Why I Am Not a Christian continued

The next essay is from 1930 and is titled "Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?"
Russell acknowledges two, only two, contributions he is willing to concede- the calendar and the Egyptian priesthood's discovery of how to predict eclipses.
After that, things go downhill.
Russell points out that regardless of any honor that might have existed in the founder of a religion, the belief devolves into power struggles among the religious elite, who use that power to their advantage. He also condemns the Christian religion in particular because of its attitude toward sex. "We sometimes hear talk to the effect that Christianity improved the status of women. This is one of the grossest perversions of history that it is possible to make." Women are subjected to even harsher moral codes than men; womankind is  seen as the temptress and the "inspirer of impure lusts"; and a woman is denied birth control and expected to bear a child a year until she wears out (in certain religions anyway.) Venereal diseases are seen as God's punishment, rather than something that should be avoided with the proper precautions or cured. Sex education for the young is forbidden, even though "a person is much less likely to act wisely when he is ignorant than when he is instructed, and it is ridiculous to give young people a sense of sin because they have a natural curiosity about an important matter."
Russell was very forward-thinking about sex education for his time. The matter of venereal diseases reminds me of the way many religious leaders had no interest in cures for AIDS and no compassion for the sufferers. They deserved it and God was punishing them for their behavior. Not much has changed.
Russell goes on to discuss the religious sources for intolerance in the world, especially the belief that only one religion or one god is the correct one. Without this belief, people like Herodotus could travel the world and "in general he is hospitable to foreign gods and foreign customs." Christianity, on the other hand, has been very eager to punish those who think differently on Earth, while even harsher punishments waited after death. "It is true that the modern Christian is less robust, but that is not thanks to Christianity; it is thanks to the generations of freethinkers, who, from the Renaissance to the present day, have made Christians ashamed of many of their traditional beliefs. It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians. Nobody nowadays believes that the world was created in 4004 B.C; but not so very long ago skepticism on this point was thought an abominable crime." Except now in the 21st century there are plenty of young Earth creationists who do believe in that timeline! I think sometimes we are going backwards!
The Doctrine of Free Will. In this section I find a little disagreement with Russell. I might be reading it wrong, but he seems to be saying that, because we are all a product of our upbringing , and even the upbringing of our forbears, and influences of society, a person cannot be completely blamed for his actions. "No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When a car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin; he does not say, 'You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you anymore petrol until you go.' He attempts to find out what is wrong and set it right." He compares this to the treatment of children, where they are sometimes severely punished for misbehavior instead of trying to find out why the child behaves that way. So far, I'm with him. When he carries this forward to adults, it's a little harder to take. "A man who is suffering from plague has to be imprisoned (I think he's referring to quarantine) until he is cured, although nobody thinks him wicked. The same thing should be done with a man who suffers from a propensity to commit forgery; but there should be no more idea of guilt in the one case than the other." Really? I think committing forgery does make you guilty. What in your upbringing or the society or your parents' attitudes gives you a pass on that? Now if you think of it in terms of prison reform, where people in prison should be helped to rehabilitate to society, rather than just warehoused as punishment for a number of years, I can see that, but they're still guilty.
Finally, he discusses the Idea of Righteousness. "Righteousness and unrighteousness must be taken together; it is impossible to stress the one without stressing the other also. Now, what is 'unrighteousness' in practice? It is in practice behavior of a kind disliked by the herd. By calling it unrighteousness, and by arranging an elaborate system of ethics around this conception, the herd justifies itself in wreaking punishment upon the objects of its own dislike, while at the same time, since the herd is righteous by definition, it enhances its own self-esteem at the very moment when it lets loose its impulse to cruelty. This is the psychology of lynching, and of the other ways in which criminals are punished. The essence of the conception of righteousness, therefore, is to afford an outlet for sadism by cloaking cruelty as justice."
Russell concluded this essay by describing ways in which society can evolve past these evils and advance to a higher ethics. He believed that religion was based on fear, conceit, and hatred. Russell believed that with reforms in education, economics, and politics many of the fears and hatreds and jealousies that society has suffered could be minimized to the extent that everyone could be fairly content. Russell believed that religion was the obstacle. "Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific co-operation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion." Wow!

Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell

I'm currently reading this book, but I wanted to get the review started before I'm finished. It's a lot to unpack, so taking it as I read it seems easier than waiting for the end.
It's a collection of essays and transcripts of speeches, some more relevant to the topic of religion and/or the present day than others. Here are my thoughts on the title section. I may not have quite as much to say about the other essays, but this is the crux of the book and the very first section of it.

Chapter One- Why I Am Not a Christian. Transcript of a lecture. 1927.

Russell determines that a Christian is not merely "a person who attempts to live a good life." You have to believe in God and immortality and you have to believe that Christ was either divine or the wisest of men. Russell debunks the popular "proofs" of religion back then, which are often still used today.
The First Cause Argument- If God is the First Cause, who made God? "There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination."
The Natural Law Argument- Why does the world, such as the movement of planets, behave as it does? Because God made it that way? Why did God make it that way and not another? "If you say that he did it simply from his own good pleasure, and without any reason, you then find that there is something which is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted." If God did have a reason, than where did that come from? "You have really a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your purpose, because he is not the ultimate lawgiver." Similar to the First Cause Argument.
The Argument from Design- "It is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years."
The Moral Arguments for Deity- There is no right and wrong outside of God. If there is a difference between right and wrong, is that God's doing? "If it is due to God's fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good." Right and wrong have to have been created/decided separately from God. Here again, you have to go beyond God for the answer.
The Argument for the Remedying of Injustice- The idea is that there is much injustice here on Earth, so there just HAS to be an afterlife where real justice happens. The long-suffering good people finally get Paradise and the evil who got off scot-free finally burn in Hell. Russell's scientific argument is that if this world is marked by injustice, it's likely to be the way of things and there is no perfect justice anywhere. "Supposing you got a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of oranges bed, you would not argue, 'The underneath ones must be good, so as to redress the balance.' You would say, 'Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment'; and that is really what a scientific person would argue about the universe."
Those are all the main arguments for God. Russell goes on to describe the Character of Christ, in which he basically says that one the one hand, Christ had many edicts which so-called good people do not follow, such as turn the other cheek and give all you have to the poor. On the other hand, Christ's teaching has flaws, such as the idea that the Second Coming was just around the corner in his own time, yet people are still waiting 2000 years later. Also, Christ's character has flaws, such as his insistence that people who turn away from his teaching should burn in Hellfire, the way Christ destroyed a fig tree for having the gall to not be producing figs for him to eat during a season when figs are not yet ripe, and my favorite argument against Christ's goodness, "the Gadarene swine, where it certainly was not very kind to the pigs to put the devils into them and make them rush down the hill to the sea. You must remember that He was omnipotent, and He could have made the devils simply go away; but He chose to send them into the pigs."
Russell then talks about the Emotional Factor, where "it is very wrong to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it." He makes the connection that whenever religion has been particularly strong, there have been more persecutions, inquisitions, and cruelties inflicted on people, whether or not they are believers. "You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world."
Russell next discusses "How the Churches Have Retarded Progress," such as forbidding divorce, "because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness." Not all religions deny divorce, but it was used only as an example of how religions use arbitrary rules that do nothing for the good of the people.
Russell finishes up the lecture with "Fear, the Foundation of Religion." "Fear is the basis of the whole thing- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand."
Finally, "What We Must Do." "A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men."

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Anyone who doesn't understand the Black Lives Matter movement should read this book. Powerful story from the point of view of a young girl in the middle of an officer shooting that takes the life of her unarmed friend. 
If you are over 25 you might find some of the language a little confusing. I'm so old and uncool that I had to look things up! LOL!
I have not seen the movie yet. I was waiting until I was finished reading the book and I just got to it. Now it's out of the theaters, but I plan to catch it on streaming video.

Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

SPOILER ALERT

Second book in the Earthseed series, which only managed to be 2 books in the end. Butler had planned on doing more, but she ended up moving on to other things. That's not really so bad, since the second book does not end with lots of cliffhangers or loose ends. It wraps up pretty well.
So, to my impressions of the book. I decided to warn about spoilers because I can't think of a way to review without giving away plot points that the reader should find out from reading it. That said, these things stand out to me. The first one is just a pet peeve I have to get out of the way.
Although I really like this book, as well as the first one, Parable of the Sower, this book has a couple of what I can only call mistakes. There is one instance where the author seems to forget how many children a character has. We're told he has four, but later only three are with him. I reread the parts between and there was nothing about him losing a kid in any way. The only thing I could conclude was that Butler forgot. Another example is when a community is attacked by religious fanatics and the people either killed in the fighting or enslaved. Originally, seven people were unaccounted for. Much later in the book, the main character mentions three people who might have gotten away. She seems to have totally forgotten the other four. These might seem nit-picky, but things like that burst the imaginary bubble you need to put yourself in when you read fiction.
Those pet peeves out of the way, I really found the book fascinating to read, although not in an entirely enjoyable way. It's hard to call a story enjoyable that is about the USA becoming a miserable hell-scape. This book is even rougher to read than the first one. We learn even more about the state of the country and it actually goes downhill from the situation in the first book, because on top of everything else, the country elects a tyrannical religious fanatic for president. 
Speaking of that, there are some eerie similarities to our own time. The president in the book even runs on a platform of Making America Great Again! People vote for him, even though he has problematic views because they want a Strong Leader who can Tell It Like It Is. 
It's not hard to imagine our country devolving into the world of the book. We just have to continue the way we are going with destroying the planet, vast income inequality, and letting corporations run everything. There are even "Company Towns" in the book, where a certain company basically "owns" the town and everyone in it. The people are all wage slaves to the company and are not even paid in dollars, but in company scrip, which they redeem for the things they need at a company store. But the pay does not cover their needs, so they end up in debt to the company, which now really owns them, because they cannot leave their jobs until they pay back the debt. At that point they can be literally sold to another company as if they are just company assets. Their children can even be sold away from them. Corporations are completely and utterly amoral and evil. People say now that if a corporation is a person, it's a sociopath. In this book, if these corporations are people, they are Satan.
Interestingly, things seem to be getting somewhat better toward the end of the book. Society is not quite as sick as it had been for the past few decades, but there is not really much of an explanation for why the "Pox" as it was called, seems to be ending. The tyrant president is gone, but he was not the cause of the decline, so I found myself curious as to what was helping society to claw it's way back up slowly. I think Butler could have given better explanations for that, other than it needed to be that way for her story to go in the direction she wanted it to.
Before I'm done, I have to say something about a couple of the characters. Marcus and Larkin/Asha. I really dislike them. It's not hard to see why in the case of Marc. He lied to his niece and told her that her mother was dead, when he knew very well she was alive. He never told his sister that he knew where her daughter was, even though she was actually staying with him! He stole his sister's child. For a holy man, he is pretty evil. Larkin/Asha disappointed me in the way she decided to torture her mother by refusing a relationship with her. Her mind was turned against Lauren and her kind by her adoptive parents and by Marc. But once she had the chance to meet Lauren, she could have started a new relationship with her long lost mother. Unfortunately, she's a weak little wimp and gets scared when Lauren reacts with anger after finding out about Marc's deception. Lauren is a tall imposing woman and we know she is intense, but Larkin runs like a scared little rabbit from her mother's anger, which isn't even directed at her. I know she was raised badly and had a hard time, but she was a grown woman by then, capable of thinking for herself. I also could not see how, after reading her mother's journal entries about how much she missed her baby and loved her and how hard she tried to find her, Larkin could say things like, "My mother loved Earthseed more than she ever loved me." I'm paraphrasing, because I no longer have the book in front of me, but Larkin expressed that sentiment over and over. 
To be fair, I'm not saying Butler should have written her differently. People are complicated and relationships get screwed up by situations and personalities all the time. I'm not saying it's unrealistic. It totally is. It's just sad. It would have been interesting to see if Larkin/Asha was going to be in subsequent books and whether her feelings for her mother might have changed. Though it would have been too late anyway, since Lauren was dead by the time Larkin read the journal.
Well, this review went on too long! After all, I do recommend both of these books. Not only is the story fascinating, but it also could be seen as a "don't let this happen to you" for our society.

A Prayer for the Animals by Daniel Kirk

This is a beautiful little book for animal lovers old and young. The text forms one long beautiful prayer for animals of all kinds:

"May all the animals of the earth,
and the animals of the sky,
and the animals of the sea
be at peace.
May they be free of hunger,
free of fear,
and may their hearts and minds be calm.
May everything in their world
be just as it was meant to be.
May the animals of the earth feel safe and secure:
wild animals,
working animals, 
and pets alike.
May all of their needs be met
so they can enjoy
the gentle breeze,
or the shining moon and stars,
or the chill of night,
or the dark and hidden places,
if that is their beloved home.
May all of the animals be at rest.
May our hearts be open to caring
for the animals of this world,
to being a friend,
a protector of the big and the small,
that they might have the things
we wish for ourselves...
good things to eat,
a safe place to live,
and the companionship of friends and family,
all the days of their lives."

I think it's OK that I included the full text because as beautiful as the words are, the illustrations should not be missed. Gorgeous detailed pictures of animals living in their worlds. Not a human in any picture, which is the way it should be.

The book was written in honor of World Animal Day, October 4, which is also St. Francis of Assisi's Blessing of the Animals day. On that day people bring animals to church to be blessed. The author suggests doing something nice for animals on that day: volunteer at a shelter or animal rights organization, donate money, food, blankets, toys. Maybe the feeling on that one day will expand into a general feeling of caring for animals and the experience of helping them on October 4 will last the rest of the year!

Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth

I had to read this after watching the fabulous Spike Lee/Jordan Peele movie adaptation on the big screen. The movie blew me away, so I had to get the "Real Story." Well, not too surprisingly, the two are very different. The book tells the events as they happened and the movie is greatly dramatized with fictional events and characters loosely based on the real story.
That's not to say that either the book or the movie suffers! They are both fantastic. The real-life Ron Stallworth was a detective with the Colorado Springs Police Department on the lookout for scams when he saw an ad in the paper inviting people to write in for information about the KKK. He decided to send for the literature to see what the deal was, not realizing it would launch him into a large-scale investigation into the Klan. He received materials by mail, but he also received a telephone call that resulted in him accepting an invitation to join the Klan. As a black man, he had to get another detective to play the "white" Ron Stallworth in his face-to-face meetings with Klan members. The real Ron Stallworth handled most of the phone calls and directed the investigation, which yielded important information for the CSPD, the military, and other organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League, about the membership and plans of the Klan in Colorado. They prevented a number of terrorist acts, such as cross-burnings, by being one step ahead of the Klan.
As I mentioned, I also highly recommend the movie, but remember it is mostly fiction. For the real story, read this book! Unless your name is David Duke, in which case it could be highly humiliating!

BlackkKlansmanTrailer

The Fall of the Wild by Ben A. Minteer

Minteer's book fills a niche in animal-related non-fiction that is fairly sparsely populated. I have not seen many books that deal with the idea of de-extinction, i.e. bringing extinct life back through cloning and gene manipulation. I found the premise of the book extremely intriguing because I have often wished that life forms made extinct in the recent past, especially by human intervention, could be brought back somehow Jurassic-Park style, but without the giant predators!
Written for the general public in a style very comprehensible to non-scientists, "The Fall of the Wild" gives detailed histories of the extinction of animals such as the Passenger Pigeon, the Great Auk, the Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacine), and the Heath Hen. He also describes near-extinctions, such as the American Bison, and how drastic conservation efforts saved the species.
Minteer advocates a type of conservation ethic that tries as much as possible to limit human disruption of already endangered and threatened species. For example, he received a lot of criticism from the scientific community for advocating non-lethal means of species documentation, for example using photography, audio recordings, and DNA swabs, rather than collecting "voucher specimens." Collecting voucher specimens involves killing one or more animals in the field to collect the remains for scientific study in the lab. Minter argues that this is irresponsible and dangerous to a species when the population of the species might be very small, rare, and/or isolated.
The book covers the case of zoos and aquariums in the world of conservation. The idea that zoos and aquariums have an important role to play in saving species from extinction is debatable, and Minter shows us both sides. The California Condor would most likely never have been saved if not for the intervention of the combined efforts of zoos and conservationists. On the other hand, zoos and aquariums are artificial environments for the animals and involve motives a bit more commercial than simply rescuing species from the brink of extinction. Do they have a role to play? The answer is yes and no. They have been instrumental in the captive breeding and reintroduction of endangered species, but sanctuaries and reserves can accomplish the same things without the exhibition aspect.
Another conservation effort discussed in the book is "assisted colonization," i.e translocating animals to other, safer habitats outside of their normal range to protect them from threats, such as climate change and poaching. Although a good short-term solution to greatly endangered species, this method is also controversial, as it does not solve the basic problems with the original habitat.
Finally, the idea of de-extinction, or "resurrection biology" is possibly even more controversial than non-lethal species documentation and assisted colonization. Minteer discusses the pros and cons of bringing species back from the extinction abyss in the fifth chapter "Promethean Dreams." What has happened to the species' habitat in its absence? How will other lifeforms deal with the sudden reintroduction of a creature gone for decades or centuries? How will new individuals of the species behave and adapt after being created "in a vacuum" as opposed to coming into being the natural way as the result of an unbroken line of evolution? Are we doing this to show our own technological prowess or to assuage our guilt, or is it truly for the good of the animals and nature? With an exploding extinction rate and rapidly advancing climate change, is it fair to bring them back when we are not handling the environment that well as it is? Should we be dealing with the present instead of trying to bring back the past?
These are the big questions to ponder and "The Fall of the Wild" serves as a helpful guide through the complex and controversial world of conservation ethics.

*I would like to thank the publisher, author, and NetGalley for providing an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*