The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

Description

Militant atheism is on the rise. In recent years Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have produced a steady stream of best-selling books denigrating religious belief. These authors are merely the leading edge of a larger movement that includes much of the scientific community. In response, mathematician David Berlinski, himself a secular Jew, delivers a biting defense of religious thought. The Devils Delusion is a brilliant, incisive, and funny book that explores the limits of science and the pretensions of those who insist it is the ultimate touchstone for understanding our world.

David Berlinski holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and has taught mathematics and philosophy at universities in the United States and in France. He is the best-selling author of such books as A Tour of the Calculus, The Advent of the Algorithm, and Newton's Gift. Berlinski writes frequently for Commentary, among other journals. He lives in Paris, France.

"In a brief review, it's impossible to convey not just the complexity of some of these issues, but the clarity, keenness, and breadth of learning that Berlinski brings to bear on them."--American Spectator "A powerful riposte to atheist mockery and cocksure science, and to the sort of philosophy that surrenders to them. David Berlinski proceeds reasonably and calmly to challenge recent scientific theorizing and to expose the unreason from which it presumes to criticize religion."--Harvey Mansfield, Harvard University "Berlinski's book is everything desirable: it is idiomatic, profound, brilliantly polemical, amusing, and of course vastly learned."--William F. Buckley Jr. "Powerful, erudite and often savagely funny."--Globe and Mail (Best Books of the Year) "With high style and light-hearted disdain, David Berlinski deflates the intellectual pretensions of the scientific atheist crowd. Maybe they can recite the Periodic Table by heart, but the secular Berlinski shows that this doesn't get them very far in reasoning about much weightier matters."--Michael J. Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box An incendiary and uproarious work of learned polemical writing, unique in its scientific sophistication and authority. Rather than criticizing science from the outside, Berlinski excoriates its atheist pretensions from within.--National Review David Berlinski plus any topic equals an extraordinary book. --Chicago Tribune