FLIPPING THE FUTURE

Jeffrey J. Kripal, The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge. Belvue Literary Press, 2019. 

Every now and then a book comes along that you just want everybody to read. Readers of my previous reviews of Jeffrey Kripal’s books will know I’m a fan of his writing and thinking, and in The Flip he’s crystallised his ideas into a vision that he purposely presents in a punchier way than usual – just 200 pages – in order to give it as wide an appeal as he can. And he deserves to be heard.

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WHAT TO DO IN MAGONIA WHEN YOU'RE DEAD

Schlieter. What Is It Like To Be Dead? Near-Death Experiences, Christianity and The Occult. Oxford University Press. 2018.

Schlieter is a professor of 'the systematic study of religion' at the University of Bern in Switzerland. He has a penchant for comparative religions and connections between philosophies. This book is dense and unillustrated so not a particularly easy read – although not impenetrable. 

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TWO CULTURES?

Peter Harrison. The Territories of Science and Religion. The University of Chicago Press, 2015

This book explores the history of the interactions between what we now refer to as science and religion. There is a tendency to believe that they belong to two distinct domains, and that they always have done but, as the author discusses at length, it is a modern idea to consider that science is concerned only with understanding the nature of the universe and that religion deals with questions concerning human meaning and value.

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GOD'S PLANET

Owen Gingerich. God's Planet. Harvard University Press, 2014

This book, consisting of three lectures delivered to the American Scientific Affiliation, "a fellowship of Christians in the sciences founded in 1941", is devoted to discussing the tensions between science and religion.
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BELIEF AND BELIEVING IN ET

David A. Weintraub. Religions and Extraterrestrial Life: How Will We Deal With It? Springer, 2014

Although the title suggests that this book is solely concerned with religious attitudes to the possibility of extraterrestrial life, it also gives a detailed survey of the methods used by astronomers to attempt to discover extrasolar planets and to identify any that might be capable of supporting life.
Paragraphs appear that are up to two pages long so you might want to read it in small doses rather than on the beach and an oxygen supply may come in handy too.

SEEING THE LIGHT

Paul Kléber Monod, Solomon’s Secret Arts: The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment, Yale University Press, 2013.

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John V. Fleming, The Dark Side of the Enlightenment: Wizards, Alchemists and Spiritual Seekers in the Age of Reason, W.W. Norton & Co., 2013

Since the 1970s there has been a gradual, if grudging, acknowledgement by academic historians that occult ideas and beliefs played a much more influential role in the Renaissance than previous generations would admit. Now, the same seems to be happening for the era to which the Renaissance gave way, the Enlightenment or Age of Reason.
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THE COOLEST MAN EVER?

Daniel Stolzenberg, Egyptian Oedipus: Athanasius Kircher and the Secrets of Antiquity, University of Chicago Press, 2013.  Review by Clive Prince

The extraordinary seventeenth-century polymath Athanasius Kircher is one of the most fascinating and intriguing figures in history. The vast scope of his interests and learning has earned him the sobriquets of ‘the last Renaissance man’ and ‘the last man who knew everything’ – even, according to the title of a conference organised in 2002 by the New York Institute of the Humanities to marked the four-hundredth year of his birth, ‘the Coolest Guy Ever’.
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BIG GODS

Ara Norenzayan. Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict. Princeton University Press, 2013.

The author describes the rise of what he calls "prosocial" religions, those which became organised to facilitate cooperation among people as human societies became larger. When humanity consisted of small bands of hunter-gatherers, they all knew one another and would easily be able to detect and deal with any unacceptable behaviour.
Paragraphs appear that are up to two pages long so you might want to read it in small doses rather than on the beach and an oxygen supply may come in handy too.

SIMPLE OR SIMPLISTIC?

Guy P. Harrison. 50 Simple Questions for Every Christian. Prometheus Books, 2013.

In his introduction Harrison acknowledges that there are "many different kinds of Christians who hold many different views". This means, of course, that the questions he asks cannot be simple. There is also the problem that within mainstream Christianity and the large number of smaller sects there are many interpretations of the different doctrines.

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DRAGONSLAYER

Allan Chapman. Slaying the Dragons: Destroying Myths in the History of Science and Faith. Lion Hudson, 2013.

The history of the relationship between Christianity and the development of Western science is a complex subject, which gives rise to much misunderstanding and confusion, some of it probably deliberate, among people who are not very familiar with the subject. There are many myths about the role of religion, as well as ignorance about the involvement of churchmen in scientific work. 

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SCIENCE AND BELIEF

Rupert Sheldrake. The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry. Coronet, 2013.

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Lawrence M Krauss. A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing. With an afterword by Richard Dawkins. Simon and Schuster, 2012.

These books are excellent examples of how science can become caught up in culture wars. Even though he was trained as a naturalist, Rupert Sheldrake does not really like modern science at all. This is because he sees it as materialistic and atheistic. Lawrence Krauss represents just that sort of atheistic science that Sheldrake deplores.
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WHY TOLERATE RELIGION?

Brian Leiter. Why Tolerate Religion? Princeton University Press, 2012.

In his Introduction the author writes: "The central puzzle in this book is why the state should have to tolerate exemptions from generally applicable laws when they conflict with religious obligations but not with any other serious obligations of conscience".
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BURIED IN CONFUSION

Neal Sutton. Buried by the Church. Matador, 2012. 

"The Da Vinci Code lit the fuse… Now… The Explosion”. So goes the publisher’s promotion at the top of the cover of this book. We are led to believe that Mr Sutton is going to stun everyone who ever opened a Bible. Indeed and, (spoiler alert) with Dan Brown’s staggering bombshell that Jesus had offspring that survived into the present day, one may expect that if this tome is to top that kind of Christian spanner in the works then it really does need to pull something very spectacular indeed from out of the scriptural hat.

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INTRODUCTION TO EXOTHEOLOGY

Thomas F. O'Meara. Vast Universe: Extraterrestrials and Christian Revelation, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 2012.

If you don't believe in Christian revelation and think that we unlikely ever to encounter any extraterrestrials, then this book is possibly not for you. However, it should be of interest not only to theology students, but also to those who are interested in the interaction between scientific discovery and religious belief, which is a more important subject than is generally realised.
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ATHEISM & BELIEF

Geoff Crocker, An Enlightened Philosophy: Can an Atheist Believe Anything? O Books, 2010.

The stated purpose of this book is to attempt to suggest how a synthesis can be achieved between religious faith and increasingly aggressive atheism. The author argues that "atheist populism destroys religious belief but offers no philosophy to replace it. It is nihilistic." He wants to combine a "meaningful metaphysics" with a recognition of the "power of myth" in religion.

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GETTING GALILEO STRAIGHT

John L. Heilbron. Galileo. Oxford University Press, 2010.

Most of us are familiar with the popular writings in astronomy and cosmology which contain absurdly over-simplified and inaccurate accounts of Galileo's problems with the Inquisition, who allegedly refused to look through his telescope and declared his scientific theorising to be heretical. Well, it wasn't so simple. As the author of this work remarks: "Galileo's biographers tend to rush their gladiator into an imaginary arena filled with pig-headed philosophers and fire-spitting priests." 

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SWINGING BOTH WAYS

Antony Latham, The Naked Emperor: Darwinism Exposed, Janus Publishing, London, 2005.

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Stephen Horne and Richard Robertson, Faith is Not Enough: A Rationalist Perspective on Religion and Other Irrational Beliefs, Janus Publishing, London, 2010.

The Janus Publishing Company of Gloucester Place, near Baker Street (not to be confused with Janus of Old Compton Street, Soho, who specialise in magazines full of photographs of young women being caned) is named after the Roman God who has two faces looking in opposite directions. This is appropriate, given the antipathetic nature of these two books that they have sent to Magonia for review.  🔻

SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY

Bernard Haisch. The Purpose-Guided Universe: Believing in Einstein, Darwin, and God. New Page Books. 2010

Although it is written for the general reader, this book is not an easy read. At first glance, it seems to be an attempt to reconcile science and religion, but the author soon makes it clear that most organised religion is part of the problem and that "... the reconciliation of science and spirituality is a different matter. That is not only possible, it is essential".
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SCIENCE & SUPERSTITION

Gregory L. Reece. Weird Science and Bizarre Beliefs. I. B. Tauris, 200

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Robert L. Park. Superstition: Belief in an Age of Science. Princeton UP, 2010,

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Macello Gleiser. A Tear at the Edge of Creation: A Radical New Vision for Life in an Imperfect Universe. Free Press, 2010.

The liminal zone between reality and fantasy is a strange haunted place, as a boy back in 1977 Gregory Reece had an experience - or dream or fantasy - in which he and a friend saw a great bird circling in the holiday summer sky. As the boyhood world in which dream and reality intermingled faded into the adult world of daylight reason and common sense, he labelled this experience a fantasy. It had fallen off the liminal tightrope into the world of labels. 

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MIND AND BODY

Michael N. Marsh. Out of Body and Near Death Experiences: Brain State Phenomena or Glimpses of Immortality. Oxford University Press, 2009. (Oxford Theological Monographs)

There is a surgical procedure in which corpus callosum is cut, resulting in a loss of communication between the two hemispheres, such that they might start to develop separate personalities.
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