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Book Review of
- Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, by Daniel C. Dennett (2006) pp. 448.
- Who Really Cares: America Charity Divide, Who Gives, Who Doesn't and Why it Matters, by Arthur C. Brooks (2006) Basic Books, New York, USA, pp. 250.
These two books contradict each other. Breaking the Spell proclaims that religion is ignorance, the cause of harm and irrelevant to any good that may occur. Who Really Cares documents the forces behind charity as strong families, church attendance, financial independence, and the belief that individuals (not government) offer the best solution for social advancement and welfare.
Breaking the Spell is a typical constricting atheistic antisocial selfish aimless secular intellectual cesspool stagnate with "me me me" -- faithless, hopeless, and grudgingly smugly "charitable" in word only to all but religious people. Dennett attempts to "break the spell" of religion for all. But he does have a god and it is called memeMemes. Take it from this reviewer, memeMemes is his faith -- it is his belief system -- and he destroys himself with his own arguments Take that, sinner! This typically atheistic theophobic tract is filled with distortions, half truths, fantasies, and eagerness to promote Original Sin, i.e., antitranscendental "suggestibility" by making one unproven suggestion after another. He has a token understanding of "transcendent values" (Pg 376-78) limiting them to "truth and justice" and maybe "good" (and this guy is a philosopher?). Dennett does not understand that religion at its best is a pro-planet, pro-nature, pro-human, pro-social belief in God. It is a well written book, superficial, interesting, and unconvincing. In other words, preening erudition. The most disturbing part is his totally wrong prevarications many times over that religion provides little good and little culture which brings me to the second book.
Arthur Brooks' Who Really Cares is an amazing disquisition on "charity" in the United States and the world. Instead of the author's philosophical musings, data analyses are provided and interpreted with surprise and pleasure. Proven false is the liberal's claim that they are more charitable than conservatives. Indeed, the opposite is documented. Traditional conservative religious people especially, did more and do more, contrary to Dennett's Breaking the Spell. Brooks' book is a total rebuttal of the underlying negative themes of Dennett and other godless liars masquerading as scientists. From Who Really Cares:For too long, liberals have been claiming they are the most virtuous members of American society. Although they usually give less to charity, they have nevertheless lambasted conservatives for their callousness in the face of social injustice. It is a bitter irony, but one for which liberals do not bear all the blame. Conservatives have been too fixated on a kind of manly free-market rhetoric that has prevented them, by and large, from stating -- or even seeing, the obvious facts: conservatives are charitable. (Pg. 178).
You do not have to read Breaking the Spell -- it is spiritless hyperrationality to a level of meta-science and logorrhea which leads to an ersatz faith which analyzes to nothing -- it negates humanbeingness and offers pathetic counterfeit Christianity of "making nice." All religion is a “natural phenomenon” you see. People have to make up stories to understand. _______ to grade school children, the author disdains incredible design and interaction which we can occasionally understand but for the most part do not really grasp to any great extent...and even then without ever really knowing why – from the five molts to become an adult shrimp (Americans would do it in one molt) to the natural confinement of animal sexuality to reproduction (except for man) rendering man to be behaviorally pollutants – nothing is really understood by faithless know-it-alls who would get lost in Manhattan without a guide. Encourage the reader to Chapter 2 of my book, Happy Ending. As usual, atheists offer superficial rhetorical and spurious claims to be able to provide as much transcendental goodness as genuinely religious people, but Who Really Cares, proves them wrong.
Recommended to all readers is www.theogeocalculus.com and "The Self-Aware Universe: A Theological Meditation" by Samuel A. Nigro, M.D., in Social Justice Review, September/October, 2006, Pg. 136-139.
Acknowledgments
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Conflicts of interest
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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