Belief in God is a work in progress for every human being. The proof of God will be peace on earth, a human accomplishment that may only be possible with a belief in something greater than us.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
The God Delusion
Author: Richard Dawkins
Narration by: Richard Dawkins & Sara Jill “Lalla” Ward
Richard Dawkins on the left is a British author, evolutionary biologist, ethologist, and science communicator. Sarah Jill “Lalla” Ward is an English actress, voice author, and actor on the former TV series “Doctor Who”. (A woman’s narration seems solely to represent a non-gender based argument for God as a “…Delusion.”)
Richard Dawkins is a formally educated Zoology and Philosophy graduate from the University of Oxford. He became the first Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. “The God Delusion” is a daunting book that argues God is a fiction created by authoritarian faiths. In light of the history of human violence in the name of different God’ beliefs, Dawkins offers a compelling argument for God as a delusion.
Religion and Science.
Religious belief has rarely, if ever, been the primary cause of war in history but millions of deaths from The Crusades to the Holocaust to the present day have fueled wars in the name of different concepts of God. Judaism preaches that there is one, indivisible God. Christianity believes one God exists in three forms; i.e. God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit”. Islam believes in the oneness of God with no partners, no intermediaries, no incarnation, and no images. Hinduism believes in many gods, one God, or God beyond form, depending on respective sects of the Hindu faith. Buddhism is non-theistic and believes there is no creator, or divine judge. Buddhists believe understanding reality is the source of enlightenment. Sikhism believes in one God that is formless, without gender, and beyond religion. Sikhs blend belief in one God with emphasis on equality. The Chinese traditions of Taoism, Confucianism believe in a natural order of the universe based on ethical behavior and social harmony.
The point is God means something “other” in different cultures. That difference in belief has caused an uncountable number of deaths. To a believer and non-believer in God, those deaths are an appalling loss to humanity. Is a different belief in God, worth a human’s death? Dawkins argues God is a delusion because He or It cannot be proven. The weakness of that argument is there are many discoveries that have been found to be wrong with further scientific exploration. Science progress cuts both ways; i.e. it proves and disproves what seems right but turns out to be wrong as further experiments prove.
The patent differences in religious beliefs in God shows that dogmatism replaces further exploration for God’s existence. There are religious scholars who have challenged dogmatic arguments for God’s existence. At the very least, Dawkins makes one think about the horrible consequence of authoritarian beliefs in God and the slaughter of innocents from those beliefs. We are seeing that slaughter today in Iran and Lebanon from attacks by America and Israel. Of course, there are reasons beyond religion for those attacks but is murder of innocents an answer or just collateral death and destruction for desired results?
Belief in God is a work in progress for every human being. The proof of God will be peace on earth, a human accomplishment that may only be possible with a belief in something greater than us.
“The God of Small Things” is a revealing and disturbing telling of the human condition.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
The God of Small Things
Author: Arundhati Roy
Narration by: Sneha Mathan
Arundhati Roy (Author, Booker Prize for Fiction awarded in 1997 for “The God of Small Things”.)
Arundhati Roy gained fame with “The God of Small Things” because of its originality. It is in the big and small things of colonialism and culture that expose the flaws of all societies. “The God of Small Things’ is a criticism of the world in which we live. Roy creates a fictional story that helps one understand the emotional, social, and political failings of India that are, in reality, repeated in societies throughout the world.
Rather than disrupting the caste system of India, Britain created an Anglophile elite that competed and supported Brahman aristocracy.
In some ways, British colonialism reshaped India’s culture. Britain’s colonization of India created a level of class superiority that hardens the administrative functions of India’s government. That hardening became an integral part of Indian culture. The English language became a symbol of superiority. Schools, courts, and government offices emulated British customs that copied systems of hierarchy, and labor control that continued after the British abandoned colonialist control of India. In visiting India, British influence is seen in country estates that travelers stay in when they ride trains from the north to the south.
The more encompassing truth of Roy’s observations is that the flaws in India’s society exist in all societies.
Ammu, one of Roy’s main characters, is a Syrian Christian woman who marries a man from a lower caste. Her husband comes from the so-called “Untouchable” caste. He turns out to be a brutal abuser of his wife and is eventually divorced by Ammu, but she continues to suffer from discrimination for her religious belief and her breaking of the caste taboos of India.
Roy’s characters like Baby Kochamma, a young woman obsessed with English manners and Catholic respectability is mocked by others in her community. Having an Oxford education became a badge of status with Englishness at the top of the hierarchy of Indian culture. Roy’s novel is set in the 1960s. A moral code of sexual guilt, fear of sin, belief in purity, and policing of desire are exemplified by India’s women who are influenced by catholic proselytizing. In today’s India, the most endemic religion is Hinduism. Rules of marriage, the norms of purity, the stigma of divorce, and association of sin with female desire are tied to Hindu social beliefs. As a Catholic, Baby Kochamma has the additional burden of believing in a minority religion which exacerbates her isolation.
Caste system’s endurance in India is undoubtedly reinforced today by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi and its President, Droupadi Murmu, who are Hindu adherents. Though Roy shows there is little theological hostility between Catholic and Hindu influences, there are inherent tensions between these two religions. Roy infers caste system is reinforced by Hindu beliefs while Catholicism is less concerned about caste than morality or guilt. The irony is that Catholicism rejects caste in theory while accepting it as a part of India’s culture. The two religions compete while reinforcing similar authoritarian beliefs on India’s citizens.
A point made by Roy is that societal, religious, and political dysfunction is not limited to India. Dysfunction exists in all nations.
When Roy’s character Ammu succumbs to the sexual desire of a male, she is criticized more for the caste difference than the sin of entering into an intimate relationship that ultimately falls apart with the abuse of her husband. The physical abuse compounds her violation of Hindu’ caste belief. The fact is that Ammu divorces her husband because he is an abusive alcoholic, not because of caste difference.
Roy shows India is a microcosm of the world, weighted down with sexism and discriminatory inequality that grows from ignorance, and societal dysfunction which often turns into human violence within and between societies and nations that can engulf the world.
“The God of Small Things” is a revealing and disturbing telling of the human condition.
Will Durant’s “…Story of Civilization…” is a fascinating view of history, but not a true measure of Western civilization’s origin.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Volume 1
Author: Will Durant
NarratedBy: Robin Field
WILLIAM AND ARIEL DURANT (Historians, researchers and writers of philosophy. William is born in 1885, graduated from Columbia University with a PhD in philosophy and humanities in 1917, dies in 1981. Ariel is born in 1898, also dies in 1981 but aided William Durant with research and editing.
This 40 plus hour audiobook about the origin of civilization is a daunting undertaking but an interesting perspective. Will Durant was not an anthropologist, but he was an erudite historian, philosopher, and engaging writer with a wife that helped him research, edit, and organize his work. His story telling and philosophical beliefs are certainly challengeable because of the speculative nature of ancient artifacts and cultural interpretations of ancient civilizations. Durant cleverly interprets the political and sociological history of civilizations and their historical and religious beliefs. With the aid of his wife, Durant assigns meaning to those beliefs which are plausible but, at times, he either confuses correlations with causes or stretches one’s imagination too far.
Professor Goldin has written a history of migration that reminds one of the well-known phrases attributed to Socrates: “I know that I know nothing”.
Anthropologists suggest the Durants oversimplify the complex multi-generation development of human societies. Some agree that an Afro-Asiatic language evolved into other languages, but linguists suggest there are many sources of language that have little to do with a singular origin of language. In the same vein, there is skepticism about their analysis of religious beliefs coming from the East because their presumptions are too deterministic for Eastern beliefs’ correlation with Greek rationalism and Christianity. Like David Hume and Karl Popper advise, “correlation does not imply causation”. Some anthropologists argue the Durants romanticize ancient wisdom and ignore political and brutal realities brought by internecine and external wars. Further, unique societal events and discoveries change civilizations as readily as past knowledge and experience, e.g., like the classical physics of Newton, relativity of Einstein, and quantum mechanics of today.
Eastern civilization’s influence on the West is the subject of the Durants’ expansive story.
It is interesting that Durant chooses Eastern civilizations as a precursor of Western society. That seems plausible based on early humans moving from Africa to eastern shores. He presumes the purpose, goal, and end results of Western society originated in Eastern cultures. Some anthropologists question belief that Western cultural beliefs evolved from Eastern cultures, but Durant argues foundational cultural, intellectual, and technological advance originated in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China; long before the West is populated.
The Red Sea and a Peninsula that connects Africa to the East.
With the origin of human life in Africa, Durant suggests human beings crossed the Red Sea or the peninsula to the continent of Asia to settle the fertile lands of Mesopotamia. The Durants argue early humans developed the Afro-Asiatic Semitic language that evolved into Arabic, Aramaic, Amharic, and Hebrew dialects for Akkadian, Arab, Aramean, Israelites, Phoenician, Moabite, and Ethiopian peoples. Mesopotamia became known as “The Fertile Cresent” and the “Cradle of Civilization”.
Mesopotamia contains the future nation-states of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, southeastern Turkey and western Iran.
Durant is criticized for human life’s romanticization, generalization and simplification. His critics argue civilizations’ complexity and societal conflicts are not adequately supported by his opinions and research. Some suggest too much of his opinion is based on secondary sources rather than field work. These are reasonable criticisms, but they do not diminish one’s fascination with his interpretations of others’ field work and opinions. Durant offers an interesting and entertaining story of civilization, but his opinions are only partly right.
The fundamental argument of Durant’s view of civilization is that intellectual, religious, and technological innovations of Eastern societies are foundational beliefs of Western society.
The Durants argue that writing systems, legal codes, mathematics, and religious thought in the West came from the East, i.e. to Durant, the roots of Western thought, governance, philosophical belief, and culture had Eastern origins. Durant’s threads of connection between East and West are not wrong but misleading. Correlation is not proof of causation. If one sees ice cream sales are up and drowning incidents are down, one is obviously wrong to conclude eating ice cream would reduce one’s chance of drowning.
One can believe Eastern culture developed before Western culture because of proximity. To Africa. However, the advance of civilization is not linear. It seems a stretch to believe the East’s civilization laid the foundational beliefs of the West because they are distinctly different because of independent experiences. An African human is not an Asian person just as an Asian person is not a Greek, German, Frenchman, or American. Philosophical, political, and artistic innovations are arguably derivative, but genius offers origination and revolutionary changes in civilizations. Agriculture may have begun in Asia but to infer industrialization is a furtherance of Eastern civilization is as wrong as saying Quantum theory is the furtherance of Western civilization. Civilization is too complex to be characterized as a linear process.
Will Durant’s “…Story of Civilization…” is a fascinating view of history, but not a true measure of Western civilization’s origin.
As a mirror and catalyst for change and hope, Professor Mark Bergson offers an excellent review of the world’s religions.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Cultural Literacy for Religion (Everything a Well-Educated Person Should Know)
Lecturer: Mark Berkson
By: The Great Courses
Mark Berkson (Professor and Chair in the Department pf Religion at Hamline University)
Professor Berkson provides an excellent overview of the most important religions in the world in his lectures. Though this reviewer is not a person who follows any religion, Professor Berkson offers a broad understanding of religious beliefs and their differences in his lecture series.
CHRISTIAN, ISLAMIC, AND HINDUIST RELIGIONS HAVE THE MOST FOLLOWERS
The three religions with the greatest number of followers are Christian, Islamic, and Hinduist which are categorized as a transcendent group of religions. In broad terms, their beliefs are in salvation, divine revelation, moral law, and a soul’s journey toward a divine being as the ultimate truth and value of life. These religions reflect on both the first and second categories of religion because they transcend the self to either a divine or a more centered understanding of oneself.
A third category would be followers of a sect of Buddhists adherents, Jainists, or Confucianists which believe in enlightenment, discipline, meditation, and moral cultivation of oneself in relation to nature, the cosmos, and everyday life. This third category is not centered around a divine being but around self-effort to create ethical harmony among human beings that will offer peace to all.
Thích Nhất Hạnh was a most famous Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk who believed and taught self-effort to create ethical harmony in oneself. (Died at age 95 in 2022.)
Berkson notes Daoist’s, Shinto’s, and some Buddhists (like Thích Nhất Hạnh) believe in the balance, flow, and interconnectedness of living in accordance with nature. He categorizes these religions as “religions of immanence”.
Tenzin Gyatso (the 14th Tibetan Dalai Lama, exiled in India from his native land in China, represents the Buddhist idea of self-transcendence.)
Berkson explains religion became important to civilization because they made living life more important than just survival. Religion gave meaning to life. Religion also provided social and moral order to life. Religion gave comfort in time of grief, fear, and uncertainty. Religion inspired societies to be creative to build cities, and create art. Religion provided a belief in something greater than oneself and the possibility of transcendence beyond earthly existence.
As one listens to Berkson’s lectures, one wonders whether religion has been more positive than negative in civilization’s development.
Berkson tries to sit on a fence between two extreme opinions. One is the positive contributions of religion to human moral and ethical belief. On the other, religion has aggravated social comity by creating differences. Different religious beliefs have murdered or demeaned millions of human beings who believe only their religion is important. If you defile the truth of my religious belief, you are not one of us. On the one hand, religion brings people together and grows cultural and artistic beliefs. On the other hand, religious belief creates silos that suppress inquiry, reinforce prejudices, and delegitimize political authority. Belief in a religion can advance understanding of human nature but at the same time suppress any inquiry into faith or science.
One will better understand specific religious beliefs as a result of Bergson’s lectures.
Bergson notes tensions between religious beliefs are the basis upon which many social and human atrocities have occurred. Christianity notes that no one comes to God except through Chistian belief while Hinduism believes there are many paths to the divine. Exclusivity in religion may not cause a war, but it certainly creates tension. The core beliefs of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have led to millions of deaths because of distinctions made between the word of God in the Hebrew Bible, Christian old and new testaments, and the Qur’an.
As a mirror and catalyst for change and hope, Bergson offers an excellent review of the world’s religions.
However, in the history of yesterday and today, the Jewish holocaust of WWII and slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza rend one’s heart. To quote Rodney King amid the Los Angeles riots, “Can we all get along?”– apparently not.
Only with education and understanding of the past can society or the individual change their future.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Cowboy Apocalypse (Religion and the Myth of the Vigilante Messiah)
By: Rachel Wagner
Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
Rachel Wagner (Author, professor of religion and philosophy at Ithaca College in Ithaca New York.)
Rachel Wagner has written a highly personal book about American gun culture that will resonate with some and appall others. As an academic philosopher and professor of religion, Wagner analyzes gun violence and sexism and how belief in “might makes right” is deeply ingrained in American character.
There are so many stories of death and injury from gun violence in America that one becomes numbed by Wagner’s apocalyptic story.
We were living in Las Vegas when 59 people were killed, and 527 were injured by one gunman in a hotel room less than 3 miles from our home. When one looks at statistics of children murdered in school rooms since 2010, a solution for gun violence should be urgent, but it appears not.
Rise in school shootings between 2010 and 2o19.
Wagner argues gun violence in the U.S. is viewed by much of the public as a belief in the myth of the “good guy with a gun” that is embedded in the history of America and reinforced by fictional stories, books, television, and the movies. She argues detective fiction like “The Big Sleep”, TV series like “Have Gun Will Travel”, and movies like “Die Hard” have lone heroes who defeat dastardly villains.
Think Alan Ladd in “Shane” or John Wayne in any of his westerns, and one believes gun-toting man-gods keep the world safe.
Wagner shows how malleable society is and why the gun lobby is rewarded and sustained by the myth of the “good guy with a gun”. Wagner argues gun-toting Americans have become gods in their own mind. What they really are is examples to potential killers of school children and unsuspecting tourists.
HAVE GUN WILL TRAVELDIE HARD
Wagner believes American gun obsession has wheedled its way into a religious narrative based on Christian apocalypticism and romanticization of American history. She notes the myths of armed vigilantes who are seen as saviors who can reset society when it goes astray. This myth seeps into American cultural shibboleths of white supremacy and patriarchal dominance that pervade video games, movies, and novels.
Wagner argues sexual and racial inequality are exacerbated by America’s gun culture. Wagner notes an experience in her personal life and her education in religion show how “might makes right” has been, and still is, a danger to society.
Wagner argues America needs to look in the mirror and quit glorifying firearms and vigilante justice. She suggests the January 6th attack on the capitol shows how widespread belief in vigilante justice is in America.
January 6, 2021, insurrection when a mob of supporters of then-President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol.
The philosophical and religious beliefs of the author are made clear in her final chapters. Only with education and understanding of the past can society or the individual change their future.
The point of “The Structure of Science Revolution” is that a paradigm begins science exploration, new paradigms challenge old paradigms, old paradigms persist, new paradigms demonstrate improved knowledge over old paradigms, old paradigms are overturned, and a new paradigm begins further search for knowledge
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
By: Thomas S. Kuhn
Narrated By: Dennis Holland
Thomas Kuhn (Author, 1922-1996 died at age 73, American historian and philosopher of science at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley.)
This is a tough ten-hour listen. It does offer an overview of the evolution of science and how new discoveries have changed human understanding of the physical universe in a revolutionary way. Kuhn suggests every revolution in science begins with a paradigm, a model or framework that offers a clearer understanding of the physical universe.
Kuhn suggests every revolution in science begins with a paradigm.
The momentous discoveries of Newton, Einstein, Darwin, and Galileo are a few of the revolutionary leaders that Kuhn offers as examples. Newton developed a paradigm of earth’s laws of motion and universal gravitation that revolutionized understanding of forces and momentum on earth. Einstein developed a paradigm of the universe by introducing theories of special and general relativity that revolutionized our understanding of space, time, and gravity. Darwin developed a paradigm of animal evolution and natural selection that revolutionized biology and life’s diversity. Galileo developed a paradigm of our universe that revolved around the sun that revolutionized our view of the cosmos and humans place in it.
SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727)ALBERT EINSTEIN (1879-1955)CHARLES DARWIN (1809-1882) FOUNDER OF THE THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.GALILEO GALILEI (1564-1642)
All of these geniuses created new, often more comprehensive, paradigms than predecessors like Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Democritus. New paradigms about air, the planets, and atoms improved predictability of results from new paradigms of thought, and experimentation that became more comprehensive and accurate than thoughts and experiments on older paradigms. Kuhn argues new paradigms foment science revolutions.
Kuhn explains how a new paradigm is challenged because of generally predictable results from older science discoveries.
The argument is made that the older discovery is better because it did have predictable results and the only reason there is an aberration is because of an undiscovered anomaly that will be discovered and explained by further thought, observation, and experimentation. However, as evidence from experiment grows to show older science discoveries are not as comprehensively predictable of results as the new paradigm, the new paradigm replaces the old one and a revolution ensues.
This is an insightful story but one gets bogged down by the number of examples that repeat similar revolutions.
The objections from old paradigm believers, failed old paradigm predictions, and ultimate revolution by new paradigms are repeated too many times.
The point of “The Structure of Science Revolution” is that a paradigm begins science exploration, new paradigms challenge old paradigms, old paradigms persist, new paradigms demonstrate improved knowledge over old paradigms, old paradigms are overturned, and a new paradigm begins further search for knowledge.
One hopes for more Leifer’s in this world of human tragedy.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Tablets Shattered (The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life)
By: Joshua Leifer
Narrated By: Eli Schiff
Joshua Leifer (Author, journalist and scholar who explores the past and present of American Jewry, Leifer pursues a PhD at Yale on the history of modern moral and social thought.)
Joshua Leifer reflects on the Americanization of Jewish ethnicity in modern times. Leifer offers his personal view of modern events in Israel, including the terror of October 7th, 2023, and its aftermath.
In the last month, my wife and I journeyed to Poland, the Baltics, and Finland.
On the trip, we visited Auschwitz, the terror of Soviet occupation of the Baltics, and the tenuous relationship of Finland and Russia. More will be shared in a future review.
The holocaust is made present to anyone who chooses to visit Auschwitz.
This is a monument to the Holocaust, located in Germany.
Leifer’s book is not about Auschwitz’s atrocity but about a diminishment of Jewish identity. One who reads or listens to Leifer’s view of Jewish ethnicity will look at Judaism in a different way. Regardless of one’s personal beliefs, Leifer argues Judaism is losing its way from what he believes is a fundamental tenet of the Jewish religion. That tenet is that Judaism will always be a minority within cultures of the world and, as a minority, Leiger argues it is critically important for followers to return to its Judaic roots. Leifer implies Americanization of Judaism is a social influence that threatens the Tablets of the Covenant, i.e., the Ten Commandments.
Leifer explains that Israel will continue to grow as an independent nation with an exodus of Jewish believers from America and the world. Leifer suggests that exodus is evident in the diminishing number of American Jews who have chosen to leave America to become Israeli citizens. His hope is that in Jews return to a nation of their own with a renewed belief and adherence to the Ten Commandments.
I am the Lord your God: You shall have no other gods before Me.
You shall not make for yourself a graven image: No idols or images.
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Honor your father and your mother.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet: Do not desire your neighbor’s house, wife, or possessions.
Of particular note is the Haredim who adhere to traditional Jewish law and customs.
There is an underlying accusation in Leifer’s book that America reinforced want for money, power, and prestige that changed the nature of Judaism.
However, human nature is a failing in all cultures. The truth is that all forms of government and culture seduce human beings to violate the Ten Commandments: not only Jewish followers. Human nature is an equal opportunity exploiter of society and people.
Leifer does have a point in that any ethnicity that truly follows the ten commandments is better than one that ignores them.
The fault in Leifer’s belief is that the ten commandments will or can be universally accepted by any culture or ethnicity. Human nature can be improved upon, but one doubts it can be erased by either religious or secular teaching of the Commandments.
Leifer hopes for a two-state solution in Israel. That seems a laudable and achievable goal, but human nature remains the same. With statehood, both Israeli and Palestinian societies may become better but there will always be the threat of Commandment violation because of human nature. One hopes for more Leifer’s in this world of human tragedy.
Robinson shows society treats people unequally, wages war for power, lacks control over behavior, and deceives itself about human nature.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Gilead”
By: Marilynne Robinson
Narrated By: Tim Jerome
Marilynne Robinson (Author, received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for “Gilead”.)
“Gilead” is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. It is cleverly written by Marilynne Robinson and beautifully narrated by Tim Jerome. Some listeners may have a hard time getting through its religious point of view. It is largely about belief in God. However, it’s truth about human nature makes it a classic regardless of one’s religious beliefs.
In broad outline, it is about three generations of preachers, a grandfather, his son, and a grandson, who live in Gilead, Iowa.
There is the grandfather who fights on the Union side of the Civil War in Kansas, presumably because of belief in human equality and union. However, it appears his son cannot justify killing of any human being, for any reason. Later, a listener/reader finds there is a rift between the Civil War’ preacher and his son who also becomes a preacher. The son becomes a father who has his own son. This book is like a letter to his son to explain his journey through life and what he has learned. The story begins by recalling a trip he and his son take to discover the grandfather’s grave in Kansas.
The journey is in the late 19th century.
The grandson accompanies his father on the arduous journey from Gilead to Kansas. They begin in a horse drawn carriage but because of weather leave the horse and carriage to walk the last miles. It is hot. One realizes the father’s decision to travel with his son is for many reasons beyond companionship. One presumes the father is ambivalent about the grandfather’s decision to join union soldiers with a willingness to kill secessionists opposed to abolition. One wonders if the father is saying there is no justification for War. The story gains broader interest at this point.
KILLING IS NEVER JUSTIFIED.
After having found the grave, the father relates a story of burying his father’s gun and some shirts. The gun and clothing are dug up. The bloodied and dirty clothes are washed, but they do not come clean. The wife of the letter writer and preacher finally throws them away, but the gun is reburied, dug up again, dismantled and thrown into a lake by the preacher. The vignette suggests the father believes killing is never justified, even in a war meant to preserve union and abolish slavery.
Preachers.
The father’s writing suggests there is a gap in ages between him and his wife. We find he is 67 when he marries his wife who is in her 30s. The preacher is nearing death by the time of the letter to his son is written. With the gap in their ages, there is a hint of jealousy about a man raised by the preacher’s best friend, who is also a preacher of the cloth. The son is Jack Boughton. Jack often played baseball with the preacher’s son, but the preacher had been told by Jack Boughton’s father to be wary of Jack.
The carrot and stick of parenting.
The impact of neglectful parenting is referred to in a sermon noted in the preacher’s story. Jack Boughton’s intelligence and education combined with parental neglect is inferred to be a cause of atheism and a penchant for illicit behavior. This creates a tension between the preacher and his close friend’s son, particularly when the childhood friend visits the preacher’s wife and son.
One comes away from Robinson’s story with a summary of the flaws of humanity. At the end of the author’s story, Jack Boughton has created a second human nature crises that will resolve itself in either happiness or tragedy. Robinson shows society treats people unequally, wages war for power, lacks control over behavior, and deceives itself about human nature.
Is belief in God worth it? Cook’s history of Muslimism and knowledge of Christianity makes one wonder.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“A History of the Muslim World From its origins to the Dawn of Modernity”
By: Michael Cook
Narrated By: Ric Jerrom
Michael A. Cook (British historian, scholar of Islamic History)
Professor Cook overwhelms one with a voluminous examination of the Muslim World. His history really begins before the birth of the Arab prophet, Muhammad (570-632). However, it is after Muhammed’s revelations and his departure from Mecca in 610 CE, when he and his followers settle in Medina (622) that a more documented history is revealed. Arabs are identified as a nomadic tribe who occupied the Arabian Peninsula, Syrian Desert, North, and Lower Mesopotamia in the mid-9th century BCE. However, notable territorial regions first appeared in the 14th century BCE with the Assyrian and Neo-Assyrian Empires. Cook suggests it is in the 7th century CE that Islam became a force in the Middle East. After the Prophet Muhammad’s death in 1632, the Rashidun Caliphate established itself (632-661 CE).
(REVIEWER’S NOTE: Scribes recreated fragmentary writings and legends of long-dead contemporaries of Christ in the case of the Holy Bible, just as the thoughts of the “last messenger of Allah” were recorded by scribes. Modern science experiments explain human minds do not precisely record or recall the past. The human mind recreates the past and fills any gaps that may arise to complete the mind’s imprecise memory. That is why scribes of biblical or unbiblical history are interpretations of facts of the past, and not necessarily accurate facts of the past.)
With the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution, Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Montenegro, and Macedonia were formed. Three Arab nation-states came out of the Ottoman Empire’ dissolution. They were Syria, Iraq, and Transjordan (now Jordan).
Interestingly, modern states with the highest number of Arab speaking residents are Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. Only Egypt and Sudan have more than 10% of their population who use Arabic as their primary language. The point of this realization is that Professor Cook is writing a history of the Muslim religion, not Arab culture.
What Cook shows is how Muslim belief (24% of the world population) impacted the world.
Cook begins to explain the split between Sunni and Shia religious belief. In the modern world, only Iran, Bahrain, Yemen, and Iraq have Shia-majority populations with a significant Shia community in Lebanon and Afghanistan. Sunni religious belief is practiced by a majority population in nearly 20 countries with a mixture in Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Eritrea, Syria, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan.
A surprising observation by Cook is the impact of a language change in the Middle East. Persian (aka Farsi) became a bridge connecting the diverse communities and histories of the Middle East. This change largely took place between the 9th and 11th centuries. It significantly impacted Muslim cultural beliefs and Iranian culture in general.
Cook implies the colloquialization of translations by Farsi (the language of Persia) of Arab Caliphate’ triumphs and failures molded beliefs of Middle Eastern nation-states. Countries like Iran either adopted or rejected Farsi’ stories of accomplishments and failures by Arab Caliphates. Some failure is associated with moral turpitude, a falling away from Qur’anic teaching, translated into Farsi language.
(Genghis Khan’s sons establish four kingdoms in the Middle East that lasted until 1368.)
Though none of the kingdoms practiced a particular religion, each influenced the course of religious acceptance. The environment they created allowed Christian religion to spread from Russian territory, while Turkish influence leaned toward Islam. Cook explains how young rebel leaders gained followers by successfully defeating and pillaging villages that had poor defenses. With each successful raid, more young people would join the raiders. This incremental growth led to the spread of Christian and Islamic religious influence, depending on the religious leaning of raiding parties.
Cook clearly illustrates how Arab culture lies at the heart of Islamic religion despite its nomadic existence. From the first madrasas (Islamic schools) in the Abbasid Caliphate in the 9th century, the teachings of the last messenger of Allah began with Arabs. Cook explains the religion is unlikely to have flourished without other cultures adoption. Without Persian, Turk, Uzbek, and Mongol societies adoption, the spread of Islam would have been minimized. Muslim belief evolved in a cauldron of conflict with Christianity, Judaism, and other indigenous religions but prevailed as a religion with two faces, i.e., the Suni and Shia Divide.
Like the schism between Catholics and Protestants, Sunni and Shia believe in one God but differ in ways that have roiled the world. In the case of Catholics and Protestants, there is the French wars of 1562-1598, the European thirty years war of 1618-1648, and the Troubles in Ireland in 1968-1998. In the case of Sunni and Shia, there was the battle of Karbala in 680 CE, the Safavid-Ottoman wars in the 16th-17th centuries, the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1990, the Iraq War of 2003-2011, and the Syrian Civil War that began in 2011 and continues through today.
The forgoing were only human deaths within the two major religions of the world, while neglecting the atrocities incurred between Christianity and Islam. There were the Crusades between the 11th and 13th centuries, the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, The Siege of Vienna in 1683, and the Lebanese Civil War between 1975-1990.
Later chapters of Cook’s history reveal the conflicts between the Islamic religion and other major religions in the Middle East, besides Christianity. Many leaders are identified for historians who will be interested in knowing more, but the names become a blur to a dilatant of history.
Like the number 47 in “Guardians of the Galaxy”, the 27 books of the New Testament offer no answer to the meaning of life.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“The History of the Bible” (The Great Book Lectures)
By: Bart D. Ehrman
Narrated by: Bart D. Ehrman Lectures
Bart Denton Ehrman (American New Testament Scholar, Wheaton College BA, Princeton Theological Seminary received a Master of Divinity and PhD.)
Bart D. Ehrman’s lectures are a revelation to one who knows little about either the Bible or the New Testament. As a scholar, Ehrman views the New Testament as history, not a religious covenant. The New Testament, as differentiated from the Holy Bible (a covenant with Israel), is a later covenant with Jesus that extends religion to all humankind.
Ehrman’s lectures are not about religious belief but about the history of the New Testament.
Removing the ideas of religious belief from his lectures will undoubtedly offend many who believe in God’s and/or Jesus’s divinity. What Ehrman does is explain how the New Testament is a flawed recollection of historical figures. The flaws come from scribes who interpret three contemporaries of Jesus–Matthew’s, John’s, and Peter’s fragmentary writings of Jesus’ ministry and teachings.
The 27 books of the New Testament are written by scribes of later centuries that are interpretations of Matthew’s, John’s, and Peter’s interpretations of Jesus’s beliefs and history on earth.
Because scribes and contemporaries’ recollection of Jesus are human, truth is in the eye and limitations of its beholders. The inference from Ehrman’s lectures is that truth is distorted by interpretations of interpretations.
Ehrman systematically reveals how the story of Jesus’s life and beliefs change over the centuries.
He gives listeners a better understanding of the complexity and false interpretations of religion that accompany the many atrocities committed by believers who foolishly murder fellow human beings. These great historical conflicts are based on interpreters’ interpretations of interpretations.
God may or may not exist, but human beings insist on their beliefs to the detriment of humanity.
History unreservedly shows–believing in religion, without concern for society leads to discrimination, mayhem, and murder. That is as clear today in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as in the history of the Jewish holocaust and pogroms of the past.
Like the number 47 in “Guardians of the Galaxy”, the 27 books of the New Testament offer no answer to the meaning of life.
REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE 