The beginning of any book is mostly exposition. We need to be introduced to both the main character(s) and the setting, the tone needs to be set and all of this needs to be done well so that we can immerse ourselves in the world the author has generated. Most novels don't have much of an issue in doing this, being set in the real world with one or two minor changes that we can quickly accept. Twilight is going to be this way as well, it's a novel about a teenage girl but it has vampires. We just have to learn to accept this to move on. So Meyer's only real goal in the first chapter is to set up our main character...whose name is "Isabella Swan."

Ugh, this is trite beyond trite as she prefers to be called "Bella," "Bella Swan." In Italian "Bella" roughly means "Beautiful," so her name essentially means "Beautiful Swan." This sets up the obvious analogy to the fairy tale of the ugly duckling and we see one of the main story arcs already. Bella is going to be shy, pretty (but not too pretty--we get to that later), and most importantly--an outcast. She needs to be an outcast because of both the typical audience of a vampire book and because the story would have to be vastly different if she were the popular girl, although that would make for an interesting work itself--a popular girl who exiles herself.

We can place Bella's age between 16-18 given the information that we have. She's a junior in highschool so she could have an early birthday or a late birthday which would have given her the odd phenomenon of the late start which would undoubtedly make her very popular in college when she is the first girl that can legally buy booze. Until then, she must remain a pariah. Why is she a pariah? Well it seems that her mom and dad have divorced, not that uncommon anymore but we also know that her mom has some mental issues. This pushed Bella into the role of child adult. She's an outcast not through any fault of her own but because her mom would forget to buy food, pay bills, etc. Bella had to shoulder these burdens on her own.

Again, this makes all of Bella's social incompetence not her fault. She doesn't relate to people her age because she's been an adult. While her contemporaries were watching cartoons, playing sports, and goofing off with each other she was busy figuring out W-4 forms, telephone bills, and grocery lists. This again is a nod to the intended audience who are typically socially awkward themselves and never believe it's their own fault. So far, it would seem that I have dated this woman before. It's not simply a matter of finding the courage to just enjoy life or people your own age, it is impossible for them...well not really. They just consider it impossible. At the same time they both look down on their peers for being immature while at the same time wishing that they could be like that, but the fates will not allow it for them.

Her appearance roughly reflects this as well: "But physically, I'd never fit in anywhere. I should be tan, sporty, blond--a volleyball player or cheerleader, perhaps--all the things that go with living under the sun.

Instead I was ivory skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red hair, despite the constant sunshine. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete; I didn't have the hand eye coordination to play sports without humiliatin--myself--and harming both myself and anyone else who stood too close."

We can couple the physical description with her lamentations about her social skills as well, "And if I couldn't find a niche in a school with three thousand people, what were my chances here?"

All of this is very important because the character has to be two things: an outcast but with the material to not be. This is why she is named "Beautiful Swan" in a non-vampire story she would find a connection with the high-school star male and they would live happily ever after. However the more outcast she is, the more the vampires are going to notice her. It's a simply rule, look at Mina Harker: she was a feminist before the days of feminism and the Vampire took notice of her. The thing about her character type, and the type of person it most closely resembles is that they are, at worst, phantoms in social settings. You sort of remember something about their presence but that's where it ends. They simply aren't noticed unless they choose to be and that almost always ends badly for them. This is our character.

Our setting if the real town of Forks, Washington which exists under "a near constant cover of clouds." This is not so cliche and I like it. A great place for a vampire because the direct sunlight never exists. While most modern vampire stories take place in L.A., New York, or some other huge metropolis the climate isn't right for predators that either abhor the sunlight or are destroyed by it. I'm not sure what we are establishing for this particular breed of undead: are they killed by it, does it lessen their powers, does the difference between sunlight and daylight make a difference? But the setting establishes that these are some of the smarter creatures that appear in fiction. They have sought out a place where the hated sun is hidden. I give Meyer credit on this one, the only thing that would make more sense is if this story took place North of the Arctic circle.

Nothing of note caught my eye today so I decided to just start the series and see if I can get some traction out of this.

"I'd never given much thought to how I would die--though I'd had reason enough in the last few months--but even If I had, I would not have imagined it like this."

I have mixed feelings about beginning a story like this. In one way it sets up a dramatic scene full of suspense right off the bat. It also sets the tone for the story that follows. I can think of a few movies that did this really well. The first is American Beauty in which Kevin Spacey laments: "Remember those posters that said, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life"? Well, that's true of every day but one - the day you die." That quote set the stage for a movie in which nothing is given away, except the almost calm serenity that Spacey's character has about it. You just know that until that point he viewed his life as a living hell.

The second movie that the opening line makes me think of is a much overlooked but awesome movie starring Denzel Washington called "Fallen." "I wanna tell you about the time I almost died..." It was a cop movie so you know the mystery is already going to be there. The thing about the movie is that it did something very few movies with prologues actually do, it made you forget about the prologue. It used the star power of Washington and a very interesting and twisted story to make the prologue so integral to the plot that it gives a 'holy shit' moment rarely seen in cinema.

Done well, beginning at the end can be very satisfying. Done anything short of that: and its like the trailer to a romantic comedy that gives away the end before you've even considered waiting for the movie to show up on TBS in between reruns of Seinfeld.

The real problem with this prologue isn't the fact that it sets us up for a main character in intense danger. It's this segment, "though I'd had reason enough in the last few months." This removes any sort of tension from any of the dangers that our (so far) nameless main character will encounter. We now know two things: that she is going to be in grave danger a couple of times in the novel and that each time she's going to get out of it to face this oncoming danger.*

More interestingly is that we have to remember something about the author's Mormonism, a distinct sect of Christianity that some Christians don't even regard as being a part of the same religion, and opening the entire book as a preface before the prologue is Genesis 2:17 which reads, "But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; though shall not eat of it, for in the day that thou shall eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." Coupling that with a quote from the prologue, "I knew that if I'd never gone to Forks, I wouldn't be facing death right now. But, terrified as I was, I couldn't bring myself to regret that decision."

This is a pre-Christian, almost pagan worldview. Not because it welcomes death but because it welcomes death without the thought of afterlife. It is welcoming the end to a life that has been lived accepting of the good decisions along with the bad. I could write 3000 words on this concept alone tying in Roman/Greek/Norse religious views and the Existential problem of the eternal recurrence. Which is basically that if you were told that you were going to have to live your life over and over again to infinity would you lament or celebrate? Our main character seems to pick the latter which Nietzsche would think impossible from someone beholden to the slave morality of Christianity. Even I have some surprise.

The Norse often come to mind in this attitude not because of the recurrence, but because all of their gods die in the great battle. The mindset of the Vikings to worship their gods, to sacrifice for them, to sing their songs even though at the end of it all those receivers of worship, sacrifice, and praise would die themselves is what gave them the lust for life that lacks from the modern religions where this life is merely a rest stop before the eternal one. I commend our author on this point at least: she has my interest.

Mibu Roshi (a Livejournal/actual friend) explained that the mysterious apple on the front cover of the book is representative of the forbidden fruit of the tree in Eden. What, however does it represent in light of the new context: does it represent the forbidden love between human and undead as her link to wikipedia indicates? Or does it represent the forbidden knowledge of good/evil or life/death that the character must now face? The first question is probably the more likely but the second is possible and what be much more interesting to me since it is less cliche. Maybe though it is neither and just a provocative cover.

Putting aside the theological and philosophical thinking the author has set a high bar for herself. She now must spend the rest of the book either tying in the tone of the prologue ala American Beauty or writing into the plot ala Fallen. Those are the only two good options left to her. No matter what, though the first actual chapter is going to be a let down as it necessarily must be a break in tension.


*Which then we know she will get out of because the book is part of a series. 

So I decided that since I like writing both series posts and stoking the fires of nerd rage I decided to borrow a page from my Wiker series and tackle another book. The choices were many and since this is the second time I am doing this books on my list of things to read were kind of out. It might be interesting to walk through chapter by chapter Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War but I would also like to finish this series sometime in 2010. That book also suffers as being the second history book in Western Civilization and all i could legitimately compare it to would be Herodotus.

I decided to lower the bar a little bit and take something that nerds hate, I am rather indifferent to, but that I am also curious about. I also thought that I could pander to the hoi polloi by making it something popular and maybe drive up some readership. For good or ill I decided that since I already defended the phenomenon earlier I might as well take up the first book of Stephanie Meyer, Twilight.

Some people out there may think, somehow, that this is beneath your humble blogger's scope. I assure you that it is not. Next to Philosophy my interest has always been in pop-culture, which kind of explains why I have three publications in the Pop-Culture and Philosophy series. Right now, love it or hate it* Twilight is the big thing. So every Monday** I am going to write about a section of the book that I have read, kind of like an assignment. I should note, although it should be obvious, that I will do this in chronological order and though it is possible that I skip sections in the writing I will not in the reading. This is because if the book has long descriptions it isn't worth reflecting on here unless they are either extremely good or shockingly bad.

If anyone wants to follow along I will be using the paperback copy of the book that has the pale hands holding an apple (I wonder if this is symbolic or not), as my guide. I will list the page numbers of the parts I have read, or in cases where it is an entire chapter (my feeling is that since any narrative has to spend a certain amount of time describing the setting, the main characters, etc. that the first two chapters will go like this) the chapter number.

Yes, yes this is a lot of instructions and needless prattling about what I am going to do for what I assume is an intelligent audience, but this is the internet and you never know what kind of special idiot you can attract. So going forward we have a plan for one of the four days of the week that I usually post. So let's take a look at the cosmetically and write out some initial impressions:

Ugh, this book looks to be almost 500 pages, with a whole bunch of pages in the back that are unnumbered, oh wait this is a paper back so I'm betting those last pages are the opening for the next book/current movie and I'm right.

The aforementioned cover is an odd choice. My thought is that unless these vampires or the main character have a liking for apples this is probably symbolic. One of the very few things that I know about the author is that she is a mormon with a degree from (surprise!) BYU (which as a side note the only Notre Dame football game (because all good Irish Catholics make the hajira there at least once in their lives) I ever saw in person was against BYU and the Irish won by landslide). Unless this book takes a complete metaphorical journey into the Garden of Eden I'm going to hazard a guess and say that it is supposed to be about desire. If that be the case then the book is going to have to reflect that in some fashion, or else this is the oddest cover for a book that I've seen in a long time.

Next time: Chapter 1...no wait there is apparently a prologue, so next time: the Prologue.


*Because Pop-Culture doesn't care which one you partake in. 
**We'll see how long it takes for me to break this schedule. Any bets?

The philosopher Xenophanes questioned the Greek pantheon by noting that Ethiopians drew their gods as long necked and dark skinned while the red haired Thracians described their gods as being red-haired. Xenophanes wondered if horses could draw gods would they be horse gods as well? It's a fair question as gods tend to fall into Emile Durkheim's idea of cultural necessity, and it's one of the various questions undertaken in Jennifer Hecht's book Doubt: A History.

Doubt compiles a history of religious skepticism throughout the history of world civilization. Not one group is left out as Hecht jumps from the origins of the Jewish culture to Western Greek civilizations to the Eastern Chinese and Indian traditions which predate them both. The book is impressive in both it's scale and execution but with that comes a sacrifice that the author makes and it leads to other mistakes that take away what is otherwise an excellent book for people interested in the history of religious thought and philosophy in general.

The problem is that the book reads at parts like an encyclopedia, with entries on various people that are often too short in one aspect and too long in others. For instance William of Okham, the formulator of "Okham's Razor" gets a mention and that's it. Which is unfortunate because his idea, "that one should not multiply pluralities beyond necessity" or more succinctly put "between two options the simpler explanation is the one that should be adopted," is so important in not only religious skepticism but also skepticism in general. Yet this gets only a slight mention to which we then move on.

The book does this repeatedly, the more it happens the less invested I am in reading the narrative instead wishing it to just be an encyclopedia or reference book. The French Enlightenment gets a greater deal of attention than I would have liked which comes at the expense of the American Revolutionaries whom founded the novus seclorum. The ideas of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine are mentioned as being important but most of the content in Paine's Age of Reason is glossed over. The same occurs in the ideas of the Italian Renaissance. Why skip over the contributions of these philosophers where it instead concentrates on the Galilean and Copernican discoveries? At almost 500 pages the book has room for both, and while the Astronomers' discoveries do prove that scientific inquiry trumped cultural inherited knowledge the writings at the time would better illustrate whether the new science had popular support or not.

Detractors of the book will view it as anti-religious depending on the scale of their respective religious beliefs. I won't pretend the book is completely unbiased as it deals with religious figures as being regular people. Hecht takes the remarkable stance that Jesus himself was a religious skeptic overthrowing the religious orthodoxy of the Jewish society at the time. An interesting take that I have never considered before. Coming to this book from Hitchens this is a much more toned down writing that is more pro-agnosticism than it is anti-religion.

There are questions of choice as well. Why concentrate on Freud's ridiculous theory of religion when it is almost completely rejected by everyone?

What is nice is that it tends to go through the "martyrs" of religious skepticism without passing the overly snide judgment that is usually reserved for the "don't-say-god-bless-you-to-me" crowd. It lists them in every period never failing to accompany the tragedy with the lesson that it would have been better for the powers that be to have just ignored them.

Some might say that the book tends to omit the skepticism that permeated Islam from the between the late medieval period to the modern age. There seems to be almost a millenia that goes by in the book without the word "Islam" or "Muslim" directly referred to, and this becomes the point of the book's final chapter. That Islam, hasn't had the skepticism that Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. has thus allowing the fundamentalists to become more and more fundamentalist and dangerous. Ibn Ali-L-Awja was executed in 772 AD for doubting the truth of the Koran and then aside from mentioning the great Aristotelian commentator Averroes, Muslim recedes until the modern age.

If the book has a final message it is that skepticism and questions are healthy and normal for a society's development. I would say that this applies not only to religious issues but to any issue. The inherited beliefs that any culture bestows upon its younger generations can all become dogmatic orthodoxy whether it has to do with god or not. Suffrage and Abolition are two of the more recent examples. Doubt can't be a bad thing unless a person is so afraid of the answers that they cannot abide even the questions. Doubt is a very interesting book, and while the writing and editing choices can be odd at times it still makes for an education.

Approximately a year ago I saw the book sitting on a display table at the Barnes and Noble that I picked up temporary holiday work. I grabbed the book as something to read on my break thinking it would be the opposite of what it turned out to be. The first chapter of course, was Machiavelli, and I thought I would read that one chapter think it to be wrong and then put the book back opting for something else.

What struck me the most about the book was how wrong it was. By "wrong" I mean incorrect, the author disagreed with Machiavelli's conclusions which I feel is wrong, but he also had some errors. Those errors puzzled me, because the guy was claiming to have a PhD, and a legitimate PhD concerning the subject of Philosophy. Simply put, as a former adjunct professor myself, he shouldn't have made the errors. How wrong the book was, became my motivation for reading the second chapter on Rene Descartes.

Descartes was an odd choice when I saw it in the table of contents. I had no illusions that Machiavelli would be in the book, same with Marx and Lenin. Depending on what political point of view the book was written from you could easily make the list in your head. However, left or right, Democrat or Republican, Whig or Torey, I couldn't think that anyone would have a political disagreement with Descartes...or for that matter a religious one. Everyone claims Descartes, he laid down the scientific method, proved the relationship between geometry and algebra, and we name the science of map reading after him. That aside the book actually made me defend Descartes. I don't like the frenchman, he's overplayed and if I never read his work again I will be happy.

As a teacher though I can't just let this guy's book sit there uncriticized. I had to read it, I had to push through the twisted corrupted interpretations by an alleged doctor of Philosophy. Borrowing from the "birthers" I need to see this degree before I will accept it. You can't prove that god exists and be an atheist. Those things are ontological opposites and writing that is an inherent contradiction. In the break room as I furiously scribbled notes into my black notebook someone asked what the name of the book was that I was enjoying so animatedly, I said that I wasn't enjoying it but it was deliciously wrong and incorrect that I couldn't stop reading it.

Mostly because it was well written: "The object of love, the utopian goal, continually receded just beyond the obstacles that called for destruction, thereby fueling the passions for both hate and love."
His final point is that these books are bad because they created a desire for something that was to be achieved at all costs, and those costs were detrimental to the progress of human civilization. It is a great sentiment that he falls victim to as well. In his vision of the perfect world that abides by his morals he has effectively twisted a good number of the ideas and purposes of the authors in question.

While he believes that these books called for the elimination of society he is actually seeking the elimination of understanding. Amazon.com's user reviews are full of people praising the book as attacking the canon of liberal academics while the books detractors take a view a hilariously over the top attack on religion itself. There is some point to the detractions as all of the prime books in the world's major religions have caused much more death than even Hitler's book, as they were used to justify some of the more horrendous acts in the history of the world.

The book requires you to accept certain things, and that without those things you cannot be expected to agree with it, that Christianity is the true religion, there are universal morals, and that the bible is true*. In the end, this book is a propaganda piece designed to discourage people from reading these 16 works but giving them the idea that they know what's in them. That perhaps, is the greatest crime.

*I can't say "literally" there is nothing to back up that sentiment though it wouldn't surprise me if he did believe it as much as it doesn't surprise me that he may not.

Finally, we reach the end. The last chapter in this horrid book full of misinformation and misleading characterizations all masquerading as objective conclusions. Where do we end? We end with one of the Conservative Movements greatest demons: Feminism. Now Wiker wouldn't be so foolish as to attack the beginning of Feminism: Suffragists such as Susan B Anthony, or even go after Feminist works such as "On The Subjugation of Women" by one of his enemies John Stuart Mill. No, instead we focus on "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan.

The book itself exposed the idea that a woman whose sole occupation is "homemaker" may not be happy with her life. She may feel trapped seeking distractions such as affairs, alcoholism, drug addiction, and depression. This book, coming out in 1963 pretty much shattered the picture of what "normal" women should be at a time when the sexual revolution was just getting started and that modern Conservatives look back on with so much fondness.

I'm not a feminist (that's actually not an obvious thing to say), I don't buy into linguistic conpiracies against women (aside from the French), nor do I think that I have oppressed women by simply being a man. That being said I have nothing against Feminism or Feminists per se. However I will jump to their defense when someone like Wiker attempts over and over again to tie feminism to Marxism and Communism. Even Wiker sort of recognizes it, "But isn't this just redbaiting*? Discrediting her later, mature work on the basis of a youthful indiscretion? I think not."

The thing about Marxism/Socialism is that while thematically wrong they were correct on certain points. One of those points was that women had been placed in a subservient role in the Industrial society. Regarded as second class citizens, they were denied the same rights as men. The Marxists and Socialists pointed out that this was wrong, is Wiker saying that they are wrong in pointing this out and recommending that abolition of women from these roles? Based on the previous chapters on Marxism (Marx and Lenin), I would have to say that Wiker would categorically dismiss anything a Marxist says as being correct. The tool of "redbaiting" that Wiker is using here, and throughout this book, is effective. I have to admit that as no one will call a healthcare reform act "socialization" nor the bank bail out "socialization" either unless they are using it to condemn either action.

So Wiker dives head first into his usual Ad Hominem attack on the author, while simultaneously bypassing correct criticisms on the origins of Friedan's theory. Betty, whom he calls Bettye for the first half of the chapter because that was her given name, was not a housewife she was college educated at "radical" Smith College** and then a journalist. Along with Lenin, this is not a criticism it's merely a fact. Salk didn't need Polio to cure Polio, I don't need to be a victim of genocide or racism to know that it is wrong. So Friedan writing about the entrapment of the housewife doesn't need her to actually be a housewife. He also touches on her ties to Marxist groups and various labor organizations which is again only an attempt to get people afraid of communism to hate Friedan more.

Friedan, was a founding member of NOW (National Organization for Women) and a strong proponent of Roe V. Wade. Wiker is not going to abide this, and likens her book to that of the atrocities of Stalin and Lenin. He says that since 1973's Roe V. Wade 48 million abortions have taken place, and that is more than all the people that have died in the Communist purges, and other atrocities that he fails to
name. I'm not going to assault his anti-abortion stance as that would be like throwing water at a brick wall, sure eventually I might get through but it will take thousands of years.

We'll end this last chapter of his on a weird note. The book was copyrighted for 2008, I first saw it at Barnes and Noble in late November of 2008 and Wiker is able to make one appeal for the 2008 Presidential Election. I don't know who is ideal candidate was, but I can be sure that this book was designed to end so that people didn't vote for the godless communist we now have as president. He likens Friedan's struggle with Michelle Obama who mentioned that between the campaign, her job, and family life she felt overwhelmed [as I imagine McCain's wife, Palin's husband, or Biden's wife did as well]. And here was her husband promising universal healthcare, access to childcare, and better schools for the American people; just as Friedan desired. "Onward goes the revolution" ends Wiker to cap off the book.

I just don't see what is wrong with better education, access to childcare, or universal healthcare. I'm aware of the objections to the last of those three, but the first two are a mystery to me. It seems that Wiker believes we should all be living in a world where one parent works and the other (female) tends to the home, this isn't possible anymore as the banking and credit industry have scuppered that.

What Wiker fails to understand in this and other chapters is that radicals are important. Radical works, even those that we disagree with are important because they allow us a different point of view. To paraphrase Mill the usefulness of any opinion, even a wrong one, is greater than censoring because it adds to the debate and to public knowledge. We have no right to censor one person, even if the world stands against that person's opinion than that one person has the right to censor the world. Radicals give us the idea of what the middle ground looks like. I think Glen Beck is a nut case, but he allows me to see what the radical right believes as much as Jeanine Garfolo/Michael Moore does for the left.

*And who uses that word anymore?
**Which I don't understand where the radical title is justified. Wiker uses it in reference to the college's professors, which seems to be common for any professor.

We get started with the obvious: Wiker is going to reject almost everything that Alfred Kinsey reported in "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male." This, for readers of the series, should be familiar. Wiker arguing from the standpoint of a conservative Christian isn't going to be accepting of a publication that accepts homosexuality as normal or anything that goes against the Judeo-Christian model of what sexual normalcy is supposed to be.

As I said in a few posts, I can't really fault him for that. That is his point of view and while I disagree; if I consistently decided to argue against that it would mean that these posts are going to get pretty repetitive. I can, however argue against his application of that viewpoint if it tends towards hypocrisy, double standards, and other crimes of inconsistency. The main issue with the chapter is that it is curiously devoid of quotes and direct references to the actual report. This seems to have been a problem that Wiker himself had as he explains, "The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction will not allow me to quote anything."

I'm not an expert in copyright law but I have three publications in which I have quoted from other works and never once have I had to ask for permission to quote/paraphrase/summarize from one of those works. As long as I correctly cited the material confirming that it is not my own it was deemed legal. I will grant the possibility that lawyers for the books' publishers took care of this for both myself the author of any chapter in question and the editor of the books themselves, but I can't see how Wiker cannot directly quote while numerous books and articles have been written attempting to discredit the report. Am I to assume that none of these books have quotes from the Reports themselves? Further adding to this enigma is that Kinsey's report is scientific and not allowing a person to quote a scientific report seems wrong to me. I have no evidence to call him a liar although this claim seems incredible to me.

Without direct reference to the work the chapter seems bare. We, of course, can get copies of the Kinsey report and check the work ourselves based on the citations that Wiker inserts into the chapter but that does seem to take away from the book's purpose.

The main issue with this chapter is that Wiker brings up an interesting conflict. The conflict is between "is" and "ought." Kinsey's report sought to explain what kind of sexual behaviors males were engaging in through the use of surveys with sample populations. Wiker seems to think that the report ought to have brought in the concept of what kind of sexual behaviors human males ought to engage in. This would lead to black and white judgment on the population in question seeming to satisfy Wiker's need to have morality permeate every aspect of science.

He of course, ties this back to Machiavelli who famously explained that he sought to explain the reality of the matter rather then explain the ideal. At this point even I'm sick of reading about Machiavelli. So we must cast judgment, but from what viewpoint should be casting judgment? While Wiker, to his credit, only references his religious convictions a few times (twice, I think) however this is the last chapter* in the book so we know where he is coming from. Why should a report pass judgment? Well Wiker never explains that, he says that Kinsey was seeking to normalize his own sexual perversions bending the world to Kinsey's own predilections, but this does little to explain why a person conducting a sexual study should be in the business of enforcing morality.

It leads into Wiker's favorite tool of applying the Ad Hominem attack, he leads into semi-graphic explanations of Kinsey's own sexual practices and then how Kinsey used them to influence his report. That, technique seems to permeate the attacks on the Kinsey Report itself in three various websites all of the conservative leaning. This does little for the technique as Ad Hominem is still an informal fallacy of logic. Despite Kinsey's own behaviors the numbers don't change, his report is still there. Just because Stalin said that one death is a tragedy and a million is a statistic doesn't make it less true because Stalin said it.

"Ought" is still his issue. Kinsey should have instead reported the sexual behaviors that men ought be engaging in, and in 1948 it would probably look just like Wiker and those that share his viewpoint think it should now.

Along with Ad Hominem Wiker brings back his old favorite of equating "natural" with "desirable." We have seen with Hobbes and Rosseau that this is a mistake. Although he goes about it in a strange manner that is very telling. Wiker talks about how he had a Disney image of a Rooster copulating with Chickens in the Hen house. That image was shattered when he actually had a Rooster and could hear the mating noises of the poultry which he described as "pain filled shrieks" because the Rooster wasn't being nice. This image destroyed and him being bothered by the noises (which as someone who has heard animals mating before I can't really blame him) he "moved the Roosters into the freezer." A nice way of saying that he killed the roosters and then ate them.

It is natural for a rooster to mate with hens in this manner. This is their inherent nature. That is after all we use the word "cock" to describe both a male chicken and a male asshole. So being offended with the rooster's behavior Wiker murdered** them. Apparently then the male chicken is immoral for following its nature.

Natural isn't always desirable, I can't stress this enough and Wiker admitting that homosexuality has existed throughout history seems to agree on the separation. It doesn't mean that Kinsey was advocating homosexuality for the population only that it seems to be a natural occurrence in human males. Kinsey did engage in homosexuality but since he conducted his report with an air of "disinterested objectivity" as Wiker says, it means that he wasn't passing judgment on those people exclusively heterosexual as missing out on something. It would seem that Kinsey might have been advocating tolerance instead of adherence to a code from a book that no one knows the author.

At no point in this chapter or the entire book has Wiker explained the superiority of his morals/values instead taking it for granted that they simply are. Wiker's favorite moral code, the Biblical one, also allows Lot to have an incestuous three-way with his two daughters but we don't have Wiker condemning Exodus for allowing him to go unscathed.

The real issue with Kinsey is touched upon but cast aside in favor of more scandalous attacks. That issue is that Kinsey's samples were made up of people that were more than willing to confess their sexual histories, too willing in fact as numerous critics of the report comment. It's called "volunteer bias" and it means that if you are willing to help out with an experiment to, say, cure cancer and knowing this ahead of time you are going to be either subconsciously or consciously hoping for the conclusion. Also Kinsey interviewed a good number of male prisoners wherein he derived higher than normal statistics of homosexual acts (in prison? duh...) from which readers of the report claimed 1 out of 3 men are homosexual.***

Instead of attacking Kinsey's conclusion, Wiker had a good opportunity to attack his method going into what could have been a nice explanation of the scientific method and how to conduct research polling. Having done that the conclusion would have fallen apart on its own. He didn't do it last chapter so missing such a golden opportunity again isn't much of a surprise. It would be a much more effective and agreeable method if he applied it to this whole book and maybe he will do it in the last chapter.

*It's not there's always a conclusion, but he does manage to squeeze in one more under the guise of a "dishonorable mention."

**: I haven't gone all PETA, I understand that he was keeping the Chickens for both eggs and meat which doesn't bother me in the least. Wiker points to the Rooster's behavior as being the sole motivation for their "incarceration" in the freezer."

***: But that statistic is nowhere in the report itself, nor is it implied.

In 1928 Margaret Mead published her work, "Coming of age in Samoa" which was an analysis of Samoan culture in order to answer the question of whether the behaviors of teenagers in the United States (rebellion, sexual anxiety) was something natural to them or if it was an effect of culture. In essence it attempted to solve one aspect of the "nature vs. nurture" question. Mead's book concluded that it was indeed cultural, that sexual attitudes in the Western world were not a product of simply being born but rather something taught. The free attitude of Samoan culture toward sex resulted in less anxiety than their American/Western counterparts.

Of course our intrepid author Benjamin Wiker is going to have a problem with this. While I have knowledge of Mead's work I have not read the book itself but am familiar with her conclusions as well as some of the evidence that brought her there. My criticism of Wiker's entry is going to concentrate on the philosophical errors he commits as per my education. I cannot go into the intricacies of the problem with Mead's book but I will, in an effort to be truthful talk about some of them.

Building an argument is like building a house, you can't expect it to hold up if you have a faulty foundation (or you can substitute another tired simile) and Wiker throughout this book is resting his chapters on the faulty ones that he discussed earlier on. The previous chapters concentrated on Machiavelli while this chapter instead focuses on Thomas Hobbes. I have previously described Wiker's incomprehenisbly inaccurate telling of Hobbes's state of nature and here Wiker rephrases it in a much simpler and easier to refute manner: "the natural=the primitive=the good."

Whenever someone uses the symbol "=" logically you can substitute one side for the other. What Wiker is saying is that Hobbes believed "natural" was the same as "good" giving the implication that the primitive or natural was to be strived for. This goes against every recommendation in Leviathan's political aspects. Hobbes, to repeat, was not advocating a return to the state of nature. He was merely describing what he thought would happen when law, government, and society were overthrown. Furthermore it was not that everyone would become thieving murderers but that some of us would, to think otherwise would be not only foolish but dangerous as well.

So the primitive society that Mead studied in Samoa would not be advocated by Hobbes, who was seen by a good deal of his contemporaries as being a monarchist second and an Englishman first. The sort of savagery that could be seen in during the English revolution prompted Hobbes into exile in France, which I doubt he really desired to do.

Returning to Mead, her conclusion is to recommend a sexual freedom that was not seen in the 20th Century America, in this Wiker's explanation is correct. She did recommend it as being more liberating and less likely to lead to some sort of repression or intolerance towards others with a different sexual outlook. I understand Wiker's objection to this as being largely centered in his religion, while I disagree with him I am not going to take an issue with it. He correctly states Mead's recommendation and then disagrees. The odd thing is that he doesn't explain why the Samoan's culture is flawed. There is the derisive attitude about how Mead describes them as promiscuous but then moves past it as if that is supposed to stand on its own.

I guess for his intended audience it does, but for the rest of us not subscribing to his ideology it needs a bit more explanation. An explanation that would have to go beyond the mere accusation of adultery since the Samoans, as Mead describes them, don't really adhere to a doctrine of life long marriage. Without that, every sexual relationship is either within a concept of group marriage or all adulterous so it's either perfect or it's perfectly immoral. I have to reassert my assumption that he must feel any reader having gotten to this point in this book would have to already agree with his morals.

Then there are some mischaracterizations and inaccuracies. Wiker claims that this book was widely accepted in it's time, while it was widely popular there was a large uproar that the book caused. The people of the early 20th century didn't eat it up so much. Which I am not sure if this is a fault of his, there were aspects that accepted it and depending on his level of abhorence of the book could mean that anyone accepting it is too much agreement. However he does remark that the book is still taught, and still required reading (I'm assuming at the college level) which means that some people do agree with it. Well that isn't necessarily the case. Going back to the previous two chapters we have two authors, Freud and Hitler, that are taught purely for historical reasons. I have taught Freud's absurd advocacy of atheism but do not agree with it, and my history teacher in highschool assigned us Mein Kampf for the historical importance of the book. I regularly taught Descartes and completely disagree with him as well. Teaching something doesn't mean you agree with it, I would love to see Wiker's syllabi since he only teaches works he agrees with (grading must be really easy for him).

Wiker closes by accusing Mead of having an ideology and then looking for a evidence to support that then he spends a page or two preaching against ideology as being the possible root of all evil. It's ironic that he does this since this book is one giant appeal to his ideology that any work which doesn't subscribe to several ideas (1. a support of one specific theism 2. a belief that ethics are universal and 3. works by atheists are wrong) are intrinsically dangerous. This irony is so thick that I doubt even his followers could miss it.

In an effort to stay true to my skepticism I must say that Mead's work is not without its own controversy, and Wiker mentions this several times in his chapter which confused me because this is a good reason that Mead's work can be considerred to have screwed up the world. Mead's methodology has come under fire numerous times. Accusations that she was pushing a preconceived conclusion on to her study. There have been calls regarding a possible loose application of the scientific method, most notably from a New Zealand anthropologist Derek Freeman. If Freeman is correct regarding his criticisms of Mead then yes, she does belong on a list of corrupters because she is illustrating that you don't have to be scientifically accurate in order to be important in your field. Although history does bear this out in both the New York Times and any study lauding the efficacy of homeopathic medicine it doesn't make it right.

Without a degree in anthropology I can't really comment further, only that Wiker has again concentrated on the wrong aspect of a work.

Next on Wiker's list is Sigmund Freud's Future of an Illusion, a book that brings us into a question of the ordering of these books. They are listed in chronological order which seems to hamper his writing style as he constantly refers back to Machiavelli's Prince as being the inspiration for more than half of these works. It happens here again, which is odd because Sigmund Freud never played politics and Machiavelli's book is inherently political.

Again though, Wiker blames Machiavelli for laying the atheistic philosophical groundwork that without which Freud would not be able to continue his work and develop his theory on the falsity of religion. Again cited is Rosseau, Hobbes (both Political books), and Nietzsche as being the foundation stones of Freud's religious theory. Which brings us to an important question, one that will probably stretch this chapter into two posts: how powerful are these writings? That Freud read Nietzsche is probably likely, Wiker says it is definite and I am unwilling to accept his word on these things, so we will assume that this is correct. Based on that assumption we still don't know what Freud read of Nietzsche so we can't just assume that Nietzsche's atheism affected Freud. Even if Freud read Beyond Good and Evil, we still don't know what he thought of it. According to Wiker, and a good deal of religious fundamentalists--from all religions, just viewing unacceptable works can change you. Reading this chapter one might get the impression that it is not Freud who is at fault, but it is his inspirations that compelled him toward atheism and writing his theory on religion.

Instead of blaming Machiavelli for laying the philosophical groundwork for atheism, Wiker should do his research and reach back. Plato laid the groundwork by having Critias claim that religion was false and the gods were merely made up by the powerful to keep the masses in obedience. Or further back to Protagoras who said the religion should be obeyed because for social customs, Democritus who explained that all things are created by the random joining of small substances he termed "atoms (A-Tom: un-cuttable in Greek)" not by some powerful god or gods, or Epicurus who denied the existence of any supreme being whatsoever, I could go on but the point is that Philosophical groundwork for atheism was laid long before the 16th century.

And most of that work was better than Freud's. While I don't like Freud, I don't think that Wiker gets it right in the way that he attacks him. The problem is that Freud's theory of religion wasn't even that widely accepted in his time. His theory relies on the much debunked "Oedipal complex:" along time ago our ancestors lived in tribal communities. This tribes were ruled by a patriarch who was simply the strongest and took the lion's share of the food and women. The others killed and ate him, later they felt guilty over their crime and deified the patriarch into a totem, celebrated the act with a sacrosanct dinner, and this formed the basis of the first religion. In a nutshell this is Freud's theory.

It was always a hard sell in philosophy of religion. I'll give Wiker credit for pointing out the ridiculousness of this theory, although he does say so in a rather snide way, "But even from an atheists standpoint, Freud's explanation is bizarre." Now just what the fuck is that supposed to mean? Yeah, my belief in things that can be proven by reason and rationality is strange while your belief that a piece of bread turns into meat is normal. Freud's explanation should seem weird and twisted to anyone. Especially since he admittedly cherry picked the anthropological evidence to support it and no one found it that influential.

Instead of using Future of an Illusion as a book that screwed up the world Wiker probably should have used The Interpretation of Dreams as being the first instance of the Oedipal Complex or Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality which introduced the concept of Penis Envy. These two works have done much more damage in history to Wiker's strict Christian worldview. In fact Illusion isn't even possible without Interpretation of Dreams or Totem and Taboo.

This pick makes less sense than anything else, but I understand why he picked it: because it is Freud's best work regarding the falsity of religion. This book has to be attacked, but it's like knocking down a building by attacking the roof, everyone knows that to break something that isn't a pyramid taking out the foundation is the most efficient way.*

Freud describes man outside of civilization as being a slave to his desires: to kill, steal, and sex whatever he wants. Something that Hobbes explained, Rosseau sort of agreed with, and now Freud uses as well; the hypothetical state of nature. Wiker makes the incredible error of thinking that that the three writers recommend this! They don't, they are explaining the development of society from a thought experiment! I can't stress this enough: Wiker cannot distinguish between explanation and recommendation. We saw it much clearer in Hobbes than we do here but I still can't believe he is making this mistake again.

However let's say that we free man from the shackles of religion as Freud desires. What will happen? Wiker explains how Freud works a moral code about murder, "You'd like to kill everyone, but you realize that everyone else would like to kill everyone else, including you, so everyone decides not to kill anyone else. There you go, a God-free 'thou shall not kill.'"

Maybe it's just me but I read a great deal of snideness in the quoted paragraph. It seems that Wiker is admitting that there can be a rational foundation for morals without his God needing to exist.** That however isn't good enough: morals apparently need punishment or else they aren't morals. Is this an indication of Wiker's insecurity regarding his own beliefs?

Wiker spends a good deal of effort on Freud's dismissal of an afterlife. You can almost read the panic that his words are gravid with. I always hear it in the voices of people whom I tell that I am an atheist and their response is always, "well then what do you think happens when you die?" That sense of panic is what throws weak theists into my disdain. The theists that I respect are the ones that know that my unbelief has no bearing on their beliefs. It's people like Wiker that don't understand that public highschool football games preaching the bible are against the law and that those things are banned has nothing to do with them being Christian. Freud's largest mistake in his book is basing his theory on an ancient ritual that he couldn't prove happened. It has nothing to do with modern religions because he wasn't talking about them or their crimes.

Despite what Wiker claims that greatest crimes of humanity didn't come through atheism, Pol Pot rounded up the intellectuals and had them killed, Hitler used religion as part of his program; yet he still claims that it is people like me that are responsible for these actions. I think not, I subscribe to virtues because of their intrinsic worth, it matters not to me whether there is a supreme being or not. If Wiker's behavior is based on punishment or reward then who is a better person?

Again, I will close by explaining that Freud's argument is wrong. No one subscribes to it and there are so many better theories advocating atheism that even by a theist's standpoint this one is irrational. Freud himself has been largely debunked in his own discipline relegating him to the historically necessary category in Introduction classes. The only people that study him seriously are English majors, and that should tell you something.


*Well everyone except "truthers" that is.

**The basic idea for this prohibition against killing isn't even Freud's it's a paraphrased version Philosopher Immanuelle Kant's Categorical Imerpative. Not to say that Wiker is plagiarizing or that Freud did as well, but that Kant who was deeply religious formed his moral code in absence of the divine showing us that reason can prove morality.

A little wordplay humor never hurt anyone...anyway it's time to end this charade regarding Hitler's book. I say "charade" because it's not like I can really criticize Wiker for including this book in his list unlike most of his other choices. Nor can I really conclude against Wiker for attacking this book. Hitler's book is two things: a bad book and a bad book. It's not only bad because of it's ideas but it's very poorly written as often books are that come from political extremists. It plays on the fears of the populace (check left wing liberal books circa 2004, or right wing conservative books 2008), is written so badly that the dumbest person in the world can understand it (the chapter on miscegenation is notorious for it's overkill using examples of the animal kingdom) which is masked under the veneer of intelligence. Giving the reader the idea that if you've read this book you don't have to read anything else (just like the one I'm reviewing right now).

The majority of the attack on Hitler is that his work is inherently racist...which is true and we can't really argue with that. The issue though is how many different philosophers/authors that Wiker can twist into being supporters or inspirations of Hitler.

He repeatedly talks about the non-religiousness that Machiavelli recommended a leader ought to engage in, to appear to be religious rather than actually be religious. As a matter of opinion if you think that the leader of a society ought to be the paragon of moral virtues then fine, I disagree but you need to have reasoning behind that opinion. Wiker commits an error of circular reasoning in his book. He claimed in chapter 1 that because Machiavelli's advice comes from a context of atheism (actually "a-religionism") that all kinds of crimes can be committed. Now in chapter 11 he says that those crimes of Hitler are because of advice coming from those who are not religious, in short: chapter 1 proves chapter 11 because chapter 11 backs up the claim in chapter 1.

Furthermore, and to dwell on someone else instead of Machiavelli, Wiker goes on the familiar rant of blaming Nietzsche for the Nazism. Historically this gets attention because the Nazis used the term "ubermensch" to describe their ultimate goal just as Nietzsche used it to describe the person who was beyond morality. The trouble is that the Nazis famously twisted anything ideological they could to give their movement philosophical, ideological, anthropological, and genealogical backing. Wiker neglects as well the fact that Nietzsche hated the nationalist spirit of Germany as creating a facet of the "last man" whom he thought would stunt the development of human society. If Wiker wanted a Philosopher the leftist socialist atheists really love why not use Heidegger's Being and Time? That guy actually was a Nazi.

Finally, Wiker's attack centers back on Hitler's ultimate goal being the Final Solution. Which is historically incorrect: "He soon designed a plan to fix all social problems. And he ended with the Final Solution: the elimination of those he believed were causing the problems." Hitler did believe that he could fix society and one ONE aspect of that was the elimination of the "undesirables" Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, communists, etc. One aspect, if it were the only aspect then why attack Britain? The chapter glosses over his megalomania and his desire to conquer the world.

The chapter ends with a comment that is a complete non-sequitor: "While we shun racial extermination of unfit children and adults in gas chambers, we have very little anxiety about eliminating the very same kind of less-than-perfect human beings in abortion clinics." By now we know that Wiker occupies a Conservative Catholic place on the political-religious spectrum. So this idea isn't a surprise. Despite the fact that I am pro-choice isn't going to play a part in my attack on this comment. The attack comes from the placement of the line where it completely doesn't belong. A whole chapter based on attacking one man's racist attitude from his memoir and then trying to squeeze a likening between him and anyone who isn't pro-life?

Don't comment because I'm on a different side than you on this issue because my concern isn't Wiker's stance on abortion. It's the bad writing here. Every now and then it's as if he needs to remind his demographic that he's one of them, this last sentence can only serve that purpose or else there would have been some build up to it. I read stuff I don't agree with, I listen to it on the radio, and here it's not that I disagree thematically it's the quality of writing that offends me. Wanting good quality prose seems to be my struggle.