence of Greek culture was felt throughout a wide area; one rather Platonic worldview held that the earth, the material world, was but one of several planes of existence. This plane was a dim, imperfect reflection of the highest heavenly plane. Between earth and heaven, one or more atmospheric planes were the dominion of angels and demons, who had the power to influence events in the material world. Several other religious groups had myths of divinities descending from the highest realm to perform salvific actions in the atmospheric realms (such as Mithra's slaying of the bull), and then ascending back to Heaven. Jesus as described by Apostle Paul seems to have acted entirely in higher spheres.

As the Greeks gave way to the Romans in dominance around the Mediterranean, there was great social upheaval and many sects arose. Jews looked forward to the Messiah predicted in their scripture; wandering preachers announced the kingdom of God soon to come. "Pagans" and Jews influenced each other; one's Savior came to be associated with the other's Messiah. Paul believed that Jesus was revealed to mankind through the Jewish scripture, if one were inspired and knew how to interpret the message.

Against this backdrop, the specifically Christian story of Jesus probably was written as a "midrashic" exercise. "Midrash" was a reworking of quotes and themes of the Hebrew scripture for contemporary education. Jews of the time would have been so familiar with midrash that they would have recognized the Jesus narrative as allegory.

Doherty traces the scriptural origins of each detail of the narrative. For example, Jesus' cry of lament, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" quotes the first verse of Psalm 22. Later in that psalm the line "They divided my garments among them and for my raiments they cast lots" became part of the story, and so on. With an identifiable "midrashic" source for every aspect of the trial and execution, these section of The Jesus Puzzle is to me the most logically compelling of the book.

However, much of the argument for the additional material that Matthew and Luke bring to Mark's basic gospel rests upon the existence of a hypothetical document. Called "Q" for "Quelle" (German for "source"), this text is speculated to contain only quotations, with no plotline. Matthew and Luke would have both used Q, albeit somewhat differently, to expand upon and rewrite Mark. Q has never been found as such, although the Gospel of Thomas, part of the Nag Hammadi discovery in Egypt in 1945, offers intriguing corroboration. Thomas is entirely a collection of sayings of Jesus, having basically no narrative element.

At some point, likely when Christianity drifted from its Jewish roots and all new converts came from Hellenistic backgrounds, the Gospels were interpreted as history rather than allegory.

The Jesus Puzzle sets forth a bold theory with a solid enough argument to open up new lines of inquiry. I have only a few problems with it: the endnotes contain too much discussion which should be found in the main section of the book; also, the writing may be too dense for a lay readership and not dense enough for a scholarly readership. Having said that, however, I believe this book is a very good start to an analysis of Christianity's founding figure.

Book Review: Inherit the Greek

by Heather Campbell

Seeing the movie Troy recently brought to mind the claim of some Xian fundamentalists that our culture is based upon the Bible. Whether deceitful or just ignorant, such an idea is sheer historical revisionism. In actual fact, our civilization is based upon the legacy of ancient Greece and Rome. Virtually every aspect of our society, other than religion itself, is inherited from the classical world: architecture, arts, philosophy, government and science.

The 'unified field theory' of Greek culture was humanism, which "affirms the dignity and worth of human beings". Here, the focus is on the human condition and the natural world. In contrast, the Biblical focus is on the supernatural; man is seen as evil by nature and incapable of redeeming himself without God's help.

Democracy is a Greek concept, the word meaning "rule of the people". Implementation of this political system has been one of modern civilization's great successes. Although philosophers such as Plato and Socrates mistrusted complete democracy, they and most Athenians of their time believed the state functioned best when there was widespread participation in civic life. These thinkers, along with Aristotle, undertook systematic examination of various forms of political organization. The American founding fathers studied ancient Greek and Roman models and political theory, and were able to institutionalize a system of checks and balances among the branches of government, and to ensure the rights of the minority and individual in the face of majority rule.

The Old Testament, on the other hand, offers just two models for governance: monarchy or theocracy (or mixtures thereof). In either system, checks and balances are nonexistent. God's authority rests with the leader and is not to be questioned; God's will is whatever the leader claims it to be. Individuals are not seen as deserving status independent of the group. God's covenant is with the people as a whole, after all, so presumably any innocent person would be punished along with the group (or, conversely, a guilty person might be rewarded). It defies common sense, however, that all members of a group are equally well (or poorly) behaved.

Even the more specific idea of trial by jury comes from ancient Greece. The system of jurors as a type of representative of the populace was instituted by the time of Pericles (450 B. C.), but even earlier than that, the concept of individual moral responsibility for one's actions had been established. In the Old Testament, however, relatives of a guilty party could be held accountable, leading to Hatfield-versus-McCoy feuds, or the sins of the father being visited upon the next generations.

Science and medicine are stellar achievements of our civilization that were built upon foundations laid down by early Greeks. Aristotle carefully investigated the natural world. Pythagoras held that universal laws underlying the natural world could be mathematically expressed. Democritus of Abdera put forth the idea of atoms as the fundamental particles of matter. Aristarchus of Samos defended heliocentrism (the theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun). Euclid's geometry was important not just for math, but for the development of perspective in the visual arts. The Bible simple offers no comparable contributions to the advancement of science.

Medicine in particular is a classical legacy; Hippocrates is acknowledged as its father. The Hippocratic school was empiricist -- that is, they carefully observed illnesses and their various treatments, and cataloged the clinical results. They explained disease in natural terms, including, remarkably, insanity.

The biblical culture, however, saw disease as a religious problem -- brought on by sin, and cured by priestly rituals. In the New Testament, Jesus performs a number of healings in the form of miracles. At least once His healing seemed more like sorcery: In John 9:6, He cures a blind man by rubbing his eyes with a mixture of spit and dirt. Such cures are all well and fine for the two dozen people who received them, but the method cannot be reproduced to help others. In fact, faith healing has opened the door for hucksters such as Benny Hinn and Peter Popoff, not to mention criminal neglect of children by Xian Scientists and similar groups.

How much psychological torture has been inflicted on people who believe their illnesses are somehow deserved? How much physical suffering has been caused by disease left effectively untreated?

Even Christianity has been influenced by Greek culture. The New Testament was written in Greek, and not just words but concepts (such as "koinonia" and "agape") were borrowed. In the 1200s, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote a treatise blending the bible with Aristotle (a fusion which came to be known as the "medieval synthesis"). The Church declared this work to be doctrine. Thus, even religion itself is an indirect hand-me-down from classical forebears.

While the Church held power in Europe, the connection to classical legacy was obscured, but when Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, refugees brought with them Greek writings. This newly rediscovered material fueled the Renaissance and restored humanism as a central principle of culture. It took two millennia to match and exceed the flourishing of civilization that originated in ancient Greece, a culture in which humans were more noble than the gods, and where homosexuality was tolerated.

References:

• Robinson, Daniel, Greek Legacy: Classical Origins of the Modern World, The Teaching Company, 1998.
• Lavine, T.Z., From Socrates to Satre: the Philosophic Quest, Bantam Books, 1984.
• The Bible, King James version.

Review of The Bible Unearthed

The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, Free Press, 2001

By Heather Campbell

"The historical saga contained in the Bible -- from Abraham's encounter with God and his journey to Canaan, to Moses' deliverance of the children of Israel from bondage, to the rise and fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah --was not a miraculous revelation, but a brilliant product of the human imagination."

So begins the Prologue of The Bible Unearthed, a book which summarizes and interprets very recent Biblical archaeology for the general public. Although much of the Hebrew Bible (the "Old Testament" to Christians) purports to be a history of the people of Israel from the beginning of time to a couple of hundred years BCE, archaeology and modern scholarship have made the case that the Biblical account is less like history and more like legend. Moreover, scholars have even been able to build an argument as to when and why this saga was composed.

It seems that around 630 to 600 BCE, in the court in Jerusalem, a national epic was compiled as a propaganda tool, to unite and energize the population with tales of past glories. This epic was woven together partly from oral traditions that may have preserved some dim memory of actual persons or events, but because it was written hundreds of years after the times it purports to chronicle, and also because it addressed issues current at the time of writing, there are telltale anachronisms and inconsistencies with the findings of archaeology.

Among the problems:

• According to the Biblical chronology, Abraham and the patriarchs of Genesis were active roughly 2000 BCE. The stories make repeated mention of camel caravans. However, archaeology has shown that camels were not domesticated until much later; camel caravans were no earlier than 1000 BCE.

• There is no evidence for the Exodus as the Bible describes it. The Bible does not give an exact date for the Exodus, nor refer to the pharaoh of the time by name. There is a stele of Pharaoh Merneptah mentions a people named Israel living in Canaan by 1200 BCE, so the Exodus should have occurred some time before that. However, there is no Egyptian documentation of any large group of slaves of any ethnicity leaving Egypt during a likely time frame. The population of Egypt was not over 5 million at the time, and it is out of the question that nearly 1 million people could leave without some kind of record or evidence.

• There is no evidence for a swift, decisive military conquest of Canaan by Israelites by 1200 BC. And it does seem implausible that a ragtag group of slaves, however numerous, could have managed a well coordinated attack on an entire region after 40 years of wandering in the desert.

• According to the bible, King David and his son Solomon reigned over a large territory, from Mesopotamia to Egypt, and had the wealth to build impressive temples and palaces. This monarchy would have had to have ruled in the range of 1000 to 900 BCE or so. Yet archaeologists have not found any monumental architecture at all dating to this time in Judah. Apparently Jerusalem was a rather small village at the time.

Most of the second half of The Bible Unearthed demonstrates how these problems can be explained by proposing a date of about 620 BCE for compilation, with later editing and additions. The Biblical account does accurately reflect the social and geopolitical situation of this period. In fact, the Bible does mention the story of the "discovery" of the book of Deuteronomy in the walls of the Temple during rebuilding at around 620 BCE. Deuteronomy passes itself off as a part of the history of Moses (who would have lived before 1200 BC as mentioned above). Yet, surprise, surprise, Deuteronomy confirms the religious reforms that King Josiah was pushing hard before his death around 600 BCE. King Josiah gave his platform credibility by ascribing its principles to the heroes of yore. Past history was written to serve the present.

Authors Finkelstein and Silberman show that Israel formed out of the indigenous Canaanite population, probably in the early Iron Age. The people were originally probably nomadic sheep and goat herders who settled in the hill country between the Jordan river to the east and the lowlands along the sea to the west. Until around 900 BCE the area seems to have been quite rural, at times forgotten by or subjected to the major civilizations of the Near East. The Israelites were divided into two kingdoms, Israel to the north and Judah to the south. These two siblings vied with each other for about 200 years, until the north was overrun by the Assyrians around 730 BCE. Refugees from the north swelled Judah's population and contributed to its rise as a "fully developed" state, with monumental architecture, trade-based economy, etc. Eventually Babylon came to dominate the region; Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BCE and carried off Israelite elites to Babylon (the "Exile"). Persia conquered Babylon in 539 BCE and allowed the Israelites to return. The dramatic Biblical epic helped maintain an ethnic identity and national unity that lasts today.

The Bible Unearthed is intended for a non-specialist audience, and the authors do a remarkable job of marshaling arguments from history, archaeology, and biblical criticism in a way that can be readily understood by the layman. On the other hand, I found myself wishing for endnotes. There is actually a bibliography given, divided by chapter, so documentation is certainly provided. Also, the main text works through the arguments fairly carefully. I know it can be difficult to strike a balance between scholarly authority and widespread appeal, and I commend the authors for doing as well as they have, but to me endnotes just seem more impressive.

One very helpful feature (for those of us who didn't get gold stars in Sunday school) is a concise but thorough summary of the Biblical version of the time period in question at the beginning of each chapter. Then, for most chapters, the authors discuss pre-1980 archaeology which until recently had been interpreted as supporting the Biblical account. The balance of each chapter presents the latest findings of archaeology which almost invariably shred the historicity of the Biblical version.

Although the authors do explicitly undermine the historical accuracy of the Bible, they are careful to pay homage to its value. They conclude by saying "we can at last begin to appreciate the true genius and continuing power of this single most influential literary and spiritual creation in the history of humanity". I find it somewhat puzzling that people who know best that the Bible is not what it claims to be are still enamored of it. Perhaps they are trying to cushion the blow for the faithful, or perhaps they cannot bring themselves to denigrate the object of their life work. I think the genius and power lie with the scientists and scholars who have painstakingly put together what really happened, based on real evidence, even though it goes against what they have been told is holy and authoritative. This book is a testament to what the human mind can discover when it does not delude itself.