Author: Stuart Jordan
Stuart Jordan is a past president and current board member of the Washington Area Secular Humanists. He is a Senior Staff Scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center.
A Family Gathering to Avoid
The Family—The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, by Jeff Sharlet (New York: Harper Perennial Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-06-56005-8) 387 pp. Paper $15.95. “The Fami ly” of the title of this book is not an organization familiar to most Americans, and its almost invisible presence (outside of political power circles) makes assessing its …
Separating the Wheat from the Chaff
Quantum Gods, by Victor J. Stenger (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2009, ISBN 978-1-59-02-713-3) 264 pp. Cloth $26.98. One of the enduring debates between atheists and theologians concerns the presence or absence of scientific evidence for the existence of a deity. While the vast majority of the scientific community would probably assert there is no reliable …
A Strong Case for Science
Science And Nonbelief, by Taner Edis, with a new preface by the author (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus, 2008, ISBN 978-1-59102-561-0) 304 pp. Paper $18.95. In this generally excellent book, Science and Nonbelief, physics professor Taner Edis offers a comprehensive review of modern science and gives cogent reasons why so many people still embrace views that …
Against All Odds
Stephen Hawking: A Biography, by Kristine Larsen (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2007, ISBN 978-159102-9574-0) 215 pp. Paper $16.95. The famous cosmologist Stephen Hawking had an extraordinary career ahead of him, or so it seemed in his twenty-first year. Acknowledged as brilliant by his fellow physics students at Oxford, he was troubled only by occasional lapses …
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, by Steven Pinker (New York, N.Y.: Viking Press 2002, ISBN 0-670-03151-8) 439 pp. Cloth $27.95. The question of how much our genes contribute to what makes us human continues to be highly controversial within certain academic as well as many religious circles. In this book, without …