Announcing “Being Good News”

There’s a new dedicated website for the book Being Good, edited by Doug Geivett and Mike Austin. It’s called “Being Good News.” The website features content related to the book, which has just been released. Included is a Newsletter section, where issues of the new “Being Good Newsletter” can be downloaded. For more information about the website and the newsletter, click here.

To download the first issue of the Newsletter, click here: Being Good Newsletter 1.1 (January 2012).

For future issues, go to the Newsletter page at “Being Good News.”

New Book Arrival—Being Good: Christian Virtues for Everyday Life

The new book edited by Doug Geivett and Michael Austin has arrived from the publisher! Here’s what three noted Christian thinkers are saying about Being Good: Christian Virtues for Everyday Life . . . .

“Being Good, with its outstanding contributions by frontline Christian thinkers and scholars, is a major contribution to the intellectual and spiritual needs of our times. Hopefully it will become a part of the practice, teaching, and preaching in today’s most prominent ministries.”

— Dallas Willard, University of Southern California

“Being Good contains eleven well-informed, gracefully written new essays on crucial aspects of Christian character, intentionally crafted to aid the reader in the quest to grow in the Christian virtues.”

— Robert C. Roberts, Baylor University

“Here I found a significantly Christian approach to living virtuously, complete with practical suggestions in every chapter for improving the quality of this life. I found myself finishing a chapter and thinking it was the best I had seen so far, only to find the next one equally or even more stimulating. When that happens, you realize that you are holding a quality text!”

—Gary R. Habermas, Liberty University

For more details about the book, follow this link.

Being Good: Christian Virtues for Everyday Life—New Book Announcement

Doug Geivett and Michael Austin have co-edited a new book, to be released by Eerdmans January 2012. Being Good: Christian Virtues for Everyday Life discusses eleven vital virtues from a Christian philosophical perspective. Each chapter is devoted to a particular virtue and is written by a Christian philosopher with special interest in that virtue. Contributors include:

• Paul Moser, on the virtue of Faith
• Jason Baehr, on the virtue of Open-mindedness
• Jim Spiegel, on the virtue of Wisdom
• David Horner and David Turner, on the virtue of Zeal
• William Mattison, on the virtue of Hope
• Steve Porter, on the virtue of Contentment
• Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, on the virtue of Courage
• Charles Taliaferro, on the virtue of Love
• Michael Austin, on the virtue of Compassion
• Doug Geivett, on the virtue of Forgiveness
• Andrew Pinset, on the virtue of Humility

The book is organized into three parts:

• Part 1: Faith
• Part 2: Hope
• Part 3: Love

Each chapter discusses a particular virtue, with careful description of the virtue, attention to philosophical difficulties related to the virtue, treatment of important Bible passages that deal with the virtue, and practical application of the virtue. Chapters conclude with though-provoking discussion questions to aid in personal reflection or small group discussion.

The book can be ordered now, directly from Eerdmans here.

Teaching Logic & Critical Thinking to Your Kids

Cover of Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking

It’s pleasing to know that parents are taking a more proactive role in the education of their children, whether or not they are homeschooling. I’ve been asked if I can recommend tools that could be used to teach children the elements of logic and critical thinking.

1. My first suggestion is that the best way to teach children how to think critically is to be a visible model of critical thinking. Children have a far greater aptitude for critical thinking than adults credit them for. They tend to be good at inferential reasoning. Their powers are limited in part by their limited storehouse of information from which to make inferences.
2. Modeling excellence in critical thinking presupposes skill in critical thinking. So parents need to be students of logic and critical thinking themselves. Unfortunately, most have not had the opportunity for formal education in these skills. But there are accessible books to consider. I’ll add a list of recommendations at the end of this post.
3. If your children see you making the attempt to sharpen your skills in reasoning, this will itself be a good example to them. You can tell them what you’re learning.
4. Learn the names of basic inferential moves (for example modus ponens, modus tollens) and use these labels with your children when they demonstrate their own ability to make such moves. This should reinforce their awareness of the significance of their mental powers, and affirm them in the use of their powers.
5. Encourage your children to think about the implications of something they have said or heard. You’ll have to be alert to opportunities for this. But once you’ve been at it for awhile, you’ll get into a natural groove. It will eventually become a part of your routine interaction with your kids. How to do this? I’ll save that for another post sometime.
6. Get your children reading at their grade level (or above!) books that exemplify and encourage critical thinking. Mystery and suspense novels, carefully selected for their sophistication and interest, can be useful. I read the Hardy Boys as a kid. I also liked the stories of the Sugar Creek Gang.
7. If you’re home schooling (or not), you can include in the curriculum some materials that teach critical thinking. The Fallacy Detective is a good source for this. (See below.)

Recommendations:

So, here are a few of the many resources available. I’m recommending those that provide a good place to start. Each title is linked to its Amazon page.

Books that inspire parents and other educators to teach children these skills:

• The most impressive books I’ve seen for this were written by Isaac Watts (born 1674), the great pastor and hymn writer. They are Logic: The Right Use of Reason in the Inquiry After Truth, and  The Improvement of the Mind: A Supplement to Logic, with A Discourse on the Education of Children and Youth.

Books for self-education in logic and critical thinking:

• 

  Quickstudy Reference Guide at Amazon

  Begin with D. Q. McInerny, Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking. See my post about this book here.

• Next, study a more detailed text. I recommend Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide, by Tracy Bowell and Gary Kemp (also discussed here).
• For convenient reference, have a copy of A Rulebook for Arguments, by Anthony Weston.
• For very quick reference and review, you might want to have the Quickstudy Reference Guide on Logic.

With adequate preparation in the early years, children in junior high and high school may be ready to work through these books themselves. They don’t provide a complete education in logic, but they are satisfactory for pre-college preparation. For more rigorous study in high school, I recommend using one of two textbooks:

• Irving M. Copi, Introduction to Logic—available in numerous editions, this is the classic textbook for college-level logic.
• Patrick J. Hurley, A Concise Introduction to Logic—also available in several editions.

Like most textbooks, Copi and Hurley are pricey. So you may want to settle for a second-hand copy. The illustrations and exposition of old editions will be dated, but the logic will be the same! I shop for second-hand books at AbeBooks.com.

For grade school and up:

• Nathaniel Bludorn and Hans Bludorn, The Fallacy Detective: Thirty-Eight Lessons on How to Recognize Bad Reasoning.
• Nathaniel Bludorn and Hans Bludorn, The Thinking Toolbox: Thirty-Five Lessons That Will Build Your Reasoning Skills.
• Nathaniel Bludorn and Hans Bludorn, Logic in 100 Minutes.

Fiction classics for youth:

• Franklin W. Dixon, The Hardy Boys Series (complete set here; starter set here)
• Carolyne Keene, Nancy Drew Series (partial six-book set; complete set here)
• Paul Hutchens, Sugar Creek Gang (starter set of six books)

This post is cross-referenced in an interesting post here.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Birthday Today

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

Today we are witnessing the throes of political unrest in an important part of the world. Cries of revolution are all over the news.

Today, it happens, is also the 104th anniversary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s birthday. Bonhoeffer famously and courageously determined to participate in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He and his co-conspirators failed. They were arrested and executed. Their execution occurred just 23 days before the Allied victory in World War 2. And do you know, Bonhoeffer did not have a high expectation that their plan would succeed? Rather, he believed he was under an obligation, that it was the right thing to do, even should the effort fail. In his case, the verdict of obligation was worked out in thoughtful consideration of the authoritative will of the loving God of the Christian Bible. Not everyone agreed with him then (most disagreed), and many would disagree still. But the point is simply that he acted from a sense of duty and deep moral principle informed by a close study of God’s revealed purposes.

The moral justification of a political revolution, on my view, must be justified on grounds that do not depend on the actual outcome. What do you think?

Note: Today I attended a luncheon at my university where the author of a new biography of Bonhoeffer spoke about the great man’s conviction and self-sacrifice. The biography is Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy, by Eric Metaxas.

The Serious Business of Lying and the Enterprise of Fiction

Image via Wikipedia

Ursula Le Guin objects to the idea that science fiction is predictive. In 1976, she wrote:

Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.

Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying.

— Ursula K. Le Guin, Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness

Lying, you might say, is serious business. Even when it comes to fiction, when we like to be lied to. But why do we like to be lied to, those of us who read fiction and pay good money to see movies?

There’s a clue in the title of John Dufresne’s guide to writing fiction: The Lie That Tells a Truth. Fiction and film, at their best, package important truths in a tissue of lies. Some of these truths we already know before our fictive experience of them. Others we learn, if we trust the lies, when fiction happens to us. And often it is our capacity to trust the lie that makes us vulnerable to truths.

Some will protest that the novelist and the screenwriter do not lie. After all, we know “it’s only a story.” But since when has this stopped us from believing what we know isn’t so? Isn’t Le Guin onto something when she says,

In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren’t there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napolean. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

And in the thick of our believing, we don’t want to be reminded that “it’s only a story.” We’re like the lad whose grandfather reads to him in the movie The Princess Bride. He’s not as ambivalent as he pretends. And neither are we. If it’s a really good story.

Dodgy Ruminations about an Afterlife

“God bless non-scientific narratives,” writes Jacques Belinerblau, a professor at Georgetown University. Of course, this is with tongue in cheek, since, though he’s Jewish, Berlinerblau is an atheist.

He speaks sincerely, however, about a hopefulness grounded in certain non-scientific narratives, for he’d like to believe that there’s an afterlife. Actually, he finds it hard to believe that there is not an afterlife of some kind.

So he believes that God does not exist, and sorta-kinda believes that there is an afterlife.

This lede sets the context for Berlinerblau’s review, titled “You’re Dead. Now What?” of four books on the topic:

• Life After Death: The Evidence, by Dinesh D’Souza
• Beyond: On Life After Death, by Fred M. Frohock
• After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, by John Casey
• Surviving Death, by Mark Johnston

Berlinblau is a touch dismissive of D’Souza. But Berlinblau, I believe, is right that there really isn’t good strictly scientific evidence for an afterlife.

If Berlinerblau’s review of Frohock is rooted in a reliable summary of the book, I’d say it’s worth a look. But it sounds like Frohock is working from some sort of pantheist or neo-pagan metaphysics (or worldview). I wish Berlinerblau had said more about this.

This reviewer makes Casey’s book sounds especially dull. But he has positive things to say about it. And I must say that the pages of this book are cloaked in the most impressive cover of the bunch.

Johnston appears to be one of those philosophers who has to be brilliant simply because it’s frequently impossible to understand what he’s saying. I suspect he’s of the “continental” variety. Berlinerblau’s sample quote from the book is almost a dead give-away.

I probably will read Frohock, eventually. He’s supposed to be ambivalent about whether science could yield evidence for an afterlife. And yet, says Berlinerblau, he’s a materialist. Like Berlinerblau, I find this confusing. If an individual person is completely constituted by material stuff and its physical organization, and this stuff dissolves—or its structure breaks down—following death, then what is the nature of the life beyond death?

The review is published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, of all places. This indicates re-entry of the possibility of an afterlife into academic surmise. Until recently, most scholars would rather die than enter a conversation about such things. Possibly, most scholars still have this preference. (It has not always been so.)

It’s equally fascinating that the traditional Christian doctrine of the afterlife is waved off with an almost pious flick of the wrist. (Check out the review and see if you agree.)

Berlinerblau’s book review enters a general conversation that is cautiously making its way back into serious discourse. But this discourse is dominated by a distinctly secular hope for a pleasant afterlife. Does this sound to anyone else like whistling past the graveyard?

Afternotes:

1. Berlinerblau adorns his essay with a choice literary quote:

The flesh would shrink and go, the blood would dry, but no one believes in his mind of minds or heart of hearts that the pictures do stop.

—Saul Bellow, Ravelstei

2. Christopher Benson reviews the Casey book, together with A Very Brief History of Eternity, by Carlos Eire, for the Christian periodical Books and Culture. Benson titles his review “Without End—Changing conceptions of the afterlife.” Indeed.

***

What do you think?

1. What is the best evidence for an afterlife?
2. If you believe in an afterlife, what will it be like?
3. What is the best argument that there is no afterlife?
4. Would there have to be a God for there to be an afterlife?
5. Are you hoping for an afterlife?
6. Are you expecting an afterlife?

Mysterious Opening Lines: Le Carré, Ludlum, and Others

GIGA Quotes, an online source for quotations, has listed 43 pages of first lines from books, beginning with Merrian-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. This amounts to more than 2300 first-line excerpts from “classical, notable and bestselling books” (here).

First lines interest me. They interest me as an author, and as a reader.

Audio Post: A Commentary on Four Novels

This is my first podcast or audio post. It’s kind of an experiment—a discussion of four novels that I read the past week during a refreshing vacation in Washington and Idaho.

Here are the books with links to Amazon:

• Michael Crichton, The Great Train Robbery
• Robertson Davies, The Manticore
• Elizabeth Daly, And Dangerous to Know
• Donald E. Westlake, Pity Him Afterwards

Now Reading “Little, Big,” by John Crowley

If you know the name Smoky Barnable, it’s because you’ve read all or part of John Crowley’s fantasy novel Little, Big, or, The Fairies’ Parliament. Or—less likely—you’ve only read about it. I suggest this is unlikely because you probably haven’t read about the novel unless you are a reader, like fantasy fiction, and can’t resist when the accolades for a book are in the order of:

Twice Shattered—A Memoir by Frank Pastore

In 1970, I was playing Little League baseball for the “Sparks” in Alta Loma, California. In Upland, the next town over (not 10 minutes away from my home), Frank Pastore was the Little League pitcher for his team. We both played “south of Foothill Boulevard,” but I have no idea whether I ever faced Frank with a bat on my shoulder.

More than twenty years later, we were introduced officially.

Review of “Snakes in Suits”

A few days ago I unexpectedly came across a book that I believe may be one of the most important books I’ve read—Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work, by Paul Babiak and Robert D. Hale (2006).

This is not your standard self-help book that panders to readers needing yet another pop-psychology fix. It is a serious but readable treatise on how the psycho-dynamics of predatory behavior manifests in the workplace, the damage that results when this happens, and how co-workers and superiors can and must respond with greater wisdom.

Faith, Film & Philosophy—New Format

Large Print Format

Our publisher has recently announced that our book Faith, Film and Philosophy: Big Ideas on the Big Screen is now available through “Read How You Want”—a company that customizes select books for readers with reading difficulties. This is good news for readers who will benefit from the special formatting provided by this company.

Amazon Search Link

To search Amazon for any product, including the books, films, and various tools discussed in these pages, click on the Amazon icon:

Julian Jackson on Daniel Cordier on the French Resistance

Anyone interested in the history of the French Resistance should become familiar with the memoirs of Daniel Cordier. To be convinced of that, I recommend Julian Jackson’s recent critical review of Cordier’s book (here).