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 Read the 10 "great" book instead August 23, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
The author makes a valid point, in that the best way to respond to books containing "dangerous" ideas is to read them, study, them, know them backwards and forwards. So go read them, and give this peice of right-wing propaganda a miss.
The author is obviously well educated, but like the authors he criticises, he shapes his arguments to fit his pre-established views (biblical ideology in his case) instead of evaluating the arguments of others on their merits.
I will give you one small example. Darwin's "Descent of man". Infected with victorian era notions of race it may be, but the fundamental concept, that by protecting the weak, we risk weakening the species, is clearly, inarguably, un-flinchingly true (Your reviewer is a perfect example, I could not possibly fend for myself in the wild without corrective eye-ware).
However, the author does not want to accept this truth--indeed assumes his audience to see it as absurd, so he attempts to use it to refute Darwin's broader contribution to the world (bringing a realistic view of ecologic change into the light) and to equate Darwin with Hitler and Stalin. It is quite true that both these men fashioned them selves "social darwinists", but the truth is, they were evil not because they promoted eugenics, but because they used the cause of eugenics as a tool of political evil.
I doubt very seriously that many people would argue against preventing sociopathic killers from breeding in large numbers (if sociopathy were known to have a clear genetic root). And it doesn't take a genius to see that a more "fit" nation (either physically fit, or technologically or economically fit, although eventually these become interrelated) can destroy a less fit nation. The problem with Hitler is not that he wanted to "improve the race" but that he wanted to decide what constitutes fitness, and make the decision hinge on absurdities like religious affiliation or ethnic origin.
We humans are eventually going to be forced to confront our own evolution. Darwin was, in fact, correct. But sadly for Darwin, things are not as simple as Victorian's thought. The genes that helped us survive the ice age now make us fat, the left handeness that got some of us persecuted in the past may (for all we know) yet be our salvation in some unforeseeable way. And the "negros" and caucasians and "australians" far from representing a scale of fitness or primitiveness, are in fact each the most fit for their local environment (cheifly with regard to the directess of sunlight at different latitudes).
But the author ignores the reality of this, and merely casts his villians in simple form. Hitler was evil, so Darwin's ideas are evil. Yet, the ideas in the Cristian Bible have caused more horror and suffering than the third rieche ever could. It was defence of the Bible, after all, that gave us both cruesades and the dark ages, and while one can argu that we heathen atheistic modern folk make ourselves miserable in our pursuit of material gain, we most certainly are not as miserable as the rank and file who lived under the thumb of the church during the biggest chunk of recorded history.
So I say, ignore this book until the decides to play fairly and include the Bible on his hit list. Forget this little book and go read the ten he denegrates. Some of them are truely inspired by evil, if anything can be said to embody evil, but reading them and debating them with the fair and open-minded will do far more to improve the world and our lot in it than the smug, right-wing anti-intellectualism indulged in by this author.
 2 Stars simply because its an interesting if flawed book August 20, 2008
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
Bear in mind the author Benjamin Wiker has taught at Marquette University, St. Mary's University (MN), and Thomas Aquinas College (CA), and Franciscan University of Steubenville. And he is a Fellow or member of the Discovery Institute a Christian U.S. think tank based in Seattle, Washington, best known for its advocacy of intelligent design, or NON evolutionary science. Knowing this helps you better understand where he is coming from which is strictly a very conservative Catholic/Christian mindset.
Machiavelli's The Prince in my opinion is a great book if for no other reason than it shows how some leaders will use any means to get what they want. As in the end justifies the means. Something people should think about when it comes to President Bush and his Iraq war.
And I wonder how many of those who gave the book 5 stars, use birth control. I ask because it was the work of Margaret Sanger that made family planning legal. Every conservative I know has less than three children because they use birth control.
I agree with Timothy Haughs review where he notes 'I could care less that Nietzsche was clinically insane. So was Van Gogh and he produced timeless art'. And look at Reagan who is considered by many to have been a great leader whom we now know had the beginning stages of Alzheimer's while President. Also remember that Nietzsche wasn't much different from many men of his era. We simply know from writings that his venereal disease caused mental health decline.
Some would even say that the Bible has screwed up more of the world, simply because of how humans like church leaders have used it to keep blacks in slavery,and women and children as second class citizens, while making greed good as long as you were white and male. Read Marilyn Yalom's book History of the Wife. But the Bible isn't on the authors list.
And how is what the few who have used the Bible to control the majority different from the authors suggestion that Darwin's The Descent of Man proves he intended "survival of the fittest" to be applied to human society? Havent the few white men of the past and some here now in the present, proven that they believe they are the fittest or best and thus should rule the rest of us?
Or what about the authors belief that Hobbes' work Leviathan led to the belief that we have a "right" to whatever we want, since this is what the few in power have always believed be they Popes or Presidents. Basic human nature would suggest that the human animal wants what he wants when he wants it. And that those in power always want to control the masses. One need only look at any ad that pushes the idea that we not only have a right to everything, but we are fools if we don't. And again this is from a capitalistic Christian mindset.
The question I have as an avid bibliophile is how many people do you know who have even read any of the books he listed? Heck how many of these have you read? If none then that suggests the author is wrong when he suggests they rule our world.
1) The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
2) Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill
3) The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin
4) Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
5) State and Revolution by Vladmir Illich Lenin
6) The Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger
7) Mein Kampf, Volume 1 & 2 by Adolf Hitler
8) The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud
9) Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead
10) Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male by Alfred Kinsey
Honorable Mentions:
1) The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli
2) Discourse on Method by Rene Descartes
3) Levithan by Thomas Hobbes
4) Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Between Men by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
5) The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
slanted diatribe from the religious right. August 17, 2008
6 out of 17 found this review helpful
This Book makes a mockery of the progress of Human thought in the past few centuries. It criticizes and makes light of some of the greatest works of human thought. One gets the opinion that the author would rather have us living in the dark ages,when we all had to conform to the rigid dictates demagogues.
This is a book for Luddites.
Intellectually Dishonest Christian Propaganda August 11, 2008
9 out of 22 found this review helpful
It is a sad commentary on our times that a book like this can be written, let alone shown respect. Wiker insults some of the greatest minds in Western Civilization (e,g, Hobbes, Descartes, Darwin, Freud, Rousseau). It is clear that Wiker regards any school of thought undermining the Medieval concept of God and Society as anathema. He longs for the good old days. He clearly hates the Enlightenment and modern materialist science. Too bad Wiker lives in the 21st century instead of the 12th. He would be more at home there.
His lies and slanders are too numerous to mention. Suffice it to say that this is yet another right-wing Catholic broadside against the emancipation of women (hence his attacks on Sanger and Friedan), against the separation of secular power from ecclesiastical control (hence his attacks on Machiavelli and Hobbes), against modern science (hence his attacks against Darwin), and against the emancipation of human sexuality from the cesspool of superstion, guilt and repression (hence his attacks on Freud and Kinsey). And notice how he impugns these great thinkers b linking them with Hitler, an anti-Semite who was spawned by the Austrian Catholic Church. Wiker is appalled by the modern world. I wonder what he thinks of Founders such as Paine, Jefferson, Franklin and Madison! After all, they revered John Locke, whom Wiker despises.
 Crying in the Wilderness July 26, 2008
16 out of 19 found this review helpful
I remember almost thirty years ago a brother-in-law retorting, during a discussion about child-rearing, that he intended to raise his children as wild stallions in a state of nature. I recall commenting that the poor deluded man was merely repeating what he had heard in his sophomore sociology and psychology classes and that, in doing so, he manifested his ignorance of the subject.
One reviewer of Dr. Wiker's book, "10 Books that Screwed up the World," offered the following thought:
"Ideas can certainly be dangerous but, once they are articulated in print, a thinking person has an opportunity to consider them rationally and counter them. This process is much more difficult if we are working from an oral articulation of ideas because orators can sway emotion and equivocate more effectively."
While intended to be a criticism of Professor Wiker ("Is this guy an enemy of free speech?"), the critic, in fact, makes his point; few people have actually read these books. Like my brother-in-law, had they actually read Rousseau, other than Emile, had they actually read Hobbes, other than the usual snippets of Leviathan offered, had they read Darwin's the Descent of Man, Machiavelli's The Prince, etc., they might have been better able to digest the unfounded and destructive utopian visions of Marx, Lenin, Hitler, and assess the illusions conjured by Freud, Sanger, Mead, and Kinsey. The reality is that few who have proffered these writers as icons of enlightened intellectualism, namely the professorial and teaching class, have taken the time to consider their products rationally. And, certainly those to whom it has been asserted that the writings comprise a source of deep reflection beneficial to humanity - essential to an understanding of humanitas - have not taken the opportunity to consider them rationally and counter the assertions. These vapid arguments have seeped into the mainstream only because they were developed by "so-and-so." In other words, the foundation is ipse dixit; the proof is hearsay.
That's why Professor Wiker bemoans the fact that the writings he has singled out have had such profound influence. If writings are not actually read and subjected to rational assessment, it would be better had they never been written. Unfortunately, the writings that Wiker addresses have been and continue to be highly detrimental to the body politic and the human soul. That is the more important reason that they should never have been written.
"10 Books that Screwed up the World" is easily read in a couple of sittings; is readily understood; and, is a must read especially for young people headed for the "castles" of higher learning.
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