Just today I finished reading a big German book, Gert Scobel’s Der Ausweg aus dem Fliegenglas: Wie wir Glauben und Vernunft in Einklang bringen können (Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer Verlag 2010, 462 pp.). It’s a book that I can warmly recommend, at least for those who are able to read German (the newly released paperback edition is very cheap). I do hope though that an English publisher will be so wise as to translate the book into English…
A short book review…
On his personal blog, evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne has given his opinion of Thomas Nagel’s review of Plantinga’s book. To those familiar with Coyne’s rantings about everything religious, it will come as no surprise that Coyne has no respect for Nagel’s appeal to Plantinga’s position. However, if you read Nagel’s review and Coyne’s review of Nagel’s review, I hope you will notice that Coyne shows himself in his review to be no philosopher. Continue reading
Just a note to point visitors of my website to a wonderful review of the distinguished philosopher Thomas Nagel of Alvin Plantinga’s latest book Where the Conflict Really Lies in the New York Review of Books. It’s a review with a very interesting twist…
(Thanks to John Teske for sharing the link via IRASnet!)
For almost 5 years now I review in my free time new books in theology, theology and science, and philosophy for the Dutch library & schools system, NBD Biblion. I started in April 2007 and I am still very much enjoying it. Just for fun, I counted all my reviews up to today. And it turns out, to my own astonishment, that I reviewed 120 books so far…
A while ago I read Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists (which for some reason was published in Dutch several months before the English edition). I was not too enthusiastic about the book (to put it mildly – and I did put it mildly in the review that I wrote). But then again, I’m no Terry Eagleton.
In the British journalThe Guardian, Eagleton published a short but brilliant review of De Botton’s book. Eagleton writes in his characteristic style, very readable, humorous, ironic, and with a conclusion that I found right on the mark:
What the book does, in short, is hijack other people’s beliefs, empty them of content and redeploy them in the name of moral order, social consensus and aesthetic pleasure. It is an astonishingly impudent enterprise. It is also strikingly unoriginal.