D'Souza [whose email is DineshJDSouza {at} aol {dot} com] writes a daily blog for AOL and a weekly column for Townhall.com
http://www.dineshdsouza.com/more/about.html
I've contacted him via email concerning some of his claims. For instance:
1) D'Souza had an article published in the New Yorker in which he attempted to argue that bonobos were just as violent as pan chimpanzees, and not the peace loving "hippies" that the liberal left was trying to make them out to be. Soon afterwards the noted primatologist and bonobo expert Frans de Waal responded to the erros in D'Souza's arguments, and so I forwarded the link to Frans de Waal's piece to D'Souza:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-08-08.html
D'Souza responded:
Thanks for sending. I found it interesting reading, and it makes concessions that seem to have gotten lost in the stereotype of the bohemian bonobo. De Waal doesn't address the issue that the notion of the Bonobo "hippie" seems to contradict the basic premises of Darwin. This was a point very strongly made in the New Yorker article. DD
To which I responded:
Dear D.D., Thank you for your response to my response to your online piece.
Bonobos as "hippies?" Hmmm. I don't think of Bonobos as "hippies" any more than I think of the alpha male in a group of Pan chimps as a "woman-hogging polygamist."
And what are the "premises of Darwin?" Might not different species of social animals have taken different paths of social evolution and come to employ different conflict resolution patterns? Speaking of social evolution among chimps they have been observed choosing the right rocks to crack nuts, or choosing a particular piece of vegetation, removing leaves around the stem and poking it into a termite mound then jiggling it to obtain as many termites as possible who cling to the stem after it is withdrawn. Chimps pass along such behaviors via watching and learning from other chimps how to do such things. Might they not have passed along different social behaviors and patterns of conflict resolution as well--as chimp species diverged over time?
During the social divergencies their anatomies could also have evolved differently, including the large clitorises on female bonobos than on female pan chimpanzees(possibly enhancing the pleasurability of sexual contact between bonobo females as well as between bonobo males and females, and perhaps this led to those females with the larger clitorises also seeking sex a bit more often than females with smaller clitorises), and the large gonads on the male bonobo chimps than on pan chimps (possibly because males with the genetic proclivity toward producing more sperm also produced more offspring who likewise produced more sperm).
However, if I've misunderstood you, and you mean to suggest that the "premises of Darwin" do not leave any room for conflict resolution patterns to evolve -- such as in large-brained feeling mammalian species from dolphins to elephants, then I also disagree.
In his new book D'Souza calls the Galileo affair "an atheist's fable." So I sent him this information below:
I heard about your new book, and its attempt to sweep the Galileo controversy under the rug. However, a definitive treatment of the Galileo controversy exists which includes the latest information granted by the Vatican archives concerning that controversy, titled THE CHURCH AND GALILEO--a collection of essays by specialists on the topic, edited by Ernan McMullin, published by Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2005.
The final essay in the book is by a Jesuit scholar, George V. Coyne, S.J., and titled, "The Church's Most Recent Attempt to Dispel the Galileo Myth," in which Father Coyne demonstrates that there remains plenty of evidence that the Catholic church itself was at fault and remains at fault for not fessing up to its persecution of Galileo and for attempting to invent excuses for how it treated Galileo and other heliocentrists at that time, and for centuries afterwards. It is a chapter well worth reading.
I also wrote D'Souza concerning his chapter in his new book on "Why atheist regimes are responsible for the greatest mass murders of history"
Dear D.D., I note that in your new book you point out that atheist regimes have been responsible for the greatest mass murders in history. However, atheistic regimes didn't evolve overnight, and Europe's own loss of faith took place after millennia of wars among Christians and between Christianized nations.
Even America's war for independence took place between two theistic nations, just as America's Civil War also did (sometimes referred to as America's Holy War). Then there's the Hundred Years War, the "Second" Hundred Years War (you ought to read or peruse "The Sweet Enemy: The French and the British" to understand the times and casualties involved in terms of the percentages of populations back then); The Thirty Years War (which took place during the Reformation and which some historians refer to as Europe's first World War); not to mention World War 1 which disillusioned many concerning notions of the grandness of combat since soldiers were gassed en masse on the battlefield, or shot down enmasse via the new machine guns.
Again, during World War 2, the main aggressors were religious nations, from Japan and its Shinto god-emperor and war leader, to Mussolini the Catholic, but especially Germany, filled with devout Protestants and Catholics, who elected the Nazi party to power democratically, Germans at that time having rejected the liberalism of the Weimar Republic in favor of more conservative versions of politics and religion. The Germans were also in extreme economic straights and fed up with the huge reparations imposed on them after World War 1.
Have you read "The War of the World," a new book out about how the 20th century grew to become so warlike?
The Russian communist revolution took place during the last year of World War 1, and nations in Europe fed the anti-communists arms to fight the communist revolutionaries, deepening the conflict as often happens when a revolution takes place, which also added to communist paranoia. Take the case of Afghanistan and America feeding the war there until the country was a shambles. The Chinese communist revolution took place after Japan had bombed and invaded China and left it a shambles.
Two more brief points. If the number of people in each city city and nation were as high during the great ages of faith when the devout kept a close suspicious eye on each other's beliefs, and, if they had the same high levels of communication, transportation and weaponry as we had during the 20th century, what might the outcome have been for Europe, or for the rest of the world (where the devout wished to spread their religion)?
Have you read much about the wars I mentioned above? Have you read books that chronicle such time periods?
In the Name of Heaven: 3000 Years of Religious Persecution by Mary Jane Engh
Holy Horrors: An Illustrated History of Religious Murder and Madness by James A. Haught
Holy Hatred: Religious Conflicts of the '90s by James A. Haught
(and for some informative fun concerning quirkier moments in Christian history... don't miss...)
A Short History of Christianity by Stephen Tomkins
For a long list, check out my amazon.com wish list titled "bad atheists, bad christians" that you can google up using this string:
"bad atheists, bad christians"
And take a peek at my other related wish lists on history, politics, religion, philosophy (I have about twenty wish lists under my name at amazon.com, divided by categories, though some categories overlap). I'm not mentioning this in hopes of anyone buying me a book, but simply as a handy resource, since the lists feature some of my favorite books, some of which I've already read:
A NOTE ON RELIGION, INTOLERANCE, PERSECUTION, AND MASS MOVEMENTS IN GENERAL
I don't argue that religion necessarily encourages evil any more than other mass movements do that blind people to what they are doing and that encourage the demonization or ostrasization of others. Those mass movements may be in either politics (fascism/communiusm/dictatorships of various sort) or religion. See the classic little work,
The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
Also see the new work,
The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip Zimbardo (Zimbardo has a website worth visiting with links to some of his interviews.)
My own reason for discussing instances of religious intolerance, persecution and conflicts in history is simply to get believers to try and acknowledge the all-too-human faults of many of even the most devout believers and churches and religious hierarchies and theologians (which are supposed to be inspired by a perfect holy book and by a new heart inside them and by the guidance of the holy spirit "into all truth"). History does not make for a very convincing argument in favor of a religionizing everyone and everything, not any more than atheizing everyone and everything. I suspect though that neither faith nor its lack is going away soon (so we must all try to live together and live with the knowlege that other people believe differently than we do).
I also like to point out that during the ages of faith there were both inquisitors and people of charity, just as during other ages, including those when faith has not played a prominent role, and in fact, there are atheists and agnostics who are quite charitable in the U.S., multi-billionaires in fact who give away billions to charity. Also, many nations today with low percentages of religiousity (when compared with the U.S., Northern Ireland, Iran and Nigeria, which appear to be the most religious places on earth), have lower crime rates and higher average education levels and standards of living than the U.S., places such as various Scandinavian countries and Japan.
I am surprised that you describe this book as 'important' -- much as I would be if you described an Alan Keyes campaign speech as an 'important' political statement. D'Souza's ever-more eccentric political statements (I hate to use the word about him, because I consider myself an eccentric, but I use it in the place of something more accurate, but libelous) have robbed him of credibility even in fields he had a reputation in -- most particularly his position that the way to defeat Bin Laden is to scrap our sexual liberalism and the sexual content of our media so that OBL will no longer have a reason to hate us. (His position, so stated in THE ENEMY AT HOME, has even drawn criticism from such as Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt.)
His personal history has hardly caused him to be considered 'important' -- I'd call him 'notorious' if I didn't feel this was giving him too much credit -- and he has become the sort of celebrity who is 'famous for being famous.' (Much like someone he has been romantically linked with, Ann Coulter. Would you consider her works worth bothering with, even though she does discuss religion and her GODLESS is 1/3 a defense of Creationism?)
While he has written some of his work from a conservative Catholic position, he has never written 'apologetics' and has no credentials for doing so.
I do hope he answers your call for a debate, but I hardly think his book is deserving of the notice you are giving it.
Prup, do you have a crush on me or something? Over at his website are some very high recommendations of the book Check them out:
“As an unbeliever, I passionately disagree with Dinesh D’Souza on some of his positions. But he is a first-rate scholar whom I feel absolutely compelled to read. His thorough research and elegant prose have elevated him into the top ranks of those who champion liberty and individual responsibility. Now he adds Christianity to his formula for the good society, and although non-Christians and non-theists may disagree with some of his arguments, we ignore him at our peril. D’Souza’s book takes the debate to a new level. Read it.”
— Michael Shermer, Publisher of Skeptic magazine
Now, I have not read his book yet, but from these recommendations it is an important book to be dealt with. Prup, have you read it to know it is NOT an important book? And what do you consider an important Christian book such that I might know one when I see one? An important book is one that has the kind of recommendations his book has. An important book is a bestseller. An important book is one that Christians will read to bolster their faith. In all three categories of what I mean when I say it's an important book, it is. It may even be a scholarly book, but it's more likely a popular one. Still such a popular one will reach many people and as such must be dealt with.
You? How can you judge a book about Christianity by this author based upon his books about other subjects? Isn't that an informal fallacy?
I have not read this book, but I have encountered D'Souza before as a "thinker". He is the one who wrote a book saying that the reason Al Qaeda and other radical Islamists attacked us is because of the cultural left's permissiveness of immorality, and that if we would only eliminate our cultural liberty, there would be no need for conflict. Perhaps his approach to apologetics is more well-thought and well-researched than his cultural screeds, but after watching his debate with Hitchens, I am not optimistic.
10 comments:
From Amazon: "Why evolution does not threaten Christian belief, but actually supports the "argument from design"
Is this going to be Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism?
D'Souza [whose email is DineshJDSouza {at} aol {dot} com] writes a daily blog for AOL and a weekly column for Townhall.com
http://www.dineshdsouza.com/more/about.html
I've contacted him via email concerning some of his claims. For instance:
1) D'Souza had an article published in the New Yorker in which he attempted to argue that bonobos were just as violent as pan chimpanzees, and not the peace loving "hippies" that the liberal left was trying to make them out to be. Soon afterwards the noted primatologist and bonobo expert Frans de Waal responded to the erros in D'Souza's arguments, and so I forwarded the link to Frans de Waal's piece to D'Souza:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-08-08.html
D'Souza responded:
Thanks for sending. I found it interesting reading, and it makes
concessions that seem to have gotten lost in the stereotype of the bohemian bonobo. De Waal doesn't address the issue that the notion of the Bonobo "hippie" seems to contradict the basic premises of Darwin. This was a point very strongly made in the New Yorker article.
DD
To which I responded:
Dear D.D., Thank you for your response to my response to your online piece.
Bonobos as "hippies?" Hmmm. I don't think of Bonobos as "hippies" any more than I think of the alpha male in a group of Pan chimps as a "woman-hogging polygamist."
And what are the "premises of Darwin?" Might not different species of social animals have taken different paths of social evolution and come to employ different conflict resolution patterns? Speaking of social evolution among chimps they have been observed choosing the right rocks to crack nuts, or choosing a particular piece of vegetation, removing leaves around the stem and poking it into a termite mound then jiggling it to obtain as many termites as possible who cling to the stem after it is withdrawn. Chimps pass along such behaviors via watching and learning from other chimps how to do such things. Might they not have passed along different social behaviors and patterns of conflict resolution as well--as chimp species diverged over time?
During the social divergencies their anatomies could also have evolved differently, including the large clitorises on female bonobos than on female pan chimpanzees(possibly enhancing the pleasurability of sexual contact between bonobo females as well as between bonobo males and females, and perhaps this led to those females with the larger clitorises also seeking sex a bit more often than females with smaller clitorises), and the large gonads on the male bonobo chimps than on pan chimps (possibly because males with the genetic proclivity toward producing more sperm also produced more offspring who likewise produced more sperm).
However, if I've misunderstood you, and you mean to suggest that the "premises of Darwin" do not leave any room for conflict resolution patterns to evolve -- such as in large-brained feeling mammalian species from dolphins to elephants, then I also disagree.
D'Souza did not respond to my points above.
In his new book D'Souza calls the Galileo affair "an atheist's fable." So I sent him this information below:
I heard about your new book, and its attempt to sweep the Galileo controversy under the rug. However, a definitive treatment of the Galileo controversy exists which includes the latest information granted by the Vatican archives concerning that controversy, titled THE CHURCH AND GALILEO--a collection of essays by specialists on the topic, edited by Ernan McMullin, published by Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2005.
The final essay in the book is by a Jesuit scholar, George V. Coyne, S.J., and titled, "The Church's Most Recent Attempt to Dispel the Galileo Myth," in which Father Coyne demonstrates that there remains plenty of evidence that the Catholic church itself was at fault and remains at fault for not fessing up to its persecution of Galileo and for attempting to invent excuses for how it treated Galileo and other heliocentrists at that time, and for centuries afterwards. It is a chapter well worth reading.
Ed, I challenged him to a public debate even before reading his book! Think he will accept it?
I also wrote D'Souza concerning his chapter in his new book on "Why atheist regimes are responsible for the greatest mass murders of history"
Dear D.D., I note that in your new book you point out that atheist regimes have been responsible for the greatest mass murders in history. However, atheistic regimes didn't evolve overnight, and Europe's own loss of faith took place after millennia of wars among Christians and between Christianized nations.
Even America's war for independence took place between two theistic nations, just as America's Civil War also did (sometimes referred to as America's Holy War). Then there's the Hundred Years War, the "Second" Hundred Years War (you ought to read or peruse "The Sweet Enemy: The French and the British" to understand the times and casualties involved in terms of the percentages of populations back then); The Thirty Years War (which took place during the Reformation and which some historians refer to as Europe's first World War); not to mention World War 1 which disillusioned many concerning notions of the grandness of combat since soldiers were gassed en masse on the battlefield, or shot down enmasse via the new machine guns.
Again, during World War 2, the main aggressors were religious nations, from Japan and its Shinto god-emperor and war leader, to Mussolini the Catholic, but especially Germany, filled with devout Protestants and Catholics, who elected the Nazi party to power democratically, Germans at that time having rejected the liberalism of the Weimar Republic in favor of more conservative versions of politics and religion. The Germans were also in extreme economic straights and fed up with the huge reparations imposed on them after World War 1.
Have you read "The War of the World," a new book out about how the 20th century grew to become so warlike?
The Russian communist revolution took place during the last year of World War 1, and nations in Europe fed the anti-communists arms to fight the communist revolutionaries, deepening the conflict as often happens when a revolution takes place, which also added to communist paranoia. Take the case of Afghanistan and America feeding the war there until the country was a shambles. The Chinese communist revolution took place after Japan had bombed and invaded China and left it a shambles.
Two more brief points. If the number of people in each city city and nation were as high during the great ages of faith when the devout kept a close suspicious eye on each other's beliefs, and, if they had the same high levels of communication, transportation and weaponry as we had during the 20th century, what might the outcome have been for Europe, or for the rest of the world (where the devout wished to spread their religion)?
Have you read much about the wars I mentioned above? Have you read books that chronicle such time periods?
In the Name of Heaven: 3000 Years of Religious Persecution
by Mary Jane Engh
Holy Horrors: An Illustrated History of Religious Murder and Madness
by James A. Haught
Holy Hatred: Religious Conflicts of the '90s
by James A. Haught
(and for some informative fun concerning quirkier moments in Christian history... don't miss...)
A Short History of Christianity
by Stephen Tomkins
For a long list, check out my amazon.com wish list titled "bad atheists, bad christians" that you can google up using this string:
"bad atheists, bad christians"
And take a peek at my other related wish lists on history, politics, religion, philosophy (I have about twenty wish lists under my name at amazon.com, divided by categories, though some categories overlap). I'm not mentioning this in hopes of anyone buying me a book, but simply as a handy resource, since the lists feature some of my favorite books, some of which I've already read:
"edward t. babinski" "wish lists" amazon
http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/24F6NZ0Q5AJFR/ref=reg_hu-wl_goto-registry/102-2466893-4947336?ie=UTF8&sort=date-added
A NOTE ON RELIGION, INTOLERANCE, PERSECUTION, AND MASS MOVEMENTS IN GENERAL
I don't argue that religion necessarily encourages evil any more than other mass movements do that blind people to what they are doing and that encourage the demonization or ostrasization of others. Those mass movements may be in either politics (fascism/communiusm/dictatorships of various sort) or religion. See the classic little work,
The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
Also see the new work,
The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip Zimbardo (Zimbardo has a website worth visiting with links to some of his interviews.)
My own reason for discussing instances of religious intolerance, persecution and conflicts in history is simply to get believers to try and acknowledge the all-too-human faults of many of even the most devout believers and churches and religious hierarchies and theologians (which are supposed to be inspired by a perfect holy book and by a new heart inside them and by the guidance of the holy spirit "into all truth"). History does not make for a very convincing argument in favor of a religionizing everyone and everything, not any more than atheizing everyone and everything. I suspect though that neither faith nor its lack is going away soon (so we must all try to live together and live with the knowlege that other people believe differently than we do).
I also like to point out that during the ages of faith there were both inquisitors and people of charity, just as during other ages, including those when faith has not played a prominent role, and in fact, there are atheists and agnostics who are quite charitable in the U.S., multi-billionaires in fact who give away billions to charity. Also, many nations today with low percentages of religiousity (when compared with the U.S., Northern Ireland, Iran and Nigeria, which appear to be the most religious places on earth), have lower crime rates and higher average education levels and standards of living than the U.S., places such as various Scandinavian countries and Japan.
I am surprised that you describe this book as 'important' -- much as I would be if you described an Alan Keyes campaign speech as an 'important' political statement. D'Souza's ever-more eccentric political statements (I hate to use the word about him, because I consider myself an eccentric, but I use it in the place of something more accurate, but libelous) have robbed him of credibility even in fields he had a reputation in -- most particularly his position that the way to defeat Bin Laden is to scrap our sexual liberalism and the sexual content of our media so that OBL will no longer have a reason to hate us.
(His position, so stated in THE ENEMY AT HOME, has even drawn criticism from such as Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt.)
His personal history has hardly caused him to be considered 'important' -- I'd call him 'notorious' if I didn't feel this was giving him too much credit -- and he has become the sort of celebrity who is 'famous for being famous.' (Much like someone he has been romantically linked with, Ann Coulter. Would you consider her works worth bothering with, even though she does discuss religion and her GODLESS is 1/3 a defense of Creationism?)
While he has written some of his work from a conservative Catholic position, he has never written 'apologetics' and has no credentials for doing so.
I do hope he answers your call for a debate, but I hardly think his book is deserving of the notice you are giving it.
Prup, do you have a crush on me or something? Over at his website are some very high recommendations of the book Check them out:
“As an unbeliever, I passionately disagree with Dinesh D’Souza on some of his positions. But he is a first-rate scholar whom I feel absolutely compelled to read. His thorough research and elegant prose have elevated him into the top ranks of those who champion liberty and individual responsibility. Now he adds Christianity to his formula for the good society, and although non-Christians and non-theists may disagree with some of his arguments, we ignore him at our peril. D’Souza’s book takes the debate to a new level. Read it.”
— Michael Shermer,
Publisher of Skeptic magazine
Now, I have not read his book yet, but from these recommendations it is an important book to be dealt with. Prup, have you read it to know it is NOT an important book? And what do you consider an important Christian book such that I might know one when I see one? An important book is one that has the kind of recommendations his book has. An important book is a bestseller. An important book is one that Christians will read to bolster their faith. In all three categories of what I mean when I say it's an important book, it is. It may even be a scholarly book, but it's more likely a popular one. Still such a popular one will reach many people and as such must be dealt with.
You? How can you judge a book about Christianity by this author based upon his books about other subjects? Isn't that an informal fallacy?
I have not read this book, but I have encountered D'Souza before as a "thinker". He is the one who wrote a book saying that the reason Al Qaeda and other radical Islamists attacked us is because of the cultural left's permissiveness of immorality, and that if we would only eliminate our cultural liberty, there would be no need for conflict. Perhaps his approach to apologetics is more well-thought and well-researched than his cultural screeds, but after watching his debate with Hitchens, I am not optimistic.
Did you or anyone ever read it yet?
I am curious as to what you think, besides the presuppositions of course.
Dan, I'm working on it. I didn't get any takers that I know of, but again, I'm working on it.
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