For those who don’t know, regular contributor Ty is on the fast-track to literary super-stardom after the launch of his co-authored book, Leviathan Wakes. Ty is one half of a gestalt entity known as James SA Corey, and seems to be taking the sci-fi / fantasy world by storm right now.

I pre-ordered Leviathan Wakes and have since read it twice. What can I say? Very little new Sci-Fi these days combines originality with a truly epic setting. Leviathan Wakes does. It’s without a doubt the best new Sci-Fi I’ve read in years, rivaling Iain M Banks’ Culture series for raw creative energy and Asimov’s Foundation series for sheer scope. I can honestly see this series becoming an instant classic.

Now I’ve finished that episode of gushing, here’s some happy news: Leviathan Wakes has been nominated for a people’s choice award!

First of all, read it! Secondly, if you love it as much as I do, follow this link and vote for it to receive an award!

Ty, thank you for a good read, and consider yourself thoroughly plugged ;-)

Return of the Atheists

Loftus considers these three works to be connected, and he opens this latest installment with the statement, “I honestly think that with this book (and certainly the series) Christianity has been debunked.”

No one has ever accused Loftus of being timid. But like a lot of final installments in a trilogy, The End of Christianity could have been a heavily padded afterthought. By this point Loftus can only muster a three paragraph introduction before launching into his “signature argument,” the Outsiders Test of Faith, which will be familiar to anyone who’s read his blog.

The book and a lot of familiar material and plenty of familiar faces. Hector Avalos summarizes his book, The End of Biblical Studies. Robert Price is always worth reading, but his two essays won’t surprise anyone who listens to his podcast. Richard Carrier, who Loftus credits with doing the actual editing of the book, provides a summary of Not the Impossible Faith, which is available free online.

What saves the book is the strength and variety of the essays. While the book is basically a handbook for the atheists in the online trenches, it doesn’t get bogged down or harp on any one line of argument. As a result, the old material fits in and leaves the book feeling balanced rather than padded.

Old Conversations, but Worth Having

In “Christianity Evolving,” Dr. David Eller provides a thumbnail sketch of Christian history, along with some discussion of how Christianity is continuing to adapt and spread around the world. Given the normal focus on white American evangelicals, the consideration of world Christianity is a nice change.

Dr. Jaco Gericke follows that by looking at how much our idea of God has changed, and Dr. Valerie Tarico looks at what it means for God to have emotions. Tarico turns that into an interesting discussion of human projection. Victor Stenger responds to Dinesh D’Souza’s arguments for the afterlife, putting D’Souza’s poor arguments to good use as he considered the logical implications.

Dr. Keith Parsons looks more specifically at the moral problems that arise from the doctrine of Hell, and the late Ken Pulliam contemplates “The Absurdity of the Atonement,” one of his favorite blog topics before his death. All told, there are fourteen strong articles here, plus Loftus’ OTF in the introduction and a brief closing from Robert Price. It’s a solid collection of essays that work well together.

That’s not to say that the book wouldn’t have been stronger with a little more variety. I’m fond of Richard Carrier’s writing, but having three of his lengthy essays – about ⅕ of the book – seems a bit much. One of the advantages of these collections is always the chance to hear new voices, and that gets lost when you turn it over to the usual suspects.

On balance, the book is a solid addition to the atheist library, and it makes an excellent companion to The Christian Delusion. But if Loftus et. al. wants to publish another book, it may be time to develop the field a little more and bring in some new blood.

But what the Founding Fathers called corruption, depravity, venality, and vice, many of us would call freedom. During the War of Independence, deference to authority was shattered, a new urban culture offered previously forbidden pleasures, and sexuality was loosened from its Puritan restraints. Nonmarital sex, including adultery and relations between whites and blacks, was rampant and unpunished. Divorces were frequent and easily obtained. Prostitutes plied their trades free of legal or moral prescriptions. Black slaves, Irish indentured servants, Native Americans, and free whites of all classes danced together in the streets. Pirates who frequented the port cities brought with them a way of life that embraced wild dances, nightlong parties, racial integration, and homosexuality. European visitors frequently commented on the “astonishing libertinism” of early American cities. Renegades held the upper hand in Philadelphia, Boston, New York and Charleston, and made them into the first centers of American pleasure culture. Rarely have Americans had more fun. And never have America’s leaders been less pleased about it.

But the Founding Fathers invented a way to make Americans think fun was bad. We call it democracy.

And they largely succeeded. The revolution was followed by wave after wave of moralistic legislation that cracked down on alcohol, prostitution, racial integration, fornication, contraception and pornography.

This is the paradox of American freedom: self-rule allows much greater repression than a monarchy. When the community itself is promulgating the law, it is much more effective at reining in the individual.

Russell’s idea is that American history can be viewed as a tug-of-war between these sides: those who believe that the power of the society should be used to create virtuous citizens, and those who refused to assimilate. That means he focuses on those who we label as “bad:” the shiftless, the shameless and the scandalous. It’s an interesting idea for atheists, since conventional religion is part of what makes a “good” citizen.

I recommend the book, with reservations. It’s easy to read, but uncomfortable reading. I don’t think most of us will react badly to seeing the mafia or pirates viewed in a positive light. His arguments that prostitution was sometimes a positive force for woman’s rights seem harder to swallow. And his chapters on slavery, showing how slaves made the institution work for them, come a little too close to the “slavery wasn’t that bad” arguments of the southern apologists.

Some may decry the choice of title, arguing that it belittles the sacred lost. But it’s a perfect fit. You probably know that the words “lunatic” and “lunacy” have something to do with “lunar”- the moon. Lunatics are literally followers of the moon- of Luna, the moon goddess. This marvelous treasure trove spans history and cultures, giving tantalizing sketches of religious lunatics of every stripe. By bringing so many stories into one collection, it’s easy to see how madness pervades religion. Far from being the exception to the rule, religion is densely populated with bizarre ideas and fixations. In these vivid illustrations, Largo dismantles our sacred cows.

Help yourself to some capezzoli di St. Agatha- Sicilian breast-shaped pastries in honor of Agatha, who endured the torture and excision of her breasts rather than sully them through marriage’s sexual demands. Find out how Buddha got his belly. Meet the patron saint of hemorrhoids. Revisit one of the first megachurches, Sister Aimee’s Angelus Temple. Learn how the Virgin Mary herself handed the first rosary to St. Dominic in 1214. Choose from among a wide sampling of alien or UFO religions. Meet ascetics of every flavor, including Simeon, who crawled atop a flagpole in the sixth century and stayed there for 37 years. Incidentally, his mother had had a vision, where the severed head of John the Baptist floated before her and announced that her son would become a saint.

Since the author has a sweetly sarcastic sensibility, his cheerful storytelling seldom veers into mean-spirited terrain. And while the collection collates endless sources to extract the nutty bits, the brief snippets can’t possibly provide the whole story. This book is not meant to be an academic treatise, so verifying and expanding any given information remains the responsibility of the reader. It’s meant as a tantalizing smorgasbord for the curious, with an invitation for follow up in a library of over 400 suggested titles. Ironically, it is the sheer variety of madness, hucksterism, conviction, and oddity through all of religious history that shows us how it’s all the same.

The latest attempt to bring them back together is Chris Hallquist’s book UFOs, Ghosts and a Rising God. By relating modern stories of the supernatural to the ancient legends surrounding Jesus, Hallquist hopes to show how debunking the one leads to dismissing the second.

Outsider Test

Pullquote: “Many of those who have written on the array of recent pseudosciences have tried to describe exactly what makes a pseudoscience. [...] Among these characteristics are characteristic fallacies shared to a remarkable extent by the arguments of Christian apologists.” (p.32)

Hallquist is veteran of the atheosphere, as his blog The Uncredible Hallq has been around for years. Up until now, his most famous work (for our purposes) has been his lengthy rebuttal to William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith.

UFOs, Ghosts and a Rising God is a work for general audiences, though people with at least a passing familiarity with apologetics and counter-apologetics will get the most out of it. Despite Hallquist’s background in philosophy, most of the arguments hinge on questions of historiography: how do we determine what happened in the past?

Hallquist focuses on this historical question while examining the evidence for the miracles of Jesus, the post-resurrection appearances, the empty tomb and so forth. Because it is a book for general audiences, Hallquist takes the time to explain the dating of the gospels and something of the intellectual climate it which early Christianity came to be.

This might make it sound like a typical work of counter-apologetics, but not many works of that type start with a history of debunking. From Alexander of Abonoteichus to the Amityville Horror, Hallquist covers some of the highlights of the skeptical attempts to dismantle superstition. Once this is out of the way, he explains some of the method and common fallacies involved in the use of historical evidence.

With this foundation, Hallquist is able to marry counter-apologetic to skepticism. After considering the arguments for the historicity of a biblical event, Hallquist compares it to a more contemporary supernatural event. One of the most developed example is the case of D.D. Home. According to the story, Home was able to levitate himself up to the ceiling in front of three witnesses.

Hallquist is able to dig up sources, some near contemporary, reporting on the stories of the witnesses. Contrast that with the anonymous and late information provided for us by the Gospels and you see the problem. However, even if you were to believe that the Gospels were early and contained eyewitness testimony, you still have a problem: if you apply the same historical standards to the story of D.D. Home as you do the Gospels, you will likely find yourself having to accept that a man in 19th century Connecticut was hovering in the rafters.

Hallquist is giving us a variation of what John Loftus calls the Outsider Test for Faith: Can you approach the beliefs of your faith tradition with the same skepticism as you approach other people’s beliefs? As Hallquist points out, many evangelicals are quick to dismiss New Age beliefs as fraud, but are never willing to turn the same skepticism on their own sacred stories.

Believing at All Cost

Pullquote: “… I suspect that religions simply cannot flourish when too much will be known about their origins.” (p.66-67)

One of the most interesting results of the this comparison is indirect. Many apologists speak of the reception of the early Jesus stories and insist that the first believers must have been skeptical, and would therefor have sought out evidence. But an examination of various charlatans and hoaxes shows that people will frequently accept a belief without much skepticism, then hold on for to it no matter what. Consider a medium who is caught using her feet to manipulate objects during a seance. Her followers insist that while she may cheat sometimes, there are other times when her powers are real and genuine. So it falls to the skeptics to tell the apologists that their view of human reason is inflated.

Throughout the book, Hallquist maintains a balance between skepticism and counter-apologetics. On the plus side, this keeps the book short and readable, as it never bogs down in detail. On the minus side, it means that the book never gets the chance to really come to grips with the examples it uses.

Perhaps this is intentional. The book does end with a call to investigate for ourselves and an extensive bibliography; all right and proper for an Outsider Test. But I can’t help feeling that a series of close case studies that compares, for example, Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus with the stories of alien abductees would make for a really interesting book. Let’s look at all the evidence and apply the same tools to both. What happens when we take the apologetic arguments for the first and apply it to the second? Can the apologists live with the results?

However, this can’t really be considered a criticism of UFOs, Ghosts and a Rising God. Its brevity and the evenness of its writing make it an excellent book for general audiences. Its core argument makes it a useful work for an internet counter-apologist to have on the shelf. It’s a solid work that makes me look forward to future works from this veteran of the atheosphere.

In Heaven, Newsweek’s religion correspondent, Lisa Miller, has written a fascinating millenniums-long history of the idea of heaven, spliced with some surprisingly mediocre reporting on present-day believers. At its core is a (very politely administered) slap to the American consensus. The heaven you think you’re headed to—a reunion with your lost relatives in the light—is a very recent invention, only a little older than Goldman Sachs. Most of the believers in heaven across most of history would find it unrecognizable.

Heaven is constantly shifting shape because it is a history of subconscious human longings. Show me your heaven, and I’ll show you what’s lacking in your life. The desert-dwellers who wrote the Bible and the Quran lived in thirst—so their heavens were forever running with rivers and fountains and springs. African-American slaves believed they were headed for a heaven where “the first would be last, and the last would be first”—so they would be the free men dominating white slaves. Today’s Islamist suicide-bombers live in a society starved of sex, so their heaven is a 72-virgin gang-bang. Emily Dickinson wrote: ” ‘Heaven’—is what I cannot Reach!/ The Apple on the Tree—/ Provided it do hopeless—hang—/ That—”Heaven” is—to Me!”

You can read the whole review on Slate.

This is a continuation of my review for Robert Kunzman’s Write These Laws on Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling.

Getting Testy about Testing

For an atheist who’s only experience with Christian home-schooling is the movie Jesus Camp, this book may come as a surprise. Many of the families are open minded and flexible — but only up to a point. It’s clear that they all fall on the right side of the political and religious spectrum.

None of the families are exactly getting a NCSE approved education on evolution. The families use books like Eagle’s Wings: Considering God’s Creation (A Creative Biblical Approach to Natural Science), books which are laced with biblical quotes and which give the standard arguments against natural selection.

Pullquote: “We’re going to be opening up our Kingfisher History Encyclopedia and read about how people evolved thirty million years ago from a speck of dust or whatever”

While Kunzman spends only a few paragraphs talking about this problem — really, does anyone find the above surprising? — it’s one of the most frustrating things about the conservative Christian home-school movement. Evolution is at once very simple (“dead organisms don’t breed”), and at the same time very difficult to really understand. As evidence, I suggest looking at all the misunderstandings we see from commentators on the science blogs.

Since evolution is so easy to misunderstand or caricature, it seems important that kids get an accurate explanation at the outset. It doesn’t bode well when one parent promises to discuss evolution with their child by saying, “We’re going to be opening up our Kingfisher History Encyclopedia and read about how people evolved thirty million years ago from a speck of dust or whatever; those are not things from which I’ll shelter them.” (203)

It would be wonderful to see some standardized testing that would ensure that the child has received an accurate understanding of the principles, even if they do not accept them. This will happen the day Billy Graham Jr. french-kisses the Pope.

Throughout the book, Kunzman suggests standardized testing for basic things like reading and math. The tests would be method neutral, but give an assessment of how much of the basics that child understands. While at least one mother subscribes to a service that provides such tests, most are actively hostile to the notion of any regulation or outside group interfering in their education process.

Passing on the Traditions

Pullquote: “I want my kids to think like me, not because I’m perfect, but because I love God and I want to follow him.”

Most of us are good pluralists, and want our children to grow up and have certain basic things: health, happiness, stability, and a willingness to allow others to have the same. How they go about achieving those things is negotiable. While most of us feel that we’ve found a way that works, we’re usually willing to allow that other ways may work better for other people. In other words, there is no single right path to take in life.

Broadly speaking, most to the parents in this book believe that there is one right way. While they pay lip-service to allowing their kids to choose their own path, they adamantly ensuring their kids learn all about the single correct path. They make little or no distinction between education and upbringing; the child does not learn math at school and morality at home, but should get everything as one package. Home-schooling is a way of life, a seamless part of the the whole.

Here’s how one mother put it:

“I want my kids to think like me, not because I’m perfect, but because I love God and I want to follow him. [...] I want them to look and say, ‘Mom and Dad showed us how to know God; they’re not perfect, they screw up, but they showed us’ — and I want those beliefs to become theirs, obviously. (212)

Contrast this with Robert M. Price. On a recent podcast discussing atheist parenting, Price suggested that parents teach their kids their own religious traditions and beliefs, but say, “This is what I believe, but I may be wrong and many people believe other things for many good reasons. You have to figure out what you believe yourself.”

This conflict is at the center of the debate: how does the parent ensure that their child understands the “right” way, while still allowing them the freedom to come to their own conclusions? What is the dividing line between education and indoctrination?

Each of the six families in this book are still grappling with this question, each fitfully answering it as best they can. Kunzman admirably allows each family to tell their own story, while still evaluating each with the eye of a parent and an educator. He provides no solid answers, but the insight he provides is absolutely essential to the ongoing debate.

Vorjack is a librarian/archivist and a public historian, living with his wife in history-soaked Albany, New York.

My mother recently admitted to me that if she had it to do over again, I would have been home-schooled. This was a shock, since my mother recently retired after 40 years of being a middle school science teacher. My mother has resisted all attempts to get her to teach outside her field, yet she wanted to teach me math and history?

But she probably could have done better than the soccer coach who taught me health, or the English teacher who simply had us read from the history text book. There’s no way around the fact that our local school system was below average. There’s also the fact that I was an unmotivated student. Perhaps if she could have controlled my education herself, she could have kept me interested. Or at least insured that I got my homework done.

There are many reasons why parents might wish to home-school. On one side you have the liberal-ish “unschool” movement, which stresses the benefits of an individualized education. Even more extreme are the “no-schoolers,” who reject curriculum and allow the kids to study what they want, how they want. On the other end you have the religious sects who want to insure that their children receive an education that is compatible with their traditions, and prevent their kids from being exposed to harmful influences.

Home-schooling as a movement remains poorly studied. It can be traced back just over forty years, or just over twenty for the conservative Christian version. Differing reasons for home-schooling meet with different school systems and differing state regulations for home-schooling, resulting in a complex and diverse mix of experiences for both parents and children.

Studies of Studying

Pullquote: “The more of the system’s tentacles that you can break off from you, the healthier you’re going to be.”

That’s what makes Robert Kunzman’s book, Write These Laws on Your Children, so valuable right now. Kunzman has spent two years traveling across the country and visiting six families of conservative Christian home-schoolers. He provides us with six case studies, interlaced with essays about various aspects of the home-school movement, like the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and Generation Joshua. While we still lack data about the movement as a whole, we can at least get a look at what’s going on inside those homes.

What we immediately find is that “what’s going on” depends on which home you look in. There is tremendous variety within the movement, and Kunzman looks at how each family deals with issues of education, citizenship, diversity and home-school regulations.

The families range from the Palmer family in a LA suburb to the Branson family in Tennessee. Debbie Palmer has a degree in Child Psychology and several years of teaching experience. Her nine children benefit from this, but one girl wanted art classes her mother couldn’t provide, so she was allowed to go to a public high school. Several of the children correspond with non-Christian friends, and the parents play hands-off.

The Branson family is different. Kunzman handles each case with balance and humanity, but it’s clear that sometimes things just aren’t working. The mother seems strained and impatient, and her teaching is haphazard. She’s dealing with seven kids, and has an older child in the hospital following a car accident; there are no substitutes for this teacher.

The father is a frequent distraction and an actual impediment to learning. He’s a big fan of corporal punishment, and a follower of Michael & Debi Pearl, authors of the extremely controversial To Train Up a Child. The father is also extremely anti-authoritarian — “The more of the system’s tentacles that you can break off from you, the healthier you’re going to be” — at least, he’s against every authority not his own.

As a mother who home-schools once said to me, “To be an effective home-schooler, you have to have the right teacher and the right student.” In other words, sometimes the best of intentions and all the resources in the world aren’t enough. What works for one family won’t necessarily work for another, nor will the same techniques work for every child in the family. The Palmer family has its problems, but seems to function smoothly. The Branson family does not.

To Be Continued …

As this is turning into a hefty review, I’ll break it up into two sections. Next time, home-schooling and evolution.

Vorjack is a librarian/archivist and a public historian, living with his wife in history-soaked Albany, New York.

There’s a story that comes down to us from ancient Rome, during the period in which Hannibal Barca was ravaging Italy. Legend has it that the Roman dictator Fabius Cunctator (“Fabius the Delayer”) built a number of temples to beseech the Gods for aid. These included a temple to what we would translate as “common sense.”

To the Romans, this was reasonable. A person would enter the temple and “pray” to common sense, which would focus their thoughts on the virtue. Having been reminded of the importance of the virtue, they were likely to put it into practice at their next opportunity. Their actions would be changed, and this would change the state of the world. What else do you want from a “God”?

If you can grasp this, then you can understand what Edward Correia is doing in his new book, The Uncertain Believer: Reconciling God and Science. He wants to build a (metaphorical) temple to compassion and proclaim that the virtue itself is a God. But while the Romans could be persuaded to find room in their pantheon, most of the West is now monotheistic. Are we ready to give up the traditional personal God for a God that is nothing more — or less — than an idea?

Gods: A Builder’s Manual

Pullquote: “On one hand, the doctrines of organized religion seem unpersuasive or downright silly. On the other, the prospect of a universe without God seems meaningless.” (6)

Correia is writing to those who already have grave doubts about the traditional understanding God, but still find a need for some overarching purpose to their lives. The book attempts to guide these “uncertain believers” through the process of creating their own conception of God that will fill those needs without falling pray to the problems of the traditional model. Correia is forthright about this; humans have always unconsciously created their Gods to fulfill their own needs, now it is time to do so consciously.

He begins this process by considering the classic proofs for the existence of a creator God: the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, ID and so forth. He considers the typical arguments for and against, coming to the conclusion that none of the proofs are particularly persuasive. Unfortunately the book is a scant 170 pages, and you could fill up volumes about any of the philosophical proofs. His approach to each is solid, but cursory. Each argument he gives has a counter argument, and Correia doesn’t have the space to deal with them. This isn’t a problem for the person already doubting the existence of a personal deity, but it limits the appeal of his arguments against those theists who already know the pat answers.

Correia then picks through some of the West’s great thinkers looking for insight into the nature of God, from Aristotle to Hegel and especially Tillich. He takes a bit from each, building an understanding of what he wants God to be. The end result of this is a definition of God that survives all of Correia’s objections, but utilizing what he considers best from each individual thinker:

God is the shared ideal of genuine unqualified love for others. To put it more simply, God is love. (115)

Theology is All About Timing

Pullquote: “Acknowledging that we are developing a conception of God does not diminish the importance of God in our lives.” (16)

It is unfortunate that this book should come out now. We’ve seen the New Atheists, we’ve seen the immediate backlash against them, and now we’re seeing a great deal of writing from the middle ground. Karen Armstrong, H.E. Baber, Robert Wright and others have written books and editorials that try to explain God in a way that the modern religious skeptic can accept. The market is probably saturated, and it seems possible that this book will simply vanish into that pool of ink without a ripple.

That would be a shame, since Correia has a remarkably frank and clear-eyed approach to the issue. Many authors writing along the same lines can get bogged down by the poetry or become overly precious with their turn of phrase, like Wrights’s “evolving God.” Metaphor and paradox may be the language within religion, but when talking about religion some clarity is appreciated.

Correia is upfront about the fact that this God is a cultural construction that exists in our collective minds rather than outside the universe, and he’s equally clear that we’re creating it rather than discovering it. I have to wonder if this won’t kill the book’s chances among moderate Christians. Correia may be happy focusing his love on an idea of his own creation, but I’ve always gotten the impression that most moderates would prefer for God to have an independent existence. Watching reactions from the quarter will be interesting.

Among atheists, I suspect that the common response will be bafflement. We can see what he’s doing, but not why he’s doing it. Many of us feel the need for purpose in our lives (and many don’t), but few feel the need to deify this purpose. Using the language of theism simply confuses the issue. It’s useless at best, disingenuous at worst.

But for those people in the middle who have given up on traditional religion but not the experience of traditional religion, Correia has provided a lucid and useful book.

Vorjack is a librarian/archivist and a public historian, living with his wife in history-soaked Albany, New York.

I first became aware of Robert Jensen’s work when his essay about rejoining the Methodist Church appeared on Killing the Buddha. Jensen is basically an atheist and a naturalist, but he had been invited to speak before a Methodist congregation by a progressive preacher. Jensen was taken by the aesthetics and the power of the rituals and set about joining the church.

Since the essay is entitled “The Inquisition,” I think you can guess how that went over.

A New Faith, that Requires None

Pullquote: My decision to join a church was more a political than a theological act.
Robert Jensen

But I suspect my atheist audience is struck by the thought of trying to rejoin the very thing we worked so hard to break away from. Why go back? As I mentioned, Jensen was struck by the sacred rituals, but there’s more to it than that. Jensen has a mission.

Jensen is defining a new type of religion, in line with modern liberal Christianity but even more secular. The core is his concept of “God as Mystery,” which we’ve previously discussed. Following that, he’s retooled – or at least sketched out ways to retool – such concepts as sin and the soul.

The result is a new take on Christianity that is almost completely secular, to the point that it could even be accepted by materialists. Granted, this requires an even more streamlined version of Jesus than is typical for liberal Christianity, but Jensen is more interested in the OT prophets anyway. Again, Jensen has a mission.

A Little Matter of Remaking the World

Pullquote: “The task is to create a system that gives us freedom from the illegitimate authority that people and institutions attempt to impose on us, but recognizes our obligations to each other.” (p. 102)

To call Jensen’s goals “ambitious” is to do them a disservice. Jensen wants nothing more than to reshape American society – and probably all western society by extension – into something totally new. Jensen focuses on discarding what he calls “the four fundamentalisms”:

1. Religious fundamentalism: Fairly obvious.
2. National fundamentalism: Nationalism in all it forms, most notably American exceptionalism.
3. Economic fundamentalism: The notion that corporate capitalism is the only right way to organize the economy.
4. Technological fundamentalism: The belief that “… the increasing use of evermore sophisticated high-energy, advanced technology is always a good thing and that any problems caused by the unintended consequences of such technology eventually can be remedied by more technology.” (116)

And this is only the tip of it. In addition to remaking – or removing – capitalism, he wants to shift from the hierarchical “power over” model of social organization to a more cooperative “power with” style. All of this is intended to address the extreme problems of social justice and environmental degradation that Jensen sees in the world today.

Jensen realizes that to change American society this completely, he’s going to need to start from the bottom up. Habits, traditions and assumptions will need to change. American ambitions will need to change, as the “good life” will need to mean something other that increased affluence. In fact, Americans as a whole will need to become accustomed to having fewer material possessions.

Feasible vs. Workable

Pullquote: “To speak prophetically is to refuse to shrink from what we discover about the injustice of the world.” (p. 144)

Jensen is clear that the fundamental problems of inequity, poverty and environmental degradation will require radical changes. He views his new take on religion as a lever for enacting those changes, by creating a new vocabulary, new values and a new ethic for living. He makes no pretense that he has a final answer, but sees the creation and embrace of this religion as an important first step.

Which is good, because he spends more time writing about the ills of the world than about the way the world will be healed. All appropriate for a prophet, of course. But here’s the dark side of this prophethetic tradition passed on by the ancient Isrealites: it failed.

Both Northern Israel and Judah were destroyed. By the thinking of the time, this meant that they had not returned to righteousness and were punished by God. By the thinking of our time, it’s hard to see how they could be considered a success. There’s no indication that the prophets convinced the elites of Israel to turn towards justice and mercy. It is instructive that when the Israelites returned from their Babylonian exile, there are no more writings from the prophets.

Jensen’s role of the prophet is important — even vital. But thundering from the mountaintop only does so much. When the work comes down to unromantic, tedious political wrangling over environmental protection, where will the prophet be? When the new religion begins to schism — always a problem for the liberal wing — where does the prophet stand?

Vorjack is a librarian/archivist and a public historian, living with his wife in history-soaked Albany, New York.