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Interesting book so far. The subtitle is "The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Tunred Into a War on American Ideals." Some of the stuff in this book is absolutely terrifying. I knew that the various government agencies, in hindsight, had a lot of information pointing to what was going to happen on September 11, 2001, but I had never read about all of the information in one place at one time. It's horrendous to think about how close we were to preventing 9/11 and yet we didn't. What's really scary, though, is how little we have done as a nation to address the failures that lead to us not preventing 9/11. And then the aftermath is equally terrifying. Learning what those in the highest echelons of government were thinking and doing immediately after 9/11 is very enlightening. The book spends a fair amount of time explaining the history and background of some of the players who came to the foreground in the "war on terror" and how 9/11 played into their world-view and what they were pre-disposed to try and accomplish. Anyway, I'm barely 1/3 of the way through the book, and parts of it are a tough slog. It's not necessarily gripping reading. The stuff I am reading now is about the various legal offices of the government and how they were sidelined and marginalized in favor of what the White House (mostly Cheney, according to this book) wanted to do in the "unlawful enemy combatant" "military commissions." I shouldn't be, but I am still amazed at the careers that were intentionally ruined, careers of good people trying to do their job. Some of them, more than just a few, were absolutely shoved out of government and black-listed in the private sector for refusing to toe the administration's line on torture and rendition and things like that. I wonder if, 100 years from now, we will have a good grasp of what happened to the United States and its most sacred and cherished ideals since 9/11. It is just so so sad.
Still more interesting stuff today. Finished Chapter 4 "Why God Almost Certainly Doesn't Exist." Some very funny stuff in here... Dawkins really tickles my "dry" sense of humor.
Dawkins did a lot of deconstruction of the Intelligent Design variant of the God/Science issue in this chapter. It was remarkable how all of the arguments for Intelligent Design fail to account for the fact that someone/something would have had to design the designer! I also thought it was really interesting to read Dawkins' excerpts from some of the theological writings on "irreducible complexity." I had thought this was an old term, but apparently it was coined in 1996. It's a term that refers to the argument that some things (like eyes, wings, etc.) are so irreducibly complex that they could not have evolved, thus there must be God. The problems Dawkins sees with this argument seem to fall into two main categories: (i) the proponents don't have a rigorous way of determining if something is truly irreducibly complex other than "I can't imagine a way for it to have come about in incremental steps;" and (ii) a God that could "design" something truly irreducibly complex would have to be so complex that it would in turn have to have been designed.
Another thing that struck me in this chapter was the "gap" arguments. I have heard people in real life talk about "gaps" in the fossil record and how that must mean that evolution couldn't have happened. Dawkins so thoroughly dispatches these "gap" arguments, essentially calling their proponents intellectually lazy. "There's a gap in the record, so there must be God = there's a gap in the record, so don't go looking for explanations or evidence or anything else that might explain it."
I said yesterday that there's a difference between a non-believer and an atheist, an important difference. I am an atheist. One of the writers Dawkins talks about (I can't remember which one and I'm too lazy to go look it up) being a "radical atheist" so as to distinguish himself in the minds of his readers from all variants of agnosticism or non-believerhood.
I find it interesting how my gut instinct has been toward atheism for a long time, at least 20 years now, but that intellectually I haven't taken the time to do the reading and research to solidify what I really think. Dawkins references so many other books that I want to go read now too.
As always, so many books, so little time.
Interesting book. I'm not finished yet, but I'm very much enjoying it. Dawkins writes with little sentimentalism and some might find his style condescending or pedantic, but I find him refreshingly blunt. It is interesting to find all his references to various philosophers and theologians that "ring bells" for me from back in my college days. He seems to be great buds with Daniel Dennett, who was very influential in my thinking (and my Honors Thesis) back in the day.
I find myself laughing out loud a lot at some of the things he's written. I already knew I was an atheist, but it is nice to "know" why I am, and that I'm not nearly as alone as I thought. I do need to do an internet search to see if Dawkins has written anything since the inauguration, when Obama included "non-believers" *gasp* in his remarks -- apparently the first reference by a U.S. President to the fact that there are people who don't believe in God. I was so excited to have even a glancing reference to "my people" in the speech that it took a while before I realized that the term "non-believer" wasn't sitting quite right with me. I'm not a "non-believer" in that I don't believe in God. I am an atheist. I believe God doesn't exist. There's a difference, and I don't even think it's subtle.
I am really enjoying Dawkins' explications of "theism" "deism" "agnosticism" and "atheism." Very interesting stuff.
Anyway, I'll save a full review for when I've finished the book (I know, you can't wait!).
I got a new BookSwim shipment a week or so ago. This afternoon I finally finished The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it was a bit fragmented. I felt like it was a lot of interesting tidbits, but it didn't really cohere as a book. I guess it reads a bit like it was a magazine piece that got expanded into a book, which is what it was. Still well worth reading.
The two new books I'm adding are Final Salute, and Bright, Shiny Morning. Final Salute is about Steve Beck, a Marine who does family notification. I thumbed through the book this evening and looked at the pictures in the middle of the book. I know I'm going to cry my eyes out reading this, but I figure that all these Americans have lost their lives for this country, and their families (and all the other military personnel and military families out there) have made and continue to make unimaginable sacrifices. The least I can do is read a book honoring the fallen soldiers and the soldier that tries to ease their families' pain.
One little tidbit that I got just from reading the photo captions... all branches of the military award posthumous medals. The medals used to arrive at their families' mailboxes, loose in a brown manila envelope. Somebody realized that just wasn't right, and now there is a group that makes sure that every posthumous medal is awarded with a full pinning ceremony.
Anyway, I'm sure most of you know my politics (or like to assume you do!), but as far as I'm concerned, support of the ordinary people and families that make up our military utterly transcends politics. It's part of why I still get choked up every time I go to a sporting event and hear the American national anthem.
Ok, enough about that.
The other book is by James Frey. You may remember that he wrote a "memoir" a few years back, called A Million Little Pieces, which was apparently utterly debunked and exposed as mostly fiction. I never read the memoir (though I might go back and read it someday), but his new book is getting good reviews for being wildly inventive and creative (go figure!), and I thought it was worth putting on my BookSwim list.
I'll try to do a review of each of the books as I get them finished. I know, you're on tenterhooks!
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