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June 3, 2008  

side bar side bar tothesource: That’s a rather provocative title! I suspect one of the responses you tend to get is, “You’re for book burning!”

Dr. Benjamin Wiker: Unfortunately it is. But I call for precisely the opposite of book burning or censorship. I want people to read these books—all fifteen of them.

TTS: But if they are so dangerous, why should we read them?

Wiker: I argue that these books need to be read because the ideas contained in them have so influenced the modern mind, yet so few people have read the books in which these destructive ideas originated. Ignorance is not bliss! If we don’t understand the destructive ideas that form our contemporary culture, then we are really slaves to someone else’s bad ideas. We are Freudian without understanding Freud, or Hobbesian without ever having read Hobbes.

One of the best ways to free ourselves from bad ideas that have become our cultural inheritance, is go back to the sources. Go back to the books where they were first set forth in clearest form. That’s a liberating experience. It allows us to see the argument for what it is, and we can then judge it accordingly.

TTS: Let’s look at some of the books, Adolf Hitler’s, Mein Kampf, Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto—they’re certainly books you’d likely see on anyone’s list of books that screwed up the world.

Wiker: It’s hard to argue that the world has been a better place because of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.  Clearly the world would have been spared a lot of grief if it had never been written. And the Communist Manifesto? Marxist ideology led to the slaughter of upwards of 100,000,000 people in the name of bringing about an entirely fictional communist utopia. Humanity would have had significantly less misery had the Manifesto not seen the light of day.

TTS: Who could argue with that?

Wiker: Surprisingly enough, many do. They say things like, “Books don’t kill; people do” or “Well, do you want to go back to the times when the Church was censoring everything”?

TTS: What do you say to that?

Wiker: To take the last point first, I repeat: I don’t want these books to be censored. I want them to be read, and read critically. I’ve been reading the Great Books for a quarter of a century, both the profoundly good ones and the profoundly bad ones. It’s been the greatest education imaginable. 

When I hear the gibe about religion and censorship, I like to throw back a little irony. By far the greatest totalitarian control of books and ideas has occurred under Marxist regimes, not Christian regimes. Lenin and Stalin even crushed their fellow Marxists who dared to deviate in the slightest degree from the official ideology. And who could forget Cambodia’s Pol Pot killing people with eyeglasses simply because he thought it likely that they were intellectuals?

That helps to answer the retort that “Books don’t kill; people do.” Sure, books that stay on the shelf and no one reads, don’t have any effect. But books that change people’s minds, and give them a distorted view of reality, are destructive. So we obviously aren’t talking just about the physical book doing harm, but its “incarnation” in intellectual culture and in political structures. For example, it was Lenin’s State and Revolution that gave Marxism its political structure in the Soviet Union, the structure that allowed it to be the world’s greatest tyranny.

TTS: What about some of the lesser-known books, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men. That sounds like a book of merely academic interest. How could a book written in the mid-18th century have anything to do with us in the 21st century?

Wiker: Many books that still define us are no longer read, or read only in college survey courses and soon forgotten. But see if the following sounds familiar. Rousseau argued that our natural state, or original state, is entirely asocial and amoral. Or to put it another way, that the love between a man and a woman, the love between parents and children, the family itself—all of these are unnatural. In fact, they are the cause of all human misery because they create entanglements that destroy our original freedom to do exactly what we want to do, without any obligations to anyone else. Rousseau’s picture of our original, happy condition is a man who merely follows his pleasures all day, eating when he’s hungry, sleeping when he’s tired, and having no-strings-attached sex with whatever woman happens to wander by. Sound familiar?

TTS: Sounds a lot like all too many men today!

Wiker: Exactly! We have a lot of Rousseauean men out there who have never read Rousseau. They don’t have to. Rousseau’s ideas spread all over Europe in the latter 18th century, and filtered down into popular philosophy, literature, and public discourse. Needless to say, they helped form the foundation of the sexual revolution in the 20th century. That’s how bad ideas work, and the consequence has been to create an abundance of rootless male sexual predators who view marriage and the family as burdens upon their personal freedom and happiness.

TTS: What about Charles Darwin?

Wiker: A lot of people know about Darwin’s more famous Origin of Species, but have never heard of his later book, The Descent of Man, where he applies his evolutionary theory to human nature. This is really the founding book of the modern eugenics movement that spread all over Europe and America, spawning such destructive books as Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil,and Margaret Sanger’s Pivot of Civilization, but also Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male—all books that I treat in 10 Books that Screwed Up the World. I’ll leave it to readers to discover all the connections!

Responses to Darwin's Atheist Moment:

I enjoy this website every week. Maybe I can't see the forest for the trees. Can the concept of natural selection be challenged in the sense of being logically inconsistent, kind of like talking about mother nature as if there is a personal being behind the universe? My understanding is that Darwin and his followers believe that there is no purpose, intelligence or intentions behind the universe and therefore natural selection, otherwise they would be getting back into God country. But the word selection means choosing, picking out, which seems to be unfairly smuggling intelligence, purpose and intentions back into the universe to make evolution possible. I would be interested if someone addressed this aspect of your last issue. - Steve Sorensen

Responses to We Told You So:

Reader Response to John Durbin (see John Durbin's letter below):
Dear John, thank you for asking for tothesource's thoughts are. I cannot respond for tothesource, but I can as a sister in Christ who has studied hard and researched long on questions of import to me on Scripture interpretation and textual criticism. You said in your note to tothesource: Because of these hyper sensitive issues of creeds, Scripture interpretations, textual criticisms of what the original or true text was and retaining "orthodoxy" I have kept myself out of divinity schools and such but I was wondering what your thoughts were. This statement reveals your assumption that seminaries and divinity schools are the source of sensitive questions, disputes, and bad interpretations. This may be true of some denominational schools who profess to have the only claim on orthodoxy. But a more informed understanding is that such schools are the right place for such questions to be researched and debated. Textual questions can and do arise from anywhere in any culture. The theological academy is the right place to do a full scale research project on your issue(s) of import. But to "keep yourself out" of the very places where scholarly research is done, studied, debated, and at least, for those who are really willing to do the work, are answered, for each new generation—to keep yourself from such places betrays your lack of curiosity to learn and experience the genuine faith and passion of active scholars today (many of whom I have studied under, like Dallas Willard, Gordon Fee, Eugene Peterson, James Houston, JI Packer) who are doing intense and excellent research with profoundly Biblical conclusions. Your statement also makes me want to know just whom you are reading? There is much excellent scholarship available in theological seminaries, and if you take the time to investigate the non-denominational and evangelical ones like Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA or Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, or Tyndale in Toronto, Ontario, you will find that every theological view from most every living denomination is studied on any particular issue at such institutions, and that you are free to study in depth in any or all of them, and form your Christ-inspired decision for yourself. Would this not be better than just universalizing your criticism of some scholars and conclusions to all theological institutions? Why cannot Christians with faith Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God do sensible, reasonable, and well done research for the Church on it's history and the manuscripts. Obviously your statement here is a criticism and question. And you are trying to write a book to clarify theological history for the Church for others, but doing the research entirely on your own? No guidance from those who have gone before? How can you propose to be an expert on what you are writing about if you have not really studied in depth and breadth the history of the Church that seminaries are here to teach? Such institutions are the guardians of the history and research from every age since the Church began, and they hold the volumes of literature and microfische that you would need to expose yourself deeply tom in order to become educated? I'm just tyring to get in to history and facts and write a book in simple form explaining orthodoxical Christian creeds and history of them. Sometimes, I find honesty and sensible research conclusions wanting. But since you have judged such institutions universally, are you instead claiming that you are reasonable and sensible and doing research 'well' by assuming confidence that Wikipedia, or the world wide web, or even tothesource, are sources enough for your research to write an informative book on Church history that will uphold orthodox Christianity? What church historians have you read? Allister McGrath I recommend to you. From a two-seminary-trained sister in Christ, I humbly suggest, please get educated by some institution where others who have been doing research for the Church all their lives can testify publicly, and with honor and integrity, that you have studied and learned, as scripture says, "to show yourself approved" —before you propose to educate others! - SP

I read some of your review and refuting of Ehrman's book Misquoting Jesus. I have concern too that scholors without faith in Jesus Christ are out-witting if you will, those who do. So I have things in common with you. One I do not though is the development and the problems with scribes with the deity of Christ as taught in the Nicean Creed. To me, this is indeed a problem, if not of doctrine alone, of view on scribal and textual bias of textual choice. Conybeare's work on Eusebius's quote of Matthew 28:19 is ignored? Is it ignored due to the popularity of the orthodoxy's position on the deity? Honestly, would it just be too "embarassing" to admit such a primitive error not only in very early copies of Matthew being corrupted but in orthodoxy's use of a trinitarian Great Commission? That is was accepted in albeit early yet corrupted form? I'm just tyring to get in to history and facts and write a book in simple form explaining orthodoxical Christian creeds and history of them. Sometimes, I find honesty and sensible research conclusions wanting. Usually this is in favor of defending an established and beloved creed. I suppose the same can be said of the Catholic interpretation of Jesus' brothers and other things "found" in the Scripture. Because of these hyper sensitive issues of creeds, Scripture interpretations, textual criticisms of what the original or true text was and retaining "orthodoxy" I have kept myself out of divinity schools and such but I was wondering what your thoughts were. Why cannot Christians with faith Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God do sensible, reasonable, and well done research for the Church on it's history and the manuscripts. Is anyone who does not accept the doctrines and creeds of Nicean still doomed as heretical today? That's a shame, and in many cases due to zealots of irrational and dishonest means. I was just hoping as it seems you are more in touch with scholors and orthodoxy today to tell me how things are going and what direction. I will bear by blame or cross for my beliefs as all will when we give account. If you could so kindly tell me what you think in a charitable way what direction biblical scholorship is heading and if you think I should stay away from mainstream, orthodoxical writers seeing that I see trinitarian errors and acceptance of errors. I'm just saddened that the old saying, anybody can make the bible say anything they want and anybody can prove anything from the bible is so true even in orthodoxical Christianity where it seems to me they should know better and they puroposefully overlook evidence. Thank you. Sincerely, -John Durbin

 
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We live complex lives. We strive to sort out priorities that sometimes conflict or seem incompatible. A moral framework is needed to help us understand the reality around us. Our Judeo-Christian heritage provides a framework to help us comprehend the choices we make and the conflicts that arise over them. It is not only the main source of our spiritual values, but also many of the secular values we depend on.

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