Category: Reviews
Trying to Save God: One More Valiant Attempt
Is There a God? by Richard Swinburne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-19-8235445-5) 144 pp., $19.95 cloth. Is There a God? is a shorter and simpler version of Richard Swinburne’s The Existence of God (Oxford University Press, 1979). As such, it provides a useful introduction to theistic thought for readers with no background …
The Crisis of Catholic Sex
Sexuality and Catholicism, by Thomas C. Fox (New York: George Braziller, 1995, ISBN 0-8076-1396-7) 381 pp., $27.50 cloth. Once upon a time (less than sixty years ago), there were mainly two categories of writings about the Catholic church, one by Catholics and one by all others. Works by Catholics were usually classified by the …
Pornography: A Business Like Any Other
XXX: A Woman’s Right to Pornography, by Wendy McElroy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995, ISBN 0-312-13626-9) 256 pp., $12.95 paper. At the first humanist conference I ever international event attended—an held in Buffalo ten years ago—I found myself asking a new acquaintance, “How did you get involved in humanism?” At first, I didn’t …
True Stories from Pro-Sex Feminists
Tales from the Clit: A Female Experience of Pornography, edited by Cherie Matrix (San Francisco: AK Press, 1996 ISBN 1-873176-09-0) 144 pp., $10.95 paper. The famed American anarchist Emma Goldman once declared that, if she couldn’t dance, she wouldn’t be part of the revolution. Thus did Goldman reject the notion that working toward a just …
Matter Matters
Materialism: An Affirmative History and Definition, by Richard C. Vitz thum (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1995, ISBN 1-57392-027-4) 246 pp., $29.95 cloth. Contemporary Materialism: A Reader, ed. by Paul K. Moser and J.D. Trout (New York: Routledge, 1995, ISBN 0-415-10864-0) 378 pp., $22.95 paper. In his clear, concise, and critical presentation of philosophical materialism, …
Dueling Visions
Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, by Frederick Clarkson (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1997, ISBN 1-56751-088-4) 277 pp., $15.95 paper. On the farthest fringes of the Religious Right, beyond Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family, lurk some organizations so extreme they should send chills down the spine of any secular …
Who Is a Jew?
The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century, by Alan M. Dershowitz (Boston, New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1997) 395 pp., $24.95 cloth. The Ashkenazic Jews: A Slavo-Turkic People in Search of a Jewish Identity, by Paul Wexler (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, 1993) 306 pp., $19.95 paper. In Defense …
Reincarnation Undressed
Reincarnation: A Critical Examination by Paul Edwards (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1996) 313 pp. $28.95. Religious insanity is very common in the United States. —Alexis de Tocqueville, as quoted by Paul Edwards Because reincarnation is a fundamental doctrine of Hindu religions and most forms of Buddhism, there are probably more people around the world who …
The Tragic Consequences of Faith
Blood on the Altar: Confessions of a Jehovah’s Witness Minister, by David A. Reed (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1996) 285 pp., $24.95 cloth. Blood on the Altar focuses on the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ refusal to allow blood transfusions, even in the face of death. Much of the rest of the book deals with the 117-year history …
Humanist Poetry for the Ages
New and Selected Poems, 1956-1996 by Philip Appleman (Fayetteville, Ark: University of Arkansas Press, 1996) 264 pp., $38.00 cloth, $22.00 paper.T The University of Arkansas Press I has done the humanist community a great service by publishing Philip Appleman’s New and Selected Poems, 1956-1996. Appleman is an avowedly nontheistic poet who does not hesitate to …
Those with Courage to Doubt
2000 Years of Disbelief, by James A. Haught (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books) 334 pp., cloth $26.95. The world is full of believers. Many are total believers, like the hundreds who travel each year to Villa Union, a tiny town in desolate, far-western Argentina, to touch the mummified body of an infant who died in …
The Latest from Quine on Logic and Language
From Stimulus To Science, by W.V. Quine (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995) 114 pp., $22.95 cloth. Willard van Orman Quine, Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Harvard, is best known for his groundbreaking work in logic, linguistics, theory construction, epistemology, and empiricism. Quine’s work is often associated with American pragmatism, which may be …
Hitler’s Jewish Genocide and Goldhagen’s Holocaustbabble
Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996) pp. 619, cloth $30.00. There is convincing scientific, historical, and psychological evidence of two basic facts regarding the fate of Jews in Hitler’s Europe. Ignoring them leads to sloppy thinking and worse. Adolf Hitler was paranoid (delusional) …
Feminism Challenged
Feminism Under Fire, by Ellen R. Klein (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1995) 258 pp., cloth $32.95. All who are involved with feminism, either in the academy and Women’s Studies departments as teachers or administrators or in the community at large as politicians and scientists, will find Feminism Under Fire of interest, if only as a …