Book Review: The Moral Arc

The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom by Michael Shermer.

I bought this book because I heard about it on Michael Medved’s show and he said it was a good book.  I guess that this is the last time I take a recommendation from Mike.  Actually the real reason that read this book is that I’ve always kind of thought that it was actually the decoupling of State and Religion was brought about by atheists, or deists that turned into atheists, and not by religious people.  Also, it seems to me that the world has become a much better place, at least parts of it, and this is another argument that Mike and the author made on the show.

Because this book was plugged by Michael I found one part of the book funny.  Dr. Shermer talks about how he tells his friends in Europe about how a talk show host in the US starts his show by saying that “American is the greatest nation of Gods green Earth.”  He then goes on to say that the Europeans just roll their eyes.  The funny thing about this is that Michael Medved is the talk show hosts that says that.  Dr. Shermer then goes on to do something that I always find disingenuous.  He pulls out some reports that talk about how European nations have higher and better living standards.  What Dr. Sheerer, and others who make these claims, don’t point out is that the US is a country of 300+ million people, which has taken in all sorts of nationalities.  The US has raised all these people to an incredible living standard.  Comparing the US to small European nations that have a mono culture is like comparing apples and oranges.  How about comparing the US to other large nations that are multicultural, like China, India or Russia.  How does the US compare then?  Or barring that how about comparing US states that almost have mono cultures like Utah, or Minnesota or another state.  That’s never done by europhiles like Dr. Sheerer.  I always wonder why europhiles like Dr. Shermer don’t emigrate to one of those other nations?  Oh yeah I know.  Dr. Shermer probably realizes that since he wasn’t born in one of those nations he finds so salutary.  He knows will never be accepted as a native because, while you can become an American by coming here and working hard, you can’t become a Frenchman or any other type of European unless you’re born there.

I’ve read some some articles by Michael Shermer and his articles seem fairly balanced.  This book however makes me reconsider my opinion of Dr. Shermer.  He now seems like another atheist that hates Christianity and anything that comes from the Bible, and he does what most atheists do is to cherry pick things out of the Bible to make people who believe in the Bible look like idiots.  He does the same thing with Christian History.  The same thing could be done in the reverse.  There is no equivalent to the Bible that atheists accept that can be cherry picked and mocked.  The same is not true with famous athiests in history.  Take the secular atheist saint Margaret Sanger who started Planned Parenthood.  She's never presented as a mad women who believed in eugenics and started Planned Parenthood as a way to kill African American babies.  That's because eugenics is now consider a pseudoscience that is disavowed by all atheists like Dr Shermer.   However practically all atheists and progressive thinkers in the first half of the 20th Century used to think eugenics was a great thing, and lets face it, if breeding works with animals, shouldn’t it work with humans if we're just progressive enough to think the unthinkable?  The only thing that caused the progressive atheists to disavow eugenics is that the mad man Hitler, the Nazi’s and the Germans showed what a terrible idea it was.  But atheists today pretend atheists would never have  believed something that stupid, but they did. 

Pretty much all of Dr. Shermer's treatment of the Bible was shallow and is practically a straw man argument the way it is presented.  Only ad idiot would not see this, and I'm sure Dr. Shermer is not an idiot so he must assume that his readers are.

I’m LDS and I found one part of the book exceptionally insulting.  Dr. Shermer showed his "deep" knowledge of LDS theology by showing how ridiculous he thought it was.  And what was his point?  Apparently that LDS theology changes!  However when atheists stop believing what the progressive atheists believed last century, like the belief in eugenics, they are progressive, while when a religion changes it's doctrines they are hypocrites.  I guess what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander.  

Another thing that really annoyed me is the lightness he made of Dr Stark’s idea that Christianity led to the discovery of science, the enlightenment, and Western Civilization in general.   He's written a number of books that lay out his arguments and ideas.  I've read most of Dr. Starks books and it think he makes very good points.  Dr. Shermer quotes one paragraph from one book and then all he does to discount the fact that Western Christianity led to our Western Civilization was to point out that there were great civilizations in China and India.  Wow!  That's some great reasoning and I'll bet Dr. Stark never realized there were great civilizations in China and India.  Let me boil Dr. Starks idea down.  Did India and China have astrology?  Yes they did.  Did they develop astronomy?  No they didn’t.  Did India and China have alchemy?  Yes they did.  Did they develop chemistry?  No they didn’t.  And that’s the point of Dr. Starks books that Dr. Sheerer dismisses in a paragraph.  Why didn’t any other society ever develop science?  Well they didn’t because they didn’t have Christianity.  Take my word for it Dr. Stark has a compelling reason why Christianity led to what we have in Western Civilization.  However, another way to look at this is as a compliment to Dr. Stark because he's discounted like the Bible with the same straw man arguments that only idiots will believe.

Dr. Shermer made a big deal about how bad slavery was, which everyone agrees was a bad thing.  I kept wondering about how he was going to deal with the fact that it was Christians in general that led to the abolition of slavery, and a specific Christian that led to the abolition of slavery in Britain.  Well Dr. Shermer does give credit to William Wilberforce for bringing the abolition of slavery in Britain as a bill to the English parliament for 27 years until slavery was legally abolished.  But then he does his best to discount the work that William did trying to portray him as a regressive prude for getting King George III to issue a proclamation against vice.  He doesn't mention anything about the "Clapham Sect", which was a group of people in The Clapham area of England which started and moved forward most of the social programs in England such as better working conditions for children and miners, cruelty to animals and other projects that seem they would be close to Dr. Shermer's heart.  What Dr. Shermer tries to do is to claim that enlightment French philosophes such as Voltaire and Diderot are the ones that helped rid the world of slavery by quoting some things that these men wrote.  However, that's all they ever did was write things.  The French never abolished slavery until forced to due so because of English warships enforcement of anti-slavery by raiding slaving ships and it became embarrassing to keep supporting it.  Was there a movement to abolish slavery during the French Revolution, that was supposedly based on the ideas of the Enlightenment?  No.  Did Napoleon abolish slavery as he tried to take enlightenment ideas to the rest of Europe as he built his empire.  No.  All atheists do is talk.

This fact that all atheists do is talk was made clear to me once when I was on Christian discussion board and was visiting the atheist section, which is something I liked to do back then.  Someone had started a thread and was railing that it was embarrassing that during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina there were hundreds of Christian organizations that were down there helping people and not a single atheist organization.  I couldn’t resist asking him why he didn't organize a group of atheists and take them there.  I don't remember his response but ever since then I've been amazed by the truth he pointed out.  Where are the atheists hospitals?  There are hundreds, if not thousands, of hospitals that have been started by Christian organizations.  Most towns have at least one, and bigger towns have multiple ones.  Then the are the Christian adoption agencies, etc.  The atheists just don’t do things to help the world.

Dr. Shermer makes one claim in the book that I found absolutely astounding.  He has a ton of data to show that wars became less common during the 20th Century.  The data as far as I’m concerned is very compelling.  Then he makes the arguments that wars have become less common because of science and enlightenment.  Then he makes his astounding claim.  He says that all wars before WWII were the result of religion!!  Including WWI!  This is the first that I’ve ever heard or read this claim.  Most people that have talked about WWI have said that it was a tragedy and the end of the modern enlightenment.  People were thinking that enlightenment and science were going to continue to make life better, and then the three nations that were the leaders of the enlightenment became locked in the most horrendous war the world had ever known.  One of the sad facts is that all of the nations in Europe were Christian, and all prayed to the same God.  That adds to the tragedy, but Dr. Shermer is the only person I’ve ever heard that has said it was a war of religion.  Also, he apparently thinks that the civil war during the French Revolution was religion based.  Were the Napoleon Wars?  Dr. Shermer is making claims that are crazy to try and prove his points.

With all that I did like parts of the book.  His writing is very engaging so it was easy to read, at least the parts that weren’t infuriating. He brings a lot of statistics to the book to show that the world is much less violent today than it was before.  I just think that his reasons for why it is are wrong.   However, I still think that science and the enlightenment and the types of governments that have risen since then contribute to the fact that the world is a better place.  I wish he had made some better arguments for why this has happened.

Book Review: Secrets of the Lost Races

I was given this book while I was on an LDS Mission in Australia 1980-1982.  We were out tracking and the person who’s door we had knocked on asked me if I would read a book.  I said that I would and gave him a Book of Mormon.  I was able to read the book in a few days during my personal study time.  Those who have been on LDS missions know that this may not have been completely following the rules, but I figured if I wanted the person who gave me the book to read the Book of Mormon I should read his book.  I’m glad I read the book, and I’ve kept it for all these years.

This book gives another interpretation on Out Of Places Parts, or OOParts.  These are things that should not exist and are ignored by “professional” archeologists.  Things such as gold chains found in coal that is supposed to be 100s of millions of years old.  Such a thing can not  possibly exist so it is ignored when it is found, and explained away.

There are  a lot of people who talk about these things and most of them say that aliens came to 

Earth long ago and these things are evidence of that.  The author of this book takes another viewpoint.  He posits that there was a pre-flood civilization that had reached a level that they were able to fight nuclear wars.  He points out that if people were living as long as is stated in the Bible that today we would have Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Pascal, Maxwell, Einstein etc… living today.  That’s some serious brain power.  It’s a great way to look at things and it’s effected my thinking for many years especially about the flood.  I grateful that that person gave me the book.  I wish that he’d read the Book of Mormon,

Book Review: The Man Who Knew Infinity

I had heard about Ramanujan before, but not enough to know his name, just that his case was used in arguments to show that the education system is a failure and that genius can come from anywhere.  I agree that genius can come from anywhere, but this book puts paid to the fact that it is a failure of the education system.  At one point the question is asked, are there other Ramanujan's out there.  The book points out that Ramanujan's brilliance is a once in a life time, or century.  That with all of the success of the Western European educational system a genius like Ramanujan only rises occasionally.

There is a question in science, and I suppose other fields, that talks about the effect of the genius.  In this book there is a person who states the differences in genius.  There is the regular genius who is very good at doing the normal things.  When he shows you what he did you can understand it, you just realize that the genius is just very much better than you are.  Then there is the magician, when the magician shows you what he or she did you still can't understnad how they did it.  Magicians change they way the world sees itself.  Magicians are men like Kepler who sees that orbits are eliptical, or Einstien and brownian motion, and Newton and gravitational force.  Not anyone could see what they saw, but once they point the way the world is a better place.

According to this book that is Ramanujan who kept notebooks, three of them, during the years when only he believed in himself, but which are still being studied and proved many years after his death.

This book is also about the other type of genius G. H. Hardy who was a mathematician that Ramanuhan wrote to who recognized his genius and nutured it and brought Ramanujan to the attention of the world.  Some would say that anyone could have discovered Ramanujan but Hardy is the third mathmatician that Ramanujan wrote and the other two didn't discover him.  From the book it said that since Ramanujan didn't have a lot of formal training his notation was hard to understand.  Not wrong just different and it takes some time to see what he was actually saying.  The book said it was like instead of saying "Penny wise and dollar foolish." you say "Quater wise and two dollars and fifty cents foolish"  Same thing but doesn't ring right.

Fascinating book about two fascinating men.  Very good read.

Book Review: Amazing Grace

This is a book about a great man, and I'm glad that I read it.  It was recommended to me by a dear friend, and I'm glad she recommended it because reading the book has really has really given me some profound insights.

I think that the most important part of the book was the introduction.  In it it points out that William Wilberforce and the Claptham Sect really changed the world in a profound way.  Before them the world had always accepted slavery, after words slavery was no longer acceptable.  Before them the world just accepted that there were poor in the world, even Christians accepted that, and that the poor were responsible for their condition.  After the Claptham Sect became the social conscience for society it was no longer acceptable that society should do nothing to help the unfortunate amongst us.  This book shows how this great change came about and introduces the reader to the man who was a driving force behind the changes.

It's too  bad we don't know more about men like this today.  I would highly recommend everyone to learn more about William Wilberforce and this book is a good way to do it.

Book Review: The Meaning of Jesus

This is a book that is co-written by Marcus Borg and Bishop N. T. Wright. I found it on scribd and was very excited to read it. Marcus Borg is probably my favorite liberal theologian. I disagree with just about everything that he says about Jesus and the Bible, but really like the way that he says we should live our lives as Christians. Bishop N. T. Wright is my favorite conservative Christian theologian. I've read a number of his books.

In the introduction of the book describes how Bishop Wright read a book by Marcus called "Conflict, Holiness, and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus". Bishop Wright sought out Marcus to congratulate him on as well as to explore some "matters arising" and to ask why the book ended as it did rather than in certain other possible ways. A friendship arose out of the fascinating study of Jesus within his historical context. The result of that friendship is this book. It is a book that discusses the different ways that they see Jesus. The book is not meant to be scholarly, and both writers refer readers to other books it the reader is interested.

I first learned about Bishop Wright a few years ago when I learned about NPP, or the New Perspective on Paul. Bishop Wright wrote a book about that called "Paul: In Fresh Perspective." I liked that book and then found that Bishop Wright was a part of the so called "Third Wave of Historical Jesus Studies." Strangely enough Bishop Wright defends the Bible and interprets the historical Jesus as if they Gospels are historically accurate. Reading his interpretation was like a breath of fresh air. Also, his thoughts were deep and his arguments well thought out, not like the general popular treatments, like the execrable books by Lee Strobel.  Although if you like his books I'm not saying that I think they're wrong, just that they're not very scholarly and they make what I feel are stupid arguments.

Basically Marcus takes the general scholarly interpretation of the Gospels and Jesus. In fact Marcus is part of the Jesus Seminar. As far as I can tell the Jesus Seminar thinks that Jesus was a historical figure, but that he didn't perform any miracles and all the miracle stories were made up about him by his followers. They try to go a little more in depth than that, but that's the gist of it, and this is the idea that Marcus defends. He talks about a pre-Easter Jesus and a post-Easter Jesus. He feels by careful study of the Gospel sources, which include the Synoptic Gospels but not John, the so called Q document and the Gospel of Thomas that he can tell what Jesus really did and said, which he calls history remembered, and what his followers made up about Jesus which he calls history metaphorized. However, while I totally disagree with what he says about Jesus and the way the Gospels were created, I really like the way that he teaches that we should live the Christian life.

So here's a great example about what I mean. Marcus doesn't think that there was an empty tomb on Easter morning. The resurrections accounts are history metophorized (made up). However, quoting "My position is that experiences of the risen Christ as a continuing presence generated the claim that 'Jesus lives and is Lord'". Marcus sees the resurrection as a metaphor for the fact that Christ's presence, or resurrection, ought to be a continuing presence in our lives. I agree that Christ's presence should be an ongoing experience in every Christians life, but I also think that it's important that there was an empty tomb.

Because I consider myself a conservative Christian I tend to agree more with Bishop Wright's portrayal of the historic Jesus than I do Marcus'. In fact I think that the ideas that Marcus shares is the reason that the mainline Christian denominations are losing members in droves. However, since Bishop Wright is an Anglican Bishop it's hard to account for him.  It seems to me, as an outsider of the Anglican confession, I think there is a fight for the soul of the Anglican Confession between conservatives and liberal Christians. At least that was the view that I got when the controversy over gay clergy erupted a few years ago. I guess if it's true then Bishop Wright must be in the camp of the conservatives camp.

That being said I enjoyed both of the wrap up chapters that talk about the way that the ideas that were shared should effect the Christian Church and Christian life. That has always been the thing that amazes me about Marcus, I disagree with everything he says except about the way he says that a Christian should live. I guess I could disagree with a few points that he has but overall I very much like what he has to say about living the Christian life.

Marcus agrees with the findings of the critical scholars for the last 200 years as he constantly refrains. He also claims to want to find a Jesus that is able to fit in with the modern world. The question I always wonder about this is does he realize that if he were alive 100 years ago, or 50 years ago the findings of the critical scholars were very much different/mistaken about a lot of things.  Does that mean Marcus would have different views about Jesus depending upon the most current ideas about Jesus Scholarship? That's just something that I can't countenance, a  changeable Jesus, and that is all that critical scholarship gives you is changes.

Here is the state of critical Jesus Scholarship as I understand it. The Gospel of Mark came first. It's the shortest and seems to make the least amounts of claims for Jesus' divinity. Matthew used Mark as a source and expanded it to beef up Jesus' credentials. Luke used Mark and Matthew to again beef up Jesus' credentials. So here's what they're asking people to swallow.

1) Jesus was just another great teacher, or healer or whatever.

2)After he died his followers got together and make up stories so that he would appear to be more fantastic and people would believe that he was the divine Son of God.

However, what these people never answer, and Bishop Wright asks this question, is why would the followers of Jesus ever make this decision? That's not how any other messianic movement, or any other movement, ever works. When the leader is killed after making fantastic claims he is dropped as a movement leader and the followers look for other leaders or disband. Sometimes a leader that accomplishes a lot during his or her lifetime he is honored after their death, but they have to accomplish something, and usually they have many years of leadership under their belt. One recent example of this might be Ronald Reagan who is now a conservative political icon (and probably looks much better in retrospect than he actually was), but he was in politics for over 30 years and rose to the pinnacle of his profession and did things like spearhead an economic resurgence, and rebuilt the military and restored their honor.  Buddha was a religious leader for 30 years and had created a following of monks called the sangha that followed and recorded his teachings.  Mohammad, if he existed, was a military, political leader, and prophets for over 30 years and built up the ummah to follow after him and they recorded his life and teachings. Jesus didn't do anything like that. According to the synoptic gospels he was active for about a year, and in John he was active for maybe 3 years, then he was killed by the Romans as a traitor, by crucifixion the worst thing that could happen to a Jew. Why in the world would anyone follow such a person, especially when, by their own admission, they all scattered after Jesus' death, which is the natural thing to do and to be expected? There is no reason: unless there was a real resurrection, and other miracles to testify of Christ's divinity. Of course since there is no answer, except the obvious that Jesus really was the Son of God and a miracle worker, no one tries to answer it, they just come up with things that could possibly have happened and say this is the best idea that we can come up with and leave it at that.

This is a good book and I would recommend it to anyone interested in two divergent views of Jesus.

Book Review: There Is A God

This is a book that I found out about while reading the book "Signature in the Cell". Of course I'd heard of the amazing conversion of Dr. Antony Flew, a world famous atheist to theism as he describes it. Not Christianity, but theism. However, he does say that if you have to choose a religion you can't go too far wrong with a religion that has such a charismatic figure as Jesus and a world class intellect such a Paul as your founders.

Much of this book went completely over my head. Even though this book was probably written for a general audience, only parts of it could I completely understand. The reason was because Dr. Flew is talking about very precise philosophy arguments, and the books that make them. However, the parts that I could understand well were well worth reading.

Roy Abraham Varghese, who is the co-author, also wrote the introduction, and the first appendix. He takes apart the so called new atheism which he says isn't new and doesn't even rise to the level of logical positivism, and ignores all the arguments being made for theism today. Basically they just rail against organized religion of any kind and are trumpeted by the media as something new, although they are not. The whole book was worth reading for the way that he took apart Richard Dawkin's, my favorite atheist to despise. After Dr. Flew, an eminent philosopher and proponent for atheism for many years, Richard Dawkin's apparently went ballistic, and went for the "ad hominem" attack. Dawkins first said that Bertrand Russel "was an exaggeratedly fair-minded atheist, over-eager to be disillusioned if logic seemed to require it," He added in a footnote "We might be seeing something similar today in the over-publicized tergiversation of the philosopher Antony Flew, who announced in his old age that he had been converted to belief in some sort of deity (triggering a frenzy of eager repetition all around the Internet). On the other hand, Russell was a great philosopher. Russell won the Nobel Prize."

Varghese writes

"The puerile petulance of the contrast with the "great philosopher" Russell and the contemptible reference to Flew's "old age" are par for the course in Dawkins's epistles to the enlightened. But what is interesting here is Dawkins's choice of words, one by which he unwittingly reveals the way his mind works.
"Tergiversation means "apostasy." So Flew's principle sin was that of apostatizing from the faith of the fathers."

That's funny writing as far as I'm concerned and it only gets better.

He related a statement made by Dr. John Barrows an English cosmologist, theoretical physicist,and mathematician who is a Research Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge University, said, regarding Dr. Dawkins disregarding the fine tuning of the Universe, "You have a problem with these ideas Richard, because your not really a scientist. You're a biologist." Julia Vitullo-Martin says that Dr. Barrow feels that biology is little more than a branch of natural history. Dr. Barrow has said; "Biologists have a limited intuitive understanding of complexity. They're stuck with an inherited conflict from the nineteenth century, and are only interested in outcomes, in what wins out over others. But outcomes tell you almost nothing about the laws that govern the universe."

Just reading those parts of the book were worth reading the entire book.

Dr. Flew wrote and presented a paper called "Theology and Falsification" and presented it at the Socratic Club, that was sponsored by C.S.Lewis at Oxford university, in 1950. This has been one of the most quoted articles about atheism of the last half of the 20th century. It's a short article and it can be found on the web if you would like to read it. This article supposedly changed the entire dynamic of the argument against God. I didn't really see how it changed the argument, but that may be because the argument that he presented is now so well known that I've heard it before in other forms.

One of the things that Dr. Flew points out is that when he became and atheist in the middle of the 20th Century much of the evidence that he now considers important as evidence of a deity was not known. One example is that the DNA molecule shape was not determined until 1953, and it was after that that it was possible to determine how it worked. Also, a lot of the discoveries of the fine tuning of the Universe were not known at that time. After taking all of these new discoveries into consideration Dr. Flew decided that the best explanation of the Universe is that it is designed, and if it is designed then there must be a designer.

He also addressed the comments by the idiot Dr. Dawkins by saying that some people had accused him of getting old and changing his views because he was worried about the afterlife. However, Dr. Flew said that he has not changed his ideas of humans having an immortal soul.  He doesn't think we do have a soul so he doesn't think anything will happen after he dies. He also said that he has always been willing to follow where the evidence leads and has changed his ideas in the past. He said that many people are supprised when they learn at one time he was a Marxist, and that he later became a supporter of capitolism.

Another interesting part of the book are the two appendices. One is by Roy Abraham Varghese who also wrote the forward.  Dr. Flew says that he has recommended the book "The Wonder of the World" and that anyone who argues against theism "would need to take into account [The Wonder of the World] which provides an extremely extensive argument of the inductive argument from the order of nature." He appendix is a paper called "The 'New Athiesm': A Critical Appraisal of Dawkins, Dennett, Wolpert, Harris and Stenger". He basically says that their arguments are not new and that they are very shallow, but that the popular press is giving them a lot of press and attention. One of the great things he says is that the atheists are trying to say that if you sit at a marble table, the argument is that if you sit there long enough the table will start talking to you. He points out that the atheists are making that somehow inanimate matter became animate and then progressed until we are the results.

The second appendix is by Bishop N. T. Wright. Bishop Wright is one of my favorite Christian writers. Dr. Flew writes 
"Appendix B concerns the claim that there is a self-revelation of God in human history in the person of Jesus Christ. The claim is defended by one of today's premier New Testament scholars, Bishop N. T. Wright. In my view, Wright's responses to my previous critiques of divine self-revelation, both in the present volume and in his books, comprise the most powerful case for Christianity that I have ever seen."

Dr. Flew apparently is not convinced by Bishop but thinks his arguments are good. I concure. Of course I always like it when someone really smart agrees with my opinion. Still I think that's high praise for Bishop Wright. I didn't realize how good his arguments were.  His appendix is excellent.  It caused me to go and see if Bishop Wright has written anything new that I might read since I enjoyed the appendix so much.

Book Review: Muhammad: Prophet of God

I was hoping that this book might give me some clarity about Islam and Muhammad.  Daniel Peterson is one of my author heroes and I generally enjoy his writing.  He also has a reputation that he can be acerbic in his writing, especially in the defense of the LDS faith.  He is also an Professor of Islamic Studies and the editor-in-chief of the BYU Islamic Translation Series, which is a series of translations of philosophical works by Islamic scholars to make them more accessible to the West.  They are printed with the Arabic text on one side of the page and the English on the other side.  From what I've been able to determine they are well accepted.  So he's got to know a lot about Islam.

Dr. Peterson's writing in this book is as always good and I actually learned some things about Muhammad that I didn't know.  I've read a couple of different accounts of Muhammad.  In some he seems to be a really nice guy.  In the other he seems to be a blood thirsty tyrant.  I'm not sure where the truth lies, probably somewhere in the middle.  My first reaction after reading this book by Dr. Peterson was that he was taking the apologist track, but then I started thinking about it a little more and realized that he really didn't take that track at all.  He may not have talked about some of the more grizzly aspects of Muhammad's life, like Robert Spencer does, but he doesn't sugar coat them either.

The fact is that Muhammad really did accomplish something that is amazing.  He started an Empire that rivaled any other great empire builder such as Alexander, and he did something that Alexander didn't do, his Empire stayed together and grew after he died.  Alexander's didn't even survive the what would have been his life span had he lived.  I think he did this by being a really good leader, and he was probably a pretty good religious leader as well for his time.  And I think this is what Dr. Peterson shows in this book.

First off Muhammad would get 1/5 of all the booty from the raids and battles that the muslims had, and all indications are that he used this to support the people who came to Medina as emigrants.  He didn't live in a lavish lifestyle.  That's certainly different than most despots.

The Battle of Uhud which was a route of the Muslims.  One of the main reasons was because of the calvary led by Khalid ibn al-Walid.  Later he converted to Islam and became a great general in the rise of the Islamic caliphate both during Muhammad's life and after.  This shows remarkable leadership.  Another thing that I didn't know is somewhat ironic that Dr. Peterson pointed out.

"Less than three decades after Muhammad's death, the Ummayads, the descendants of Abu Sufyan, ruled the empire from Damascus.  The strongest leader of that house was Mu'awiya, the son of Abu Sufyan and of Hind, who had torn out and eaten the liver of Muhammad's uncle following the Battle of Uhud."

After the defeat of Mecca many of Mohammad's former opponents converted to Islam and were allowed to, despite calls for revenge.  If people were willing to follow Allah and his Messenger, the Messenger was willing to let them, and in the end, in many cases that turned out to work well for Islam.

Mohammad was probably not any more ruthless than any other great empire builder.  Many people have talked about how Constantine was not a very good Christian and did what was necessary to hold his empire.  And his lasted quite a while.  Charlemagne was the same way.  He could be ruthless when it was called for.  His Empire didn't last to long after his death.  The difference between these men and Muhammad is that a billion people don't look to them as the "perfect" example and they do to Muhammad.  So while Charlemagne might have killed 2000 pagans in a day, no Christian thinks that should be emulated as a good thing to do.  But when Muhammad did anything, like marry the wife of a man he had defeated and decapitated on the same day, or consummate a marriage with a nine year old wife, or kept slaves or etc.  There are a lot of people in the world today who think it's perfectly fine to act that way today because Muhammad did it.  Dr. Peterson doesn't point any of these things out, but they happened.

So I would recommend this book.  It's well written and you can learn some things about Muhammad.  I don't think he tells the whole story about Muhammad, but he does tell an important part of it.

Daniel Peterson and the Mormon Studies Review, A Nice Ending it Seems

Something funny happened a while ago.  I got a check from the Maxwell Institute returning some money because I was not going to be getting a volume of the new "Mormon Studies Review".  They'd just renamed it from FARMs Reviews.  I didn't think much of it.  Then I heard that Dan Peterson had been fired, and that was upsetting to me, and apparently it was upsetting to him.  Then I received a volume of "Mormon Studies Review".

It seems like it's laying out the philosophy of the Review going forward.  The editor wrote an introduction and he said that the guiding principle of the Review was going to be friendship.  There was also an article by Brian D. Birch called "In Defense of Methodological Pluralism: Theology, Apologetics, and the Criticle Study of Mormonism."  That's a mouthful.  In the article he talked about the different methods of Mormon Studies, and he talks about how aplogetics would fit in.  He says that one filed is called "negative aplologetics" and that is where critics are answered.  He said that one of the main proponants of that field was Daniel Peterson and went on to say some good things about him.  Also, Dr. Peterson had an article included as well.  I was hoping that there wasn't going to be an enduring rift and it seems like there is not going to be one.

After getting the latest Review I did a search on google to see if I could find any more information on the firing.  I did find that Dr. Peterson had supposedly written 100 page article on someone named John Dehlin who runs a web site called Mormon Stories where people who have left the Church can write their stories.  Obviously it's an anti-Mormon site, and I haven't even visited it.  It probably says that it's out to present all views, but it won't.  Any way John apparently didn't like what was going to be said about him and called a General Authority and was able to get the article pulled, which threw off the publishing because now there was a 100 page hole.  Then they stopped publishing and fired Dr. Peterson.  After all of that I decided that I would really like to see that article.

I'll admit that Dr. Dan Peterson is a hero of mine.  Mainly because of one article he wrote called "Nephi and his Asherah."  I'd always wondered about the how Nephi goes from not know what the tree in his father's vision meant to knowing that it was the love of God after seeing the Saviour's birth.  A vision of "A virgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins" that later has a baby.  There had always been a disconnect there for me, and Dan made the connection powerfully.  I once got to meet Dr. Peterson at a FAIR Conferance, and told him how much I liked that article.  I asked him if many people have told him they liked it and he said I'm one of the few, and then I asked if it was controversial at all and he said it was a little.  Any way I loved it, and after that I look for things that he's written and always enjoy them.  I don't always agree with him, but I always enjoy his writing.

Anyway I liked what Dr. Peterson did in the old Review however I was sometimes surprised at the polemical tone that the book sometimes took.  I don't think it's as bad as what is written in books about the LDS Church so I always took it with a grain of salt, but I could see how it might not be something that a scholarly journal produced by BYU would want to be associated with.  Now I just hope that the Maxwell Institute doesn't kill the spirit of FARMS.  I loved FARMS, for me it was a breath of fresh air, just the kind of stuff I loved and needed.  I would wait for their books and publications and pounce on them when they came out.  Pretty much anything they produced I bought and read.  I don't know if I'm going to continue doing that anymore.  I mean do I really want to read about Mormon Gender Studies?  Maybe not, although the article I did read was not as bad as I thought.  Maybe I'll have to take a wait and see attitude.

However, I do know that I want to support Dr. Peterson's new Journal, well over a year old now, "The Interpreter."  When people have questions about the Church, and they've read some anti-Mormon liturature I'm pretty sure that the information I'm going to get from the Review might not help so much.  It might help if it a professor that has a question, but I don't know many people like that.  I'm pretty sure I will get some good information from the Interpreter though, just like I used to get good information from the old Review.

With all that being said I guess that I'm going to have to step up and read Dr. Peterson's "Muhommad: Prophet of God."  I'm just aftaid that I'll find that I disagree with what he says and that he's an apologist for Islam.  After all that is Dr. Peterson's main field of study.  But then again I'll probably get a lot of good things from it.  I should just read it and see what he says.  Don't be a chicken.

I'm Out to Improve Myself - And the Lord is Helping

Just before the New Year I was reading an article about a former missionary who'd gone to Hong Kong to expand his business. It was a Forbes magazine article and it really hit me that it was a pretty good article. He said that he was ADD and that he'd been stuck in a rut for the last 10 years of his life and needed to get out of it. He knew he could do better because he'd proven it to himself on his mission just how much he could accomplish when he stuck his mind to it. I'd been feeling that I was stuck in a rut and would like to improve myself, and I'd just recently found out that I might be dyslexic. This guy mentioned in his article that he depended on books like "Getting Things Done" and the "Power of Habit" to help him keep on track with his ADD. I'd read "Getting Things Done" and thought that it was a great book so I decided that I should read "The Power of Habit" since he'd recommended it. I was hoping that I could get some ideas from it and maybe start accomplishing a little more in my life.

If I have one gift in life it is that I have a love for learning, and in all my learning I try to get understanding about the gospel. I would like to think that I have a gift of being able to teach the things that I learn to others. I'm trying to share my ideas in writing more with this blog. To go along with that gift of learning I feel that I'm sometimes led to books, or topics where the spirit seems to whisper to me: "Buy this book it'll be a good one." That may be just the way I justify spending all the money I spend on books, but I really believe it happens and when I does I usually learn things, about the gospel generally and myself sometimes.

That's what happened when I read this article about this book. Then when I was looking at "The Power of Habit" I came across the book "The Willpower Instinct" and I felt I had to read that book as well. Then felt that I should read "Emotional Intelligence" and "Emotional Intelligence" and then I saw a Great Courses lecture series called the "The Spiritual Brain" and I felt I should get that as well. After I read the first two of these books it reminded me of "Feeling Good" which is a all time life changing book for me.

I started with "The Power of Habit" and it was pretty good in laying the ground work there's been a lot of study on the brain with new imaging techniques. Where people used to try and figure out what was going on in the head, they can now actually see. Well they can see where blood flow is, or electrical activity and they assume from that that that is where the activity is taking place. Three things I remember especially from this book is that: 1) Marketers use the power of habit to market to you. 2) Organizations have habits 3) That the brain can imprint habits without the conscious part of the brain helping.

Number three was especially fascinating. A man got some type of encephalitis that destroyed the part of his brain that consciously learns things. His wife was told that he needed exercise and that he could never leave the house alone because he wouldn't be able to find his way back. Well she took hime for a walk every day on the same path so that she could meet both of those conditions. One day the man left the house by his self and the wife freaked out, but the man came back on his own. Scientists who were interested in him would go on the walk with this guy and he would have no idea why he was turning on certain street, or where his house was when he was only a few houses away, but he would walk into the house sit in his chair and watch the history channel. His brain had created a habit he could follow although he no conscious memory of it. He could do the same thing with making himself breakfast. He would get up go to the kitchen and mage himself eggs and bacon, but he couldn't tell you where the kitchen was. The brain was building habits that could fire but he didn't consciously know what he was doing.

One key thing that I took away from this book, besides the interesting things I mentioned, is that their seem to be key habits that if someone will do they also start doing other things in their life as well. The classic example they give is that when someone starts exercising everyday as a habit it will start spilling over into other parts of their life. They might start saving more, or eating less or other things that they've wanted to do. He also says that you should examine your habits to see why you're doing something. He then gave an example about how he would always get up in the afternoon and go to the cafe at his work to get a cookie and then talk with coworkers. When he started to examine why he was doing this he found that he mainly was doing it as an excuse to talk to coworkers, so he started just visiting with coworkers instead. Something like that. However, he never tells you how to do this, what a key habit would be, or how to examine your emotions.

The second book, "The Willpower Instinct" was by far the most interesting, and some of the information in it was in the first as well I'm sure. The author of this book says that it's taken from a class that she gives as a extension course at Stanford University. When she first offered it she was worried that no one would show up, but they had to move the class 4 times that first semester until they were in the largest lecture hall at Stanford. I don't know how big that is, but I'm sure it's pretty big. She said that the way to use the book is to try and implement one chapter a week the way they do at Stanford. She said that you could obviously read it through at once to get an overall flavor, but that you should go back and do one chapter a week. So that's what I did.

One of the first things that the first two chapters teach if meditation and breathing practice. From my short experience with trying yoga I could see that both of these were simplified yoga practices without the religious aspects to them. In the meditation portion she said that people who practiced it after as little as 11 hours of practices imaging or their brain showed that the portions of the brain that control our willpower had become "thicker" meaning more connections had been made in those portions of the brain. This is pretty much the same thing that the professor in the "Spiritual Brain" had found and they'd had their participants do a meditation practice that was similar.

For years I've thought that the eastern religions with their knowledge and understanding of the spirit and body connection probably had a lot to teach the west. However, I never really understood what it was getting at and why it was important. This gives a great reason, and it might be a little different than the reason they teach the meditation practice, but all religions say that you should meditate, at least all the ones I know about.

Anyway as I've said I've tried the meditation and breathing practices and haven't really done them in a while, however I've started again and I find them very beneficial when I know what I'm doing them for, and they fit in my spiritual practices. I don't really want to try and have a nirvana experience by doing something that I consider in many ways a waste of time everyday. However, when she talked about controlling your breathing to help with relaxation and that you should shoot for 3-6 breaths a minute I thought that might be hard, but after doing it for a couple time the second week, because it's part of the second chapter, I found that I was able to do 3 breaths a minute already. So maybe somethings stuck with me after all.

Also, books talk about how the mind is wired with the amygdala, a part of the mind that is supposed to be very ancient. The amygdala controls the emotional part of the brain, and it starts to fire before your conscious part of the brain even gets the signals. It's also the part of the brain that seems to imprint emotional memory. Emotions turn out to be very important. There is a story about a man who had something happen so that his amygdala was damaged and he felt no emotion. Far from being a Spock or Data he couldn't make decisions any more because he couldn't feel that anything was important to do. Turns out that emotions are an important way to run our lives. Our prophets have always taught that one way the Lord, talks to us is through emotions and I think this shows that they're right.

One other thing that I found super interesting is in the 5th chapter which I re-read this week and that is the power of dopamine. The first indication of this was back in the '50s when some scientists were doing a test on some rats and had stuck an electrode into the rats brain. I turned out that when the rat was allowed to push a switch that would excite the electrode it would do it until it fell from exhaustion. When the made the rat run over an electrified field that would burn it's feet to push the switch they would do so until they could run anymore. The scientists thought they had found the reward center of the brain, but what they'd found was the anticipation portion of the brain, the place were dopamine was secreted. When they destroyed that part of the brain in the rats and then gave them sugar they would get the same dopey look on their face (that the authors words, she's very funny) they still got the reward, but now you couldn't get them to do anything to earn the reward because there was no dopamine.

Apparently the brain send out dopamine when it thinks you should be taking action to do something. So if there's some tasty food around the brain starts telling you to crave it so that you'll go get the food. Apparently when getting tasty fattening food was scarce it was a good thing that your brain would put you in the mood for doing what it took to get it. You became a risk taking machine. But it might not be so good when tasty fattening food is all around you. She also said that when you saw a pornographic image the same thing happened your brain floods with dopamine. She said it probably happened because in the past you usually saw something like that only when you had a chance to spread your genes not on a daily bases. However, they've shown that showing people sexy images does flood the brain making it a risk taking machine which will cause them to spend more money for example. Obviously something that advertisers have figured out. When I was reading about some of the information that Bro. Christopherson talked about in his talk at the Priesthood Session in Oct 2012 one of the things that I found was that young men can get addicted to pornography or video games but it was the same addiction and addiction to arousal, or dopamine.

One interesting thing that this book talks about that there are 3 types of willpower. The "I will," the "I won't," and the "I want." She says that sometimes we can change an "I won't" to an "I will" challenge or an "I want". I'd never really thought about it that way before. It seems like I've always concentrated on the "I won't" part.

Anyway this book has much more information on how to implement willpower in your life, and how it works. I've really enjoyed this book and the insights it gives.

"Emotional Intelligence" was not that great of a book. I got the 10th anniversary edition of it. It gave some interesting information and ideas. Basically it says that Emotional Intelligence or EQ is more important to your success than IQ or your personal outlook. He says that research has shown that your IQ is pretty much set for life at birth, and that people seem to have a personal set point in the way they look at things. Some people are just more outgoing and some are just more timid. These traits appear in children at about 8 months and are pretty much set for life. However, you can change your EQ and it can make a great difference in your life. However, he doesn't really say how to do this other than some ideas on how to raise kids. It's sad the way some kids are raised.

"Emotional Intelligence 2.0" is totally different. It give you 4 basic areas that you can work on in your EQ and then give 63 different ideas to work on. Many of these ideas I've read about in other books but not explaining why they were important or how they were going to help. This book lays out a little more refined plan with explanation. It also says that you should just work on a few ideas at a time and then move on. Trying to change to much at once is overwhelming. In fact all the books say the same thing about only changing small things at first, although "Power of Habit" doesn't really tell you what to change, just that if you get a key habit it will change your whole life. I guess "Willpower Instinct" doesn't say what to change, just that you should only take on one challenge at a time.

Finally I listened to the "Spiritual Brain." It covered a lot of these areas but in a different way. The first part of the lectures, I think, where basically saying that religion does effect your brain in positive ways and here are the positive things that it does for you. He also knows that his research is very going to be controversial and he spent a long time talking about how he took questions that people were going to raise about his research were going to bring up. I found it amazing. At one point he talked about research that shows that Mormon males live longer and healthier lives as evidence that living a religious life is good. He said that at one of his presentations that a minister stood up and said that he thought that what he was doing wasn't very good because people are going to start to try to be religious for the physical benefits not for the theological ones. He said that that's not what he's doing and he doesn't think it would work anyway that people are only religious for the same reasons they've always been, but that here's more information about why it works. I think he's right and I like to hear stuff like that.

That was the first half of the lectures the second half I think was more about neruotheology which is a new field of study and he's written a book about it. In this section he tries to explain why the brain would believe the theological things that it might believe and why. I didn't find this section as interesting as the first section, and it may have been because I really wasn't prepared for it. I'm going to have to listen to it again. One interesting thing is that he talks about mystical experiences, and I found this interesting. He tries to lump Joseph Smith in with other mystics, but I now really see what Author Henry King and Hugh Nibley mean when they say that Joseph's account is the exact opposite of a mystical experience. He just went into a forest and tells exactly what happened, noting ineffable at all about what happened. In fact that seems to be the most amazing thing about the accounts of all prophets visions. The things that happens may seem bizarre in the telling but they're tellable. None of this I was light and dark at the same time, or I could touch everything at once. However, as the professor says many people of different religions have these experiences and all of them, after they have them say that they're life changing. Also, at least to me they seem to be remarkably similar no matter what religion the person having them is. However, it seems like most people have to work to attain these visions through some sort of meditation technique, that also seem remarkably similar.

This is what I found unattractive about the Buddhist meditations. I didn't want to spend all the time emptying my mind of everything, so that I could achieve some state of nirvana, that I don't think is important. However, this seems to be an experience that many religions have and from the descriptions it seems to be an experience that's very important to the people that have them. I'd say they're important, but I'd like to know why. The prophets teach us that we should ponder on things that we want to understand better, and many people have talked about how they have sudden enlightenment but it's on topics that are of concern to them. Some prophets have talked about how they've had visions opened up to them, like Nephi and Joseph F. Smith, but these are indescribable accounts of lights and feelings etc. It something that I'm going to have to ponder about, and I'm going to look more into neurotheology.

For me it's been an enlightening few weeks. I know that these ideas are going to be helpful to me and they're very exciting.

Book Review — Emotional Intelligence 2.0

I think this will be a good book.  It doesn't add a lot of information to the field of Emotional Intelligence for me but what it does do is give some guidance in how the reader can increase their Emotional Intelligence or EQ as it's called.

The book lays out four areas where you can increase your EQ.  I find this interesting once again.  A few years ago I went to a training meeting offered by the group that I worked for.  In that meeting they said that people had been dividing people into different groups of strengths for thousands of years starting with Socrates.  They often divide them into 4 groups and the groups are similar sounding.  I just remember this happening and that after the guy leading us that time said it I went and researched it on the web a little and he seemed to be right.  Now here these guys are again dividing us into 4 Groups.  That's got to be good.

I'm not going to tell you what the areas are, but they make sense.  The book also give 63 ideas (I'm just repeating what I heard or read somewhere I didn't actually count them) about how to improve in these areas.  I find this a very great idea.  Many of these ideas I've read about before in self-help books, like remembering someone's name is very powerful.  Yes it is and I'm terrible at it, but this give a good reason for why I should improve and how it will help overall.  This book also makes the point that trying to change everything at once is over whelming and that you should just pick 3 ideas to work on.  That really makes sense to me.

Buying the book also gives you access to a code that allows you to take a super special test (in their eyes I'm sure) that analyzes where you need help and then gives you suggestions on what you should start practicing.  In a review about this book I read someone that said that the test was stupid and that it would be easy to ace.  I'd have to say that I agree with that person, but only a moron would try to ace a test they were going to take for self improvement.  Maybe acing the test if it were part of a job interview sure, but just for yourself?  The test actually confirmed that I'm weak in areas I thought I'd be weak in, and stronger in areas I thought I'd be strong in, although not as strong as I'd like.  They gave 3 suggestions of things to work on in the book and I agree with two of them but will probably change the third.  Overall this seems to be a very promising book.