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83 of 91 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating correction of "the narrative", March 12, 2010
To begin with, the book should probably be titled "Atheist Delusions About Ancient History." This book is not so much a debate with our Fashionable New Atheists (Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens -- "The Gang of Four?? :-) ) It is more a long, and endlessly fascinating, revisit of Ancient History.
It may not be surprising to learn that there are at least two main narratives commonly provided for "The History of Western Civilization." Here they are (very compressed):
Narrative #1: The Christian Version. "The world was lost in pagan immorality and darkness; man enslaved man and man dominated woman. Then, with the Birth of Christ, came the Divine Light, and the world was forever transformed. The barbarian, knuckle-dragging rapists of Europe were baptised and brought to Jesus, and the world got much, much better. Even today, there is no other known source of European civilization and we reject it at our peril." One of the most popular novels of all time, "Quo Vadis," is in this narrative tradition.
Narrative #2: The Modernist Version. "We had the Glory of Greece and the Splendor of Rome, but alas a bunch of superstitious people completely replaced the glories of Paganism with the knuckle-dragging ignorance of Blind Faith. The result was the Dark Ages, which only ended when Heroic Forces restored the classics of Greece to a benighted Europe. Then came the Enlightenment, and Democracy, and all manner of good things, once the Europeans cast off the shackles of Faith." Arthur C. Clarke and many other modern thinkers followed this narrative.
Whether you approve of my "summaries" or not, the point is that they are both tremendous oversimplifications and they are both therefore silly. If you want to be a propagandist, OK, take one of those simple-minded narratives. But if you really want to understand the history of Western Civilization, you need much more information.
One myth which has been repeated endlessly is that "Christian mobs destroyed the Library of Alexandria." This is completely false. In the first place, there were two libraries, and there have been a number of "suspects" beginning with Caesar, but nobody really knows what happened. (A man named Parsons wrote a whole book on the subject.) Another myth is that Christianity somehow destroyed the original Greek manuscripts of Aristotle, and that we had to get them back from the Arabs, in Arabic. If this myth were true, how could we possibly have all of Aristotle in the original Greek today? (The original Greek manuscripts were preserved in Byzantium.)
Things like this make the book under review invaluable, and there is one larger discussion I would like to share with you. It concerns Galileo, and the Myth of Galileo -- apparently launched by the great hypocrite Brecht. Basically, all you need to know is that "everything you think you know about Galileo is false," most particularly the idea that Galileo and other modern astronomers were engaged in some sort of running war with the dogmatic Catholic Church. Not at all. In the end, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton were engaged in a much larger and more difficult battle: they were overturning the dead hand of Aristotle, which had stifled European science for thousands of years. Newton's final victory was the collapse of Hellenistic "science" --- such as it was.
Well, I've either stirred up your interest, or I haven't! Back to Beethoven Op. 127. :-)
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112 of 132 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A much needed history lesson, May 24, 2009
This review is from: Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Hardcover)
The only thing I dislike about Atheist Delusions is its title. A few other reviewers have pointed out that it seems to indicate the book will be a rebuttal of atheist writers like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and the rest. It is not. Indeed, David Bentley Hart asserts that men like them are hardly worth attention because of the infantile level on which they argue. What Hart does, instead, is provide a history lesson for the "fashionable enemies" of Christianity.
The delusions in question, Hart says, are mostly historical ones. One will not discuss religion with an atheist long before history comes up. What of the injustice of the Inquisition? The Crusades? The long-running war of religion against science? The Reformation and the subsequent wars of religion? We hear constantly that religion (read: Christianity) is the most destructive force in human history. It is Hart's purpose to debunk the delusions and historical fabrications that characterize historical arguments against Christianity.
The primary focus of Hart's book, hinted at in the subtitle, is the "Christian Revolution," those first, tense centuries AD when Christianity replaced ancient paganism. The pagan era has been eulogized since in the Enlightenment as an era of peace and progress, of scientific advance that was stymied by the bigoted, book-burning Christians of the "Dark Ages." Hart shows that, while we owe much to the ancient world, it was also an irredeemably ugly place of slavery, infanticide, of callousness and hopeless reconciliation to the whims of cruel fate. Christianity, which he calls the only true revolution in history, changed everything from the bottom up--and since Christianity was first accepted among the lower classes and slaves, it changed everything quite literally from the bottom up.
Christians did not, Hart shows, burn the Library of Alexandria, or torture millions during the Inquisition, persecute Galileo, or wreak havoc across Europe during the Reformation in the name of religion. Christianity gave the world hospitals, modern science, and the moral framework to regard all life as worthy of life. In this coup de grace, Hart even points out that it would not even be possible for men like Dawkins and Hitchens to make their arguments of justice and fairness were it not for the "Christian Revolution," that their concepts of justice and fairness are rooted not just in Western Civilization but in Christianity itself.
The only way in which Atheist Delusions left me wanting was in a discussion of the Crusades. I am a military and medieval historian and so this topic is near and dear to my heart, but Hart only gives the Crusades a paragraph or two at the beginning of one chapter. He claims that the Crusades were not rooted in any Christian doctrine of just war--but they were, and were he to investigate further he would see the reasons the Crusades were considered just. (To take up the slack on this topic, I recommend Thomas F. Madden's New Concise History of the Crusades.)
But that one niggling issue aside, Atheist Delusions is one of the best books I have ever read--and I do not say so lightly. I read through it as quickly as I could and have thought about it daily ever since. I've found more food for thought, more intellectual challenge and stimulation here than in any book I've read in years.
Highly recommended.
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95 of 122 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Easterner Defends the West, April 3, 2009
This review is from: Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Hardcover)
I will forgo the standard adjectives that came to mind when I read this book: brilliant, stunning, breathtaking. That is a given when one reads David Bentley Hart. This book is a combination of alternative history, apologetics, and smash-mouth theology.
Hart claims the Christian faith represented a revolution in the story of humanity (ix). It shattered the pagan cosmology (115) and introduced new categories of reality, the dimension of the human person for one. However, Hart's thesis is more subtle than that. He is not simply saying "Christianity has done a lot of good to the world; therefore, you need to belive,"--that would be a variant of the genetic fallacy that Hart so masterfully refutes. Rather, Christianity has its own telling of the story, a telling that reworks the categories of human existence within the framework of its own story.
Over against the story is the narrative of modernity. Modernity's telos is that of freedom. Its highest ideal is putting trust in the absence of a transcendental. Its freedom is nihilistic. Modernity's current defenders, and this is the first half of Hart's book, retell the Western story in a way to demonize Christianity in their defense of modernity. Therefore, Hart meticulously shows how Christianity did not impede science (the chapter on Galileo is hilarious), burn witches (the Inquisition, despite its bad moments, actually limited the bloodiness of the State's persecution of heretics), or fight religious wars (the Crusades are actually a different case, worthy of a conversation but not under this topic).
One slight criticism: Given Hart's thesis of the Christian revolution of thought and humanity, its shattering and rebuilding of worlds, it is rather surprising to see Hart end on so dismal a note. If the Christian Revolution is as powerful as he says and as I believe, and if the detractors of Christianity are slightly moronic, as appears to be the case, does this not ultimately point to the triumph of the Christian narrative? Of course, the word triumph needs to be carefully qualified.
Conclusion:
What many of Hart's readers might not realize with this book, but this is actually Hart's clearest piece of writing. Most of Hart's writing (*Beauty of the Infinite*), while beautiful, is borderline incoherent. This book, on the other hand, is understandable.
EDIT: I've actually become more critical of this book in particular, and Hart in general over the past year. Hart is quite learned and makes a number of pointed responses to the "New Atheist Detractors." And to be fair, if the New Atheists are going to ridicule Christianity in the most scathing of terms, they need to be ready to play hardball. That being said, this book started well, had a nice historical review, but had one of the most lame conclusions I've ever read. Imagine Beethoven's 9th ending with everyone humming "Kum-by-yah." I mean, there is a major dialectical tension in this book. If Hart is correct on the Christian narrative, then how does his conclusion follow?!?
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