Blinded by the Light?

James Becker's The First Apostle is a work of mystery fiction in the vein of Dan Brown's work.  Though I enjoyed this book, I would have to admit that I find Brown's work to be more compelling to read.  They both suffer from the tendency to make characters, especially villains, one dimensional or caricatures.  Once again, the villain is the Catholic Church, who is in league with La Cosa Nostra in this particular tale.  Like Brown, Becker attempts to give his work a veneer of historical accuracy, but he does admit that much of his tale is speculative.  Without trying to give away too much of the plot, Becker's work is premised on the work of historian Joseph Atwill's Caesar's Messiah.  While Becker is hypercritical of the legacy of the Catholic Church, he seems to be willing to accept Atwill's work at face value, though most mainstream historians do not give much credence to Atwill's thesis.  With a title like, The First Apostle, most readers would likely realize that within a Christian context, this is a work related to the life of Paul of Tarsus, known to some as Saint Paul.  

The story begins with an accidental discovery of a Latin inscription "HIC VANDICI LATITANT", which translates into English as "Here lie the liars."A young British couple, Mark and Jackie Hampton, discover this inscription when they are remodeling their home in Italy.  After a seemingly innocuous Internet search by Jackie to learn more about this cryptic message, the story begins in earnest.  The Church and its associates are alerted to this search and trace it back to the Hampton's home.  Jackie ends up dead.  One of their close friends, Chris Bronson, who happens to be an English police officer comes to help Mark deal with the logistics of Angela's death and discovers a possible connection to Jackie's death and this inscription.  

Within the Vatican, a Cardinal Vertutti is alerted when the Vatican's Italian "partner", La Cosa Nostra learns of this inscription.  This inscription is related to the Vitalian Codex, an important and secret document that is lacked in the Apostolic Penitentiary, which is one of the most secretive and secure parts of the Vatican Library.  This codex contains information about the primary object of these searches, the Exomologesis. 

I wonder if there is a Library of Congress classification for fiction based on various conspiracies regarding the Catholic Church, the life, death, or possible marriage of Jesus, and assorted other figures like Peter and Paul.  All it takes is some historical vestige of an event or person and anything that is shady or incomplete can be accounted for by appeal to the Vatican Library, Opus Dei, or some other sinister wing of the Catholic Church.  I suppose I should disclose that I am a lifelong and practicing Roman Catholic, but I think my previous reviews show that I am pretty fair in my criticism of abuses of the Catholic Church past and present.  

Back to the story, once Chris Bronson begins to put the pieces together, the heat is turned up by his pursuers, who are truly pursuing information about the "liars" rather than Bronson and Hampton.  When Bronson realizes that he is out of his element with this historical and archaeological puzzle, he turns to the one person he knows who might be able to help- his ex-wife, Angela.  Angela works at the British Museum.  Once she receives pictures from Chris of the inscription, she forwards these to a colleague, Jeremy Goldman who is a specialist in ancient languages.  

Naturally, the Mafia is watching Bronson's every move, even in cyberspace, so no one is safe, especially Bronson and his ex-wife.  At this point, the book turns rather formulaic as the Bronsons race to solve the mystery, while the bad guys try to do the same and to tie up loose ends as well.  

The writing is good and Becker tells a fine story.  The narrative goes from the present day to first century Rome through the tragic fate of the Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade before returning to the  present with the frantic search for the liars in the hills on the outskirts of Rome.

If you like mystery thrillers with a historical twist, I think you might enjoy The First Apostle despite Becker's strong antipathy for the Roman Catholic Church and his skepticism regarding the historical origins of Christianity.  

God's Advocate

If it is not quite evident yet on this blog, religion and theology are two topics of great interest to me.  I have no formal training in either area, however, I do have a strong interest in these topics.  I would have to say that what I have learned is typical of the auto-didact, my reading is not particularly structured or systematic, but I think I am fairly well-informed on the issue of the existence of God.  Dean Overman's A Case for the Existence of God is a serious, intellectually dense, stimulating, and compelling in arguing for the existence of a God, a creator.  Overman, though he doesn't beat you over the head with it, is also a Christian.  However, as someone who is a lawyer, a theology student at Princeton Theological Seminary, and a former Templeton scholar in information theory, physics, and religion at Oxford. Overman is a formidable intellect in defense of God's existence, not an evangelist for Christianity.  

The book is only 160 pages long and contains 13 chapters. However, if you read the afterward and the three appendices, the book stretches out to around 200 pages.  In these pages, Overman packs a tremendous amount of argumentation and information.  I would not recommend reading it in one sitting.  You need time to digest the information presented.

Overman begins by arguing that if science can theorize about imperceptible objects, then one cannot be prevented from making arguments about God using theoretical and not empirical concepts too.  I think this argument is particularly timely given the fact that physicists recently spoke about finding the God particle (Higgs Boson), but cannot actually see it, we can only find traces of it.  

Overman argues that there is sufficient reason for the universe to be not only intelligible, but also rational and not merely random.  "The conundrum of using reason to argue against the existence of reason appears odd if not self-defeating. The intelligibility of physical reality appears to require the principle of sufficient reason." (25)

He goes on to also show why it is reasonable to conceive of a creator who is outside of its own creation and that our universe likely has a creator.  "Don Page, one of Stephen Hawking's collaborators, understands this issue well and uses the example of an artist's drawing of a circle to illustrate that the absence of a beginning or an end does not remove the artist as the cause of the circle." (40)

Overman next goes to the problem of a supernatural creation, but first he uses science to show how difficult a natural and random creation would be. "Moreover, because a creation out of nothing is not within the power of natural causes, one rationally conclude that, if the universe began to exist, it had a supernatural cause." (43) Why is it tough to prove a natural creation? Overman argues that at the very beginning of creation, at what is known as Planck time, there were no laws of physics, actually no physics at all. He elaborates," To be rational the atheist must show how something comes from nothing. Otherwise, the existence of something is not explained, unless that existence is a necessary existence, independent of anything else. One has to have a starting point, and if an atheist is not going to beg the question why her starting point exists, she must begin from really nothing- what Francis Schaeffer called nothing-nothing. This means no laws, no quantum fields, no wave functions, no observers, no energy, no particles, and no motion." (51)
The advantage of the theistic view is that God who is outside of the universe is the cause of creation. As a another trace of a creator, Overman spends the better part of "The new mathematics of information is consistent with the reasons for the existence of God emphasized in this book. These reasons are based on the argument for a necessary being, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, the order and rationality inherent in the universe,the fine-tuning of the universe for the development of conscious life, the evidential force of religious experiences, and the reason there is something rather than nothing." (73) Chapter 6 detailing how intelligle and mathematic the universe truly is. Overman writes, "The new mathematics of information is consistent with the reasons for the existence of God emphasized in this book. These reasons are based on the argument for a necessary being, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, the order and rationality inherent in the universe,the fine-tuning of the universe for the development of conscious life, the evidential force of religious experiences, and the reason there is something rather than nothing." (73)
As he continues building his case for God, Overman spends some time considering the implications of quantum physics for the universe and for the history of the debate over God's existence. As Overman notes, many of the most famous skeptics and opponents of religion based their arguments on a Newtonian scientific paradigm. With the work of scientists like Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, and Albert Einstein, the atheistic arguments have not ncessarily kept pace with science. To use one example, Overman shows that a purely materialistic view of reality creates problems for trying to make sense of our world. He writes, "The observer cannot make the measurement or observation, and also be part of the probability description of a physical system. The observer must always be someone outside of the probability description of the wave function."(77) this is an application of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Overman devotes most of chapter 8 to a discussion of the relatively new field of algorithmic information theory. Making use of this field, Overman makes a strong case that information may be the new paradigm for energy and an integral component of reality. It is also not reliant on matter for its existence. Overman explains, "Even when one attempts to apply a reductionist method and press on to deep-down reality, one finds that the foundation for all energy and matter appears to be an expression of information. This may remind one of the claim that 'in the beginning was the Word (Logos)." (86-87)
As you might expect from a trained lawyer, Overman does spend some space on the formal proofs for God's existence, relying heavily on the philosopher and writer, Mortimer J. Adler's book How to Think About God.  Overman doesn't think that proofs are superfluous to a belief in God and to the Christian faith, but he also doesn't feel there is any particular reason that one has to be convinced by reason to be a theist and Christian.
One of the weakest parts of the book is his argument, which isn't original, that without God there is no morality and no manner by which we can establish morality or distinguish between good and evil.  The famed philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell's classic What I Believe convinced me that an atheist can be moral and can make a case for ethics and morality. Overman's hyperbolic argument leads him to make comments like this: "Our distinction between good and evil between right and wrong are absurd if there is no God. If there is no God, a serial killer and a benevolent charity are ultimately of equal moral value. (Actually there is no moral value if there is no God.)" (89)  Now, this is just rhetorical grandstanding, in my opinion.  Overman is too smart to not be aware of philosophies like Utilitarianism that could make a compelling argument why a charity is more morally valuable than a serial killer.  If taking to its limits, Overman's argument makes some sense.  In other words, I believe that one should not murder or steal because I believe that God has created all of us humans.  Similarly, I can argue for environmental restraint because again God has created our world.  I do have an absolute standard that an atheist does not. However, just because there is no absolute moral or ethical standard does not preclude the development of a secular ethical and moral framework.  Also, this type of absolute standard has not prevented Jews, Christians, and Muslims from committing horrible atrocities against one another and even within their own faith traditions.
Overman does do a nice job of trying to argue for other approaches to God beyond the merely rational method.  In this portion of his work he appeals to famous scientists and philosophers like Blaise Pascal, Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Buber, Simone Weil, Mortimer Adler, and others.  Everyone one of these individuals possessed a keen intellect, but they also saw clearly the limits of reason.  I was familiar with most of these thinkers and their arguments, but if you are not, this is a good introduction to some alternate ways to attempt to develop an understanding and relationship to God.
In his appendices, Overman expands on why he sees the materialist and atheistic case for creation fall short.  Appealing once again to information theory, Overman argues, "The laws of physics are basically compact formulas, the millions of instructions (information) contained in the smallest living organism's DNA requires sequences that are too random and contain too much information to be derived from compact formulas.  If I understand this correctly, Overman is arguing that life as we know it cannot be derived from the relatively simple algorithms available in the natural world.  He cites the work of physicist Paul Davies, who has written a series of books that have over time drawn him to the side of theism.  Davies writes, "The heart of my objection is this: The laws of physics that operate between atoms and molecules are, almost by definition, simple and general.  We would not expect them alone to lead inexorably to something both highly complex and highly specific. ... genomes are more or less random sequences of base pairs, and that this very randomness is essential if they are to play the role of evolvable, information-rich molecules." (Davies, The Fifth Miracle, 254-256)
Overman concludes by invoking the work of the mathematician Kurt Godel and his Incompleteness Theorem which argues that mathematics and other systems of information cannot ultimately prove their own validity.  I am butchering this, but you can look up Godel's argument if you wish.  Here is Overman's take on it: Godel's theorem demonstrates that mathematics  is incomplete because the system leaves unanswered the truth or falsity of certain mathematical propositions that are the logical results of valid mathematical inferences. . . . There is clearly a limit on the ability of human reasoning to know that logical thought processes will lead to truth."
This is not an easy read and requires the reader to ponder many new and difficult concepts.  Overman does a masterful job of making many of these concepts comprehensible.  His use of appendices allows the non-specialist to stick to the text, but does offer more detailed analysis of these ideas, if you are interested.  He also uses extensive footnotes, but I did find these to be mostly helpful.  A most important book for the ongoing debate regarding the existence of God.

Czar