Customer Reviews

Architects of the Culture of Death

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The authors have done their research with this one! Each chapter highlights a modern thinker/philosopher who has been immortalized in our culture. Rare facts and shocking informative tidbits about pioneers like Darwin, Freud, Sanger & Kinsey challenge the reader to consider the darker side of these "architects" who have intentionally or inadvertently become apologists or defenders of eugenics, racial genetic engineering, sterilization, infanticide and sexual deviancy like bestiality and pedophelia. A plentitude of references from biographies, autobiographies and articles written by these "architects" reinforce the point and eliminate the "Catholic Bias" rebuttal. I promise any reader will come away challenging their own pre-conceived dispositions on a multitude of modern-day issues.

This book really surprised me. I had expected a strict review of my college philosophy course with a Catholic rebuttal. Instead I found an invititation to seriously consider how these individuals of the past two centuries have affected my life and the society that has molded me.

The vignettes consist of a description of each philosophy; but more importantly they focus on the individual that developed the philosophy. Being able to see what brought each one to their viewpoint and how the viewpoint developed was amazing. How seriously would we in the modern day accept some of these individuals if we had that information? Many would be dismissed like street corner prophets. Even more enlightening was learning the tangible results of their philosophies in their own lives. Definitely not a pretty picture for them then or us now.

The authors do not leave you alone without hope and reason. They point out the faultier thought processes and counteract them with Catholic teaching, mostly from the Holy Father, John Paul II.

My only regret is that they covered Freud and missed Jung.

It's a great weekend read. Would also be a wonderful gift/reference for Catholic family members to send off to school with thier new college student.

This book is a collection of thumbnail sketches of major thinkers behind the culture of death. Some, like Freud, are famous; others, like Francis Galton, whose pernicious ideas about eugenics exert tremendous influence to this day, were unfamiliar to me. These sketches include a basic overview of their thought along with purely biographical information. In several cases, it becomes obvious that their personal torments formed or helped form their aberrant philosophies. This attempt to establish a causal connection between personality and philosophy is a major point the authors strive to make, thinking that in so doing they discredit the ideas themselves--an approach that may not be entirely valid philosophically but is highly interesting nonetheless. Since the sketches are roughly 20 pages long, we are only getting a superficial overview. However, the writing is crisp and provocative, definitely whetting the appetite for more. As the authors point out in their introduction, many of us blame our current problems of abortion, euthenasia, moral decay, etc. on "the Sixities" or Roe vs. Wade, not realizing that these phenomena themselves are rooted in ideas that go back two hundred years or more. To really understand how deep-rooted this culture of death is, we need to understand how we got here. This book provides excellent introduction to the whole line of thought that has wreaked such havoc on our culture.

In light of recent reviews, it may be helpful to begin by saying what this book is not about. It is not an apologia for large families. Neither is it an attack on socialism or a defense of such alleged "major" players in the spread of capitalism as El Salvador, Panama, and "Algiers." (The reviewer who suggests this is eloquent, though I think badly deficient in his history -- but this book is not a defense of what he attacks.)

Architects of the Culture of Death describes the lives, thoughts, and influence of 23 "great thinkers" who helped make our world. These include the famous -- Nietzche, Darwin, Marx, Sartre, Freud, Margaret Mead, Kinsey, "Dr. Death," Peter Singer -- the relatively unknown, and those somewhere in between (Ayn Rand, Margaret Sanger). What they share in common is they expanded on the intellectual and Promethian tendencies of the Enlightenment, attempted to reinvent human nature, usually had troubled (or frankly perverse) personal lives, and (the authors think) made the world a much worse place. Each chapter tells an individual story, usually rather sad, and draws a moral. The stories strung together are meant to show how Western civilization moved from a "pro-life" Christian perspective, to a perspective that diminishes and disfigures humanity, ending in abortion, infanticide, sexual loneliness, and of course the totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century. But most of the lines lead towards Western secularism.

The authors are not "morons" or "idiots," as the reviewer of apocalyptic temperment suggests. They are intelligent and informed, if sometimes simplistic. I'm not sure Darwin deserves the honor of being in the company of some of the deeply sinister folks who haunt these pages. De Marco and Wiker seem a bit more cautious and thoughtful than Paul Johnson in his scathing and not always fair Intellectuals, but never as profound as C. S. Lewis in his classic Abolition of Man, or as historically detailed as From Darwin to Hitler. But the territory covered is similar, and readers may find these books worthwhile too.

True, fools, madmen, and false Messiahs -- those Jesus called "wolves" -- are always with us. But there is a heart of darkness in the Enlightenment project that wars with whatever good once guided Western civilization out of its periodic madnesses, and bids (it seems at times) to snuff the light of humanity from our souls. You may disagree with the authors about the source of that darkness, or the nature of the Light. You may feel they preach too much. You may argue there are other threats to worry about, as there are. But clearly, overpopulation and greedy businessmen are not our deepest dangers; human nature itself may be up for grabs. It may take special courage for "progressives" to read these stories and honestly entertain whatever truth can be found in De Marco and Wiker's warnings. But for those willing to face such criticism, the rewards may be greatest. As Proverbs says, "he who regards reproof is prudent."

In Architects of the Culture of Death, collaborative authors Donald de Marco (Professor of Philosophy at St. Jerome's College) and Benjamin Wiker (Lecturer in Science and Theology at Franciscan University) provide a clear definition of the concept "Culture of Death" which has become a both a popular phrase in national political and cultural dialogue, as well as academic circles. Architects Of The Culture Of Death provides an informed and informative delineation of the mindsets of twenty-three influential thinkers ranging from Ayn Rand, Charles Darwin, and Karl Marx, to Jean-Paul Sarte, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jack Kevorkian. Highly recommended reading for students of philosophy and theology, the authors offer an understanding and restoration of the human being as a person and the rediscover of a benevolent God arising from the concept of "Personalism" as articulated by John Paul II, and appropriately serving as a hopeful antidote for the stark pessimism that has issues from the originators of the "culture of death" perspective in contemporary human affairs.

Have you ever found yourself having an indepth conversation with a secular or sadly a lukewarm Christian friend about modern social morality and ethics? Have they banied about such named as Margaret Mead, Freud, Ayn Rand and yes even the more extreme Nietzche, Kinsey, and Kevorkian in justifying their positions, holding them up as the brilliant minds of the nineteenth and twentieth century?

Well this book rips the masks off all those people and more. It shows them for who they are, and exposes their true agendas, which can be summed up as survival of the wealthy, powerful and atheistic elite. The rest of humanity can be done away with as a pile of refuse. The theme that rang out loudly and clearly is just how mentally unfit and disturbed all these people are, coming from broken families, abusive homes, engaging in sadomasochistic behavior. And THESE are the people our society holds up as role models?! Please they should all have been locked away in an insane asylum.

I HIGHLY recommend this book, it's somewhat long, but a very fast and engaging read. The chapters themselves are short, and if you want to understand why our society is becoming what it is, you NEED to pick up this book!

I suspect that potential readers are not prepared (likewise, I was not)for the seething summaries and frank conclusions that these chapters present to the reader. The authors successfully let the facts speak for themselves. Many of the "architects" had nightmarish and almost unbelievably depressing homelives and sad lifetime experiences. This only serves to reiterate the fact that the very people that our society has grown to idolize and that many personify and seek to imitate were troubled and sometimes insane designers of the "Culture of Death". Many of the quips and quotes about these "architects" are definetely suprising and upsetting at the same time. From atheism to misguided evolutionary theory, abortion to eugenics and euthanasia, this novel, though depressing because of its content, will be a read that you will never regret having taken upon yourself. The Culture of Life is on the rise to counter the "Culture of Death" so definitively originating in these "architects". Indeed, This book is a great piece of armor to grow into a strong soldier of Christ's army.

This definitely ranks up there with one of the best books I have ever read. True to its title, this book takes a look at our current prevalent Culture of Death and gives in-depth descriptions of individuals and movements that have brought us to where we are now. One thing that suprised me was to see a few people (such as Charles Darwin) who had often been seen by society as harmless, only for this book to describe the full extent of his writings and what their implications were. Don't skip over this page, this is too good a book for anyone to pass up.

Eric Voegelin, in his book, "Science, Politics & Gnosticism," describes the gnostic philosopher as one who is "dissatisfied with his situation," and sees the world as a "defective and unjust...prison from which he wants to escape." In his attempt to escape, he tries to "seize control of being" by "the murder of God" so he can facilitate "the destruction of the old world and passage to the new" by the "construction of a formula for self and world salvation" to "replace [the old world] with a perfect and just order." He will then "come forward as a prophet who will proclaim his knowledge about the salvation of mankind." But, in his desire to have dominion over being, he "arbitrarily omits" or "suppresses an essential element of reality in order to... create the fantasy of a new world." This, invariably, leads to societal calamity.

Voegelin's analysis perfectly describes most of the eighteen people featured in "Architects of the Culture of Death," by Donald DeMarco and Benjamin Wiker. Many of the individuals contained in the book are familiar names such as Nietzsche, Darwin and Marx, while others are more obscure, such as Francis Galton, Judy Jarvis Thomson and Clarence Gamble. For each entry, the authors give a brief biographical sketch of the individual and why they are members of the Culture of Death.

Significantly, sixteen of the eighteen people featured are atheists (omitting an essential element of reality) while the remaining two, Margaret Mead and Clarence Gamble, could best be described as "functional atheists" (they claimed a religious faith, but acted contrary to its teachings.) Another common factor was that most came from a broken or dysfunctional home - many having no relationship or an adversarial relationship with their fathers. This is a common pathology among atheists and appears to be a huge catalyst in propelling them into the Culture of Death. Many of the entrants had disagreeable personalities themselves.

This book is written by Catholics for Catholics, so the non-Catholic reader may be surprised by the number of references to Pope John Paul II, other Catholic philosophers and writers, as well as the authors' tendency to place contraception on the same sinful level as abortion. It also leads to an instance of irony that I feel was probably lost on the authors. In the entry on Auguste Comte, DeMarco describes how the philosopher elevates Madame Clotilde de Vaux to an object of worship and adoration after her death from consumption. He transformed the chair that she would sit in during her Wednesday visits into an altar, kneeling before its flower-strewn seat three times a day reciting verses and praying in her honor. DeMarco characterizes Comte's behavior as blatant idolatry, yet to the protestant reader, this sounds exactly what Catholics do with the Virgin Mary, whom Protestants believe was merely a human being like any other (although used greatly by God) with an intrinsic sin nature.

This book is an important read for anyone who wants to understand where the Culture of Death originated and upon what ideas it's based upon today. It clearly demonstrates that the quickest way to gain membership into this club is to "murder God," and "create the fantasy of a new world" without Him. Far too many still choose this foolish course today.

This book was probably the fastest 373 pages I have ever read. De Marco and Wiker have done a magnificent job at making complex, intellectual material easily readable without diluting it.

This catalogue of (mostly) deeply warped individuals exposes many of the ulterior, personal motives behind the alleged "scientific" contributions made by many influential thinkers of the last two centuries. It would be hard to pick out one theme to call "particularly" alarming, but if I had to, I think most readers will be especially aghast at the clear philosopical pedigree traced from Darwin to Galton to Haeckel to...Hitler. Sorry to tell you, folks, but the legitimate grandfather of Nazi genocide is most likely venerated as a great scientist in your kid's high school biology text.

The authors are both Roman Catholics, which comes through in the book with innumerable references to Catholic thinkers, most often Pope John Paul II, as a counterpoint "Culture of Life." As a Protestant, I was occasionally annoyed or befuddled by references such as "Holy Father," but even so, Karol Wojtyla's "personalism" comes out ahead at the end of the read. I may differ with Roman Catholics theologically, but I'm anxious to learn more about Wojtyla's philosophy.

This book is a disturbing read, but not without hope. If we are to escape the very dark place where Man is led when "science" is elevated to usurp morality, and Humanity to usurp God, we must first unmask those who would lead us there.