Easter

It's Easter.

Our calendar is looking weirdly empty for the next five days, and Mulan and Miya are looking forward to relaxing with almost nothing planned.

For lunch today they're having Chinese time; they're out with Mama and friends having a restaurant meal.

Meanwhile, over the past few days I've been enjoying contemplating the meaning of Easter as originally intended in the Gospels of the Bible.

This video is part one of a multipart mini-series by James Tabor.  It's decently detailed, with each 20-50min video covering one day in the story of Jesus' final week.  Highly recommended for those interested in the texts themselves.

But here's my practical takeaway message from the first couple of days:

Those who know me know that I'm an ethical vegetarian.  Animals have the capacity to suffer -- they feel pain and have their own interests.  We shouldn't unnecessarily cause them pain and suffering.  We (mostly) don't need to eat them.

I'm delighted that Jesus in the Gospels was strongly and forcefully trying to put a stop to the unnecessary torture and slaughter of millions of animals.  On day two, when Jesus disrupts the temple, he quotes the Hebrew Bible as scriptural authority to stop the killing of the animals.

I really hope that more Christians would follow Jesus on this one.

Why I am not a Christian

At 2am on Monday, Bart Ehrman talked for five hours on why he's not a Christian.

In his part of the world it was Sunday, but for me it was 2am, so I didn't listen to him live.  But I did watch him over the next few days while eating meals.  It's here.

Over the five hours Ehrman gave a mix of his personal life history, academic scholarship on the Bible and Christianity, and observations of the world in which we live.  In all aspects it was a brief overview, but it was a pretty good summary of how things are.

In my opinion Ehrman is both sensitive and sensible, and I mostly agree with what he says.  Highly recommended to watch.

If you've watched it, here are a few of my quick thoughts:

1.  Ehrman grew up as a Christian, and as a teen he had a born again experience in which he converted to evangelical Christianity.  He studied the Bible and Christianity as an evangelical believer in the inerrancy of the Bible.  But over time through his studies he began to see the discrepancies, so came to see the Bible as written by people for people. He still believed that God was active in the world, but that the Bible wasn't God's perfect word.  However, some time after that, as he looked at the world around us, he could not see God's active participation.  The world contains too much suffering, and the self-evidence of that doesn't fit with an all-powerful loving God who actively helps His people.  For Ehrman, a memorable point was when he was saying the Nicene Creed in church, and found that all he could honestly say truthfully was that Jesus was crucified under Pilate and suffered and was buried.  He thought it would be dishonest of him to continue participating in church.

I have a great deal of respect for Ehrman on that, and I think it's an honorable response to take.  However, it's not the only possible response.

I have heard and read of a number of Christians in that same situation, who have nonetheless consciously decided to continue as Christians in the church.  Their thinking is that language and belief is not purely propositional.  That is, when we speak we are not always intending to make statements about the world that are either true or false.  Language has lots of other purposes.  Just because we don't believe the statements are literally true doesn't mean that they don't have other value in saying them.  One purpose is a social one, to create and enhance loving community bonds.  For these Christians, saying the Nicene Creed in church is not about merely stating facts about the world.  It is about joining together with other people in a loving, shared community.  Saying the Creed together helps form relationships, which helps others, and makes the world a better place.

Some of these Christians are non-realists, or fictionalists.  They believe that God does not really exist, but that the church is a wonderful, human, place to create and enhance a good community.  Don Cupitt and Lloyd Geering have written about this.  Others of these Christians still think that God exists, but think that God is really not like what most/many Christians think he is.  John Bishop (my graduate advisor back at university) suggested that God is literally love (a relation that come into existence in ideal communities).  All of these approaches treat Christianity as a tradition, not a single doctrine, and as such it's possible to take inspiration and think differently while still staying within it.

I assume Ehrman, as an academic, is aware of this approach.  But he does not mention it at all.  I wonder why he chose not to personally do things that way.

2.  As I understand it, Ehrman's main reason for leaving Christianity was that he was convinced by the Argument from Evil.  I agree with him on this.  And I completely agree with him that it's important to genuinely acknowledge the real horrors of suffering, in real life situations, and not try to theorise it away with abstractions.  Clearly he's read and thought a lot about this, and he wrote a book on the various ways the Bible writers responded to suffering (I've read his book, God's Problem, and I highly recommend it).

However: back in the day at university I did a graduate course on the Argument from Evil, where we looked at some of the detailed back and forth on the replies and counter-replies.  I don't consider myself an expert on this, but in all of what I have heard and read of Ehrman on this, he has never shown that he is aware of much of what we covered in that course.  Maybe he doesn't feel the need to mention it, but sometimes I wonder why he didn't present (and reply to) certain responses to his arguments.  There is definitely much more back and forth to the issue than he shows.  Consequently, so far I've felt that his discussions of the argument are, while essentially correct, a little light.

3.  Similar to the Argument from Evil, I think Ehrman is also a little light on metaethics, when he discusses how it's possible to have morality without God.  I think he's mostly right, but I don't think he presented the issue of objectivity in ethics as precisely as it could have been presented.  As I understood him, he seemed to grant too quickly that if we reject the existence of God (and especially the Divine Command theory of ethics), then we are left with an ethics that is not objective (but that's okay).  Contrary to this, there are lots of ways of understanding ethics in an objective way that are not connected with God.

4.  Mostly I agree with Ehrman's practical ethics.  He says he's a humanist, and I think he rightly focuses a lot on helping other humans.  I think his outlook in this respect is admirable, and he has done a lot of good in the world.  As far as I understand it, I think Ehrman grounds this human-centred ethics on the observation that humans have evolved in certain ways to have certain dispositions and values, including social values of helping each other.

However, I am with Peter Singer in thinking that this approach is "speciesist".  I agree with Singer that a better way of grounding our ethics is to consider suffering in general, by all beings, and not merely human suffering.  So, while I agree with Ehrman that an essential part of living in this world is about helping other humans, I think we could and should extend this help to non-humans who also suffer.

Book review: Jesus Before the Gospels

Last month I wrote that lately I've been reading about the history of Christianity.

In particular, I reviewed a book which examines the physical texts that we have of the New Testament, and how, through copies of copies of copies, they changed over the centuries.  With this question we were looking at the period of time between when the original authors first wrote their texts and when the copies that we have today were written.  It's a question of the extent to which the Bible as we know it today is different from what was originally written by the original authors.  

The answer is both fascinating and complicated.

There is, however, a prior question to this.

This is a question of what happened during the time gap between when the historical events of Jesus took place and when the original authors first wrote their texts.  It's about the oral history before the written history.

I've just finished reading Bart Ehrman's 2016 book on this, Jesus before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed and Invented their Stories of the Savior.

The New Testament is a collection of 27 books written by many different authors over several decades.  The mainstream view is that the earliest of these (Paul's seven letters) were written some 20+ years after the death of Jesus.  The four Gospels in the Bible are anonymous (and almost certainly not really written by Matthew, Mark, Luke or John).  Likely, Mark was written about 40 years after Jesus' death, while Matthew and Luke-Acts were 15 or so years after Mark, and John was several years later again.  These four Gospels are our earliest written records of the life of Jesus.  (Paul's letters are earlier, but don't contain a lot of information about Jesus' life.)  We also have other texts about Jesus outside of the Bible, including many other Gospels, however these were written later and have more differences, suggesting further divergence from the historical events over time.

The question is how historically accurate are these earliest texts (written about 40 to 65 years after the events took place).  In particular, do they accurately describe Jesus' life?  Which parts (if any) really happened, and which parts (if any) were misremembered or made up?

There are two parts to answering this question.  One is to look at the texts themselves -- how the Gospel accounts differ from each other, and how they are the same.  The differences tell us that different Christian communities likely had different oral traditions and local circumstances leading up to eventually writing the texts.  The similarities suggest a common origin (possibly, though not necessarily, back to Jesus).

The other part that Ehrman addresses is the empirical work that informs us of the psychology and anthropology of both memory and oral cultural traditions.  By understanding how memory works in humans, and how people orally pass on knowledge to later generations, we can have a better understanding of what likely happened in the decades after the events as people told others what they had seen and heard.

The first part first.

When we look at how the Gospels each describe certain happenings, and when we list out the events in order point by point, we come across significant differences.  These are not merely differences of perspective; some differences contain logical or physical impossibilities.  Here and elsewhere Ehrman discusses these Biblical contradictions.  This means that clearly, at least in some respects, some of the Gospel writers misremembered things, or made up things, or heard different stories than each other.  They can't all be historically accurate.

Matthew and Luke both contain some word-for-word identical sections to Mark, suggesting that the authors of Matthew and Luke both had a copy of Mark on hand when they wrote their Gospels.  They also have word-for-word identical sections that are not in Mark, suggesting that they both had on hand another written source that we have now lost (scholars call this Q).  They may have separately had other writings on hand, too (called M and L).  So, in all probability these Gospel writers were not writing entirely from memory but were relying in part on some other earlier writings (much of which we have now lost).

We might also look at the language of the Gospel stories.  Apparently some parts only work in Aramaic, the language of Jesus, while others only work in Greek, the language of the writers -- that is, certain points being made rely on the particular meanings of words that occur in one but not the other language.  This tells us that the Greek ones were later additions in the oral tradition, and not authentic to Jesus, while the Aramaic ones are closer to Jesus (potentially, but not necessarily, from Jesus).

At some point we have earliest writers who wrote entirely from memory.  There was a gap of several years or decades when the stories of Jesus were passed down entirely orally, from eyewitnesses to friends, family and acquaintances.  Over the years these stories changed languages from Aramaic to Greek.  And similarly there was geographic movement, from Jesus' home in Galilee to other regions and to where the Greek-speaking writers lived.

There is a big scholarship on this.  Jesus Before the Gospels is for non-scholars, and Ehrman emphasises that he is just scratching the surface.  The extensive bibliography is a good place to start for further readings.

The main focus of the book, however, is the empirical work in memory and oral cultural traditions.  Ehrman points out that Biblical scholars generally don't address this interdisciplinary issue.  He says most are naively optimistic about the abilities of the early eyewitnesses and followers to accurately remember and pass on what really happened.  They assume, without much argument, that the earliest writings we have are accurate eyewitness accounts of what really happened.

But Ehrman argues that the empirical studies don't support this optimism.  The main point of his book is to link these two scholarly fields together, to show how one informs the other.

Firstly, the psychology of memory.  (One of my university undergraduate majors was psychology, and so what Ehrman discusses is mostly familiar to me.  I completed my studies 25 years ago so I may misremember (!), but I think he summarises it accurately.)

The quick main point is that studies show that people are not that great at being eyewitnesses.  When asked to report back on events we often get things wrong, and not even realise it.  In many ways memory is just as much creation as it is reflecting real events.  In the act of remembering we often create the narrative then remember that creation, rather than remember what actually happened.  Ehrman goes through some of the well-known empirical studies on this.

A common response to this is that while this may be true of us modern, literate, folk, this may not be true of people in other cultures, including the oral culture of first century Palestine.

This thought is that the eyewitnesses and those who they told their stories to had better memories than we do today, because, of necessity, those living in oral societies without writing have to be better at remembering things.  They were trained, either consciously or through everyday necessity, to remember things accurately.  And we're not.

Ehrman addresses this in two ways.

First, he overviews anthropological studies of memory in oral cultures.  And it turns out that they are no better than the rest of us.  Studies of storytelling in oral cultures show that their oral stories change over time, with significant differences between each retelling, and even when they say that they are telling the same story.  Moreover, it's possible that oral cultures don't treat truth the same way that we do.  In a literate culture we can easily see how one text matches another text, and so we often care about how similar they are to each other.  But in an oral culture each retelling is its own unique event, appropriate to its own situation, and there's no need for it to say the same thing.  They don't worry so much about the changes or being accurate to the origins.  The idea that co-eyewitnesses will confirm and corroborate the original true story just doesn't seem to apply.

Secondly, looking at the historical evidence of first century Palestine, Ehrman shows that the people in Jesus' day were no different.  In the historical records and in what we know of the culture of the day, there is no evidence to suggest that the eyewitnesses to Jesus and those they told were any different such that they remembered the events more accurately.

What this all tells us is that in the 40+ years after Jesus' death the stories of him likely changed over time with each retelling.  People added or removed aspects as they told others what they had heard, and, like Chinese whispers, likely what eventually got written down was somewhat different from what started.  Different Christian communities in different regions would have passed on different stories, and their storytelling would have reflected the unique issues that they were dealing with, and responding to, in their local areas.

Likely (but not necessarily), as with most oral storytelling, a gist would have remained.  So, the task for scholars is to try to extract the historical gist from the later storytelling.  Ehrman suggests the following historical gist of Jesus' life and death:

Of course there is much more to it than this.  I highly recommend Jesus before the Gospels as a good starter.  (And I hope that I mostly accurately remembered, and wrote down here, what I read.  But almost certainly my retelling here has changed the story, in some way, from what Ehrman told.  That's the nature of being human.)

Book review: Misquoting Jesus

Right now I've got a stack of books on my bedside table on the history of early Christianity, which I'm steadily working my way through.  Just for fun, nothing serious.

But one book needs to go back to the library today (luckily I've finished it), so I'd better write down a few of my half-baked thoughts on it.

It's Bart Ehrman's 2005 book Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why.

I've said here before that I grew up as a sincere Christian, but started to question it as a teenager.

Twenty and more years ago, at university, I looked into the more philosophical aspects of Christianity.  The reasons for and against belief, the nature of faith, the concept of God, etc, etc.  I did a big chunk of my graduate studies in the area, and tutored undergraduates.  (So I guess I'm moderately well-read, but far from an expert.)

My academic studies were the tail end of my steady de-conversion, and after completing my dissertation I settled into my own views as a happy atheist/agnostic.  Over the years I've continued to casually check the discussions, and overall not much has changed.

But the history of Christianity is a whole other topic, and one I don't know in as much detail.

Even though the church that I grew up in was quite Bible-based, and I was pretty familiar with many of the Bible stories, I don't recall much emphasis on the history.

Reading historians on the subject now, I see several historical issues that I don't recall ever hearing in church.  From what I read, I understand that these are standard topics discussed in many theology courses that church leaders graduate from.  However, it seems maybe they don't often pass this information on to their congregations?

Issue One: What are the physical texts?

One thing that jumps out at me is that I don't remember hearing in church about the physical texts and their origins.

I'll try to summarise my understanding of my readings; happy to be corrected by those more knowledgeable.

It's still an open question when many of the books of the New Testament were written, but the mainstream view seems to be that the first were written about 20 years after Jesus' death.  These are the seven letters that Paul wrote, with the earliest around 50 CE.  The Gospel of Mark was likely written around 70 CE, Matthew and Luke-Acts maybe 15-ish years later, and John several years after that.  The final New Testament books seem to have been written around 100 CE or soon after.

However, we don't have any of the original texts.  Instead what we have is copies.  Or rather, copies of copies of copies, etc.

Our earliest copy is a credit card sized piece containing parts of the Gospel of John (Papyrus 52).  It's dated to around 150 CE.

The earliest complete books of the New Testament are dated to around 200 CE (Paul's letters in Papyrus 46, and John's Gospel in Papyrus 66).  The earliest complete Bible we have is from around 350 CE.

The New Testament that we have today is, as I understand it, a pretty close reconstruction of what was being read and copied in the third century CE.  But it's not what was originally written or what was originally copied and passed around, as we have lost those.

Nonetheless our modern translations are closer to the originals than the King James Version, as it was based on a twelfth century manuscript that is now seen as one of the worst available to us.  (The King James Version is beautiful literature, but not so accurate to what the original writers likely wrote.)

Issue Two: The manuscripts are different from each other

But does it matter that we don't have the originals?

It turns out that, at the very least, it's an issue.

The thing is, copying manuscripts by hand is quite different from printing them.  It is very hard to copy accurately, word for word, anything by hand.  Mistakes creep in.

To put a number on it, apparently there are more differences between our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.  That is, between the approximately 5700 Greek manuscripts we have of the New Testament, there are maybe 300,000 or more differences.

So, if we want to read the Bible, which manuscript do we use, and which difference do we choose over the other?

Fortunately most of these differences are trivial.  There are spelling mistakes, or missed words, lines or even pages.  The scribes copying the manuscripts are just like us when copying -- their eyes sometimes jumped or misread things, and mostly it's easy for us to correct for that and reconstruct things.

But some of these differences are not trivial.  There are a significant number of passages that are importantly different from each other, and sometimes it's hard to know which was the original and which was a later change made by a scribe.

And this is not just accidental changes.  There are plenty of passages where it's clear that scribes intentionally made changes to the texts.  On purpose they made additions, changed words, took things out, etc.  We know whole sections have been added by later scribes, likely to give authority to their particular theological/political beliefs and to combat competing ideas.  We also know that, more subtly, occasional words were changed to better suit their views.

What all this means is that we have manuscripts in which there are important differences and we don't always know which was closer to the original and which was the later scribal change.

Consequently, a big part of historical scholarship is textual analysis to find reasons for choosing one difference over another.  In a significant number of cases there are still open questions and scholarly disagreements on which way to go.

Issue Three: Known unknowns and unknown unknowns

So, scholars know they have got manuscripts that differ from each other.  We know that scribes changed the texts, as we have got the physical evidence.  And we know that sometimes we don't know which manuscripts contain the original texts and which were later scribal changes.

We also know that the earliest manuscripts we have are many generations removed from the original writings.

Those earliest scribes probably changed things as much as the later ones we know about, both accidentally and intentionally.

So, we can infer that there were almost certainly scribal changes between the original texts and our earliest copies.  The earliest copies that we have are almost certainly different from what the original writers wrote.

But how much, which parts, and in which ways?

We simply don't know.

Issue Four: Historical methods for reconstruction

Fortunately, despite the limits of the texts we physically have, scholars can make some educated, reasoned guesses about which manuscript versions are more likely to be closer to the original and which are more likely to be later scribal changes.  But these are only ever best guesses, and not certainty.  And it's still hard to jump the gap between our earliest manuscripts and the original writers.

Historians have developed a list of criteria which they can apply to unclear cases.  It's not infallible, but it's good to have reasons to help with the educated guesses.  An ongoing issue is which criteria to use in various specific cases, and their relative weighting.

For example, an initially counterintuitive criterion, which makes sense on closer inspection, is that the more difficult reading is more likely to be the original one.  Scribes, when they make changes, are more likely to make a reading easier rather than harder.  So, all things being equal, the more unusual wording or uncomfortable concept is more likely to have been written by the original author, and the less challenging one was more probably a later scribe trying to "correct" things.

To me, it has been fascinating to read specific textual examples of where known manuscripts significantly differ, and then work through the ways that historians might apply different criteria for deciding which was closer to the original and which was the later scribal change.

Issue Five: Inerrant scriptures or historical documents

A theological puzzle for Christians who say that the Bible is the inspired word of God, or that it is inerrant, is that historical scholarship seems to show that at best we are one step away from the original writings.  Even if the original writings were so inspired or inerrant, that's not what we have today.  And surely it seems odd if God were to inspire the original writings, but then not make sure that they were accurately preserved for later readers.

It seems to me that looking at the textual history of the Bible opens up the possibility of relaxing the need to see the Bible as always internally consistent or accurate in all respects.  Perhaps more plausibly we ought treat the Bible as written by fallible historical people in their own time and to their own audience.  Arguably smart, insightful, and often accurate, but without that sense of necessary textual infallibility that we often hear from believers.  A slight reduction in textual authority is okay, and surely Christianity can live with that.

---

So, the book is now back at the library, and other books on my bedside table await reading.

Overall I'm not enough of a textual scholar to comment on the accuracy of the information in Ehrman's book.  But what I can say is that it's very clearly presented and the reasoning is strong. For now I'm persuaded.

Update on reading the Bible

I've slowed down with reading the Bible.

The other day I said I had read Genesis.  I've now finished the books of Exodus and Leviticus, as well as Numbers up to chapter 19.

Unfortunately I've now caught up with Hemant Mehta's reading and commentary, so from now on I can only read a chapter a week.

According to Wikipedia there are 1189 chapters in the Bible.  I've read 136 chapters, which means there are another 1053 chapters to go.  At a chapter a week that'll be another 20 1/4 years; I'll be retired before I get to the end!

As a churched child I was pretty familiar with the stories in these books, repeatedly reading various sections dotted throughout.  But up until now I'd never read all these books completely and continuously, and that gives a very different feel.

Reading continuously gives a better sense of the percentage of words spent on various topics, and hence the priorities.  And genuinely equally reading each chapter -- not merely skimming over the boring bits and focusing on the well-known bits -- has been really important for this.

I feel that this has allowed me to get a much better sense of the character of God in these books.  Not only can we often read directly what God says and does, but we can also infer values by looking at what is included, the amount it is included, and what is excluded.

What stands out for me is the amount of words spent detailing both the rituals for worshipping God and the various penalties and punishments for failing to correctly adhere to those rituals.  By far, the focus for human right action is on how to interact correctly with God.  Comparatively speaking, there is very little on how humans should interact with each other or their environment, except inasmuch as it affects God.

The impression given is that the God of these books doesn't care much about people, as people.  He is not so interested in their feelings, their loves, their lives, their interests, their relationships, their families, their wellbeing, and whatever is personally important to them.  He cares even less about non-human animals.

The character of God, as portrayed in these books so far, is self-absorbed, insecure, quick to anger at perceived insults against himself, and with a tendency to lash out with violence when angry.  This violence is often lethal, with both spontaneous and pre-meditated killing and torture of individuals and groups of people.  Often his victims had absolutely nothing to do with the supposed wrong and were merely innocent bystanders.  A significant aspect of what appeases him is the torture and killing of animals, the burning of their flesh (and its smell) and the splashing of their blood.

In other words, the God of these books comes across to me as morally repugnant.  Of all the characters portrayed in the Bible so far, God easily stands out as morally the worst, to the point that if we were to call anyone evil it would be him.  If such a being existed in reality I'd be opposed to him.

What I would like for Christians to do is, when reading the Bible, look at what it says God does, and imagine how you would feel if a human did those exact same things.  Can you honestly say that what God does in the Bible is good and just and right?  Is the God of the Bible really worthy of worship?

(Of course, the Bible makes much more sense if it's seen as a collection of different texts written over many hundreds of years by many different people and compiled and edited by many others.  Matt Baker at UsefulCharts has some excellent videos on when the various parts of the Bible were written and compiled, including this summary chart.)

UPDATE 7/11/2022: Matt Baker has just uploaded a combined YouTube video of the earlier multi-part series on when the various parts of the Bible were written.  Well worth watching.)

Reading the Bible

I'm not sure if, for blog consistency sake, I should name this post Book review: Genesis.  But I'm going with the more clickbaity/shocking one for the family.

Yep, I'm reading the Bible.

I should qualify that.  I've just finished Genesis, the first of 66 (give or take, depending on your version) books of the Bible, so there's still a way to go.

I think I last read Genesis in full over 30 years ago, so there's a lot I didn't remember.  I'm now continuing on with Exodus.

I should qualify that some more.  I'm actually listening to someone else read aloud the Bible, while I follow along to the text.

And some more qualification: This person reads the text then provides a commentary on it, all in a handy YouTube series, one Bible chapter per video.

So, averaging something like 11 minutes per video-chapter, you can do the maths for how many hours I've already spent listening to 50-chapter Genesis.

Occasionally Mulan or Miya sit with me too, and Mulan especially enjoys it.

On to my thoughts:

The commentator is Hemant Mehta, whose YouTube channel is called Friendly Atheist.  This Bible series is called Everything Wrong with Genesis in the Bible.  So, yeah, with names like that we're not likely to be glossing over the Biblical oddities.

But Hemant's friendly and entertaining, and somehow even the long Bible family tree name lists are not too boring with him.

Hemant approaches the Bible as a person of today, raising questions that most of us would likely have when reading the Bible.  As Mulan said, he points out the obvious things.  Eg:

• Internal self-contradictions.  Sometimes the Bible contradicts itself, and it's impossible for both passages to be true at the same time.  Often this is to do with (a) how certain events are said to have happened, (b) family relationships, (c) ages of people, (d) numbers of things.  Hemant usefully points out where the section we're reading contradicts another section of the Bible.

• Contradictions with current best-evidence science.  Sometimes events that the Bible describes cannot possibly have really happened according to current best scientific evidence.

• Morality.  Characters in the Bible frequently do some pretty bad stuff.  God is one of the worst offenders.  There's plenty of genocide, rape, murder, slavery and incest.  And then there's the soap-opera-worthy nasty family dynamics.  The sexist male domination is stand-out bad, too.

• Storytelling.  As Hemant says, the Bible could have used an editor.  There are issues of event ordering, repetition, missed information, unnecessary information, etc.

• And then simply weird stuff.  Hemant's tone is perfect for reacting to the absurdities.

The main weakness with Hemant's commentary, as I see it, is that he doesn't spend much time detailing how and why the cultures of the day(s) saw things differently, and how that influenced their behaviours.  Sometimes he's a little too quick to point out the oddities, without explaining why the people of the day thought those oddities made sense within their culture.  From an intercultural awareness perspective there could be a little more cultural context and sympathy, before jumping to the humour/criticism.  (Though to be fair to Hemant, his point, as he says at the beginning of the series, is to show how it makes no sense to take the Bible literally, as the inerrant word of God.  He is not doing cultural studies.)

But overall, reading along with Hemant is a great way to read the Bible.  For non-Christians it's an enjoyable intro into something that everyone should be familiar with.  For Christians it's worth stepping back to get a fresh perspective.  And for ex-Christians like myself, it's a comfortable back-to; rehearing the familiar childhood stories while also recalling why it was all best left in childhood.  Highly recommended.  Here's the start of the series:

Book review: Two excellent books

I've just finished reading two excellent books.  Both are highly recommended.

The first one happened because at the moment Mulan is writing an essay for school.  She has to choose four works that are connected by a single theme, so I was enlisted to give her reading suggestions.

With works and theme completely open, Mulan had a hard time narrowing her choices.  First up, she chose Dune as her first book (she simply likes the book).  She then needed a theme, and eventually settled on fictional works in which the author has a political intent.

Over the school holidays, while we were Covid-isolating, I scanned our home bookshelves and gave Mulan:

• Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
• Animal Farm, by George Orwell
• The Plague, by Albert Camus
• Erewhon, by Samuel Butler
• Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy
• and a little later, Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder

(She had already read a couple of these, and she read the others during our family lockdown.)

Why did I give Sophie's World later?  Because I wanted to read it first!  While I'd heard great things about it, I'd never got around to reading it.

What stands out for me is that it's a very cleverly written book.

First up, Gaarder attempts to explain the history of Western thought, from the pre-Socratics through to the existentialists, to teenagers!

Yeah, how many teens are going to want to read a textbook on Parmenides, Aquinas, Hegel, Sartre and so on?!

So, the first clever bit is that we meet soon-to-be-15-year-old Sophie, who starts getting mysterious letters from an unknown person.

The letter-writer turns out to be a philosophy teacher, who posts mini-lectures to Sophie, and we get interested in the dryer details of Plato, Aristotle and so on because Sophie gets interested in them.  We also have the mystery of who this teacher really is and how/why he is writing to Sophie.

But just as we're getting comfortable in Sophie's world, and getting to know the teacher, Alberto, we are introduced to another almost-15-year-old, Hilde, and her father who works for the UN in Lebanon.  But there's definitely weird, spooky stuff happening in Sophie's world.

By halfway through the book our philosophy lessons have moved through the ages and we're dealing with issues such as how-much-can-we-really-know and what-is-ultimate-reality-really-like in Descartes, Kant, Berkeley, and so on.

And then we get to the first of the two main twists in the story.  Without giving too much away, what we have in places is a book within a book, with the author teaching his readers via another author teaching his reader via another author teaching his reader.

What I especially like is how Gaarder is able to clearly explain the challenging ideas of these brilliant historical people in ways that can connect with normal life.  A big part of the story is the connection between the mini-lectures and Sophie's experiences in her world.  The ideas are made real to the reader (while at the same time challenging the reader to think about what is really real!).

If I was to be picky I might occasionally critique Gaarder's understanding of some of the ideas, what the historical writers were really saying, and which historical writers should be covered.

But at heart, this is an introductory book for complete beginners.  Of necessity it's sometimes going to be cartoon versions of the complex ideas.  But the historical names are the standard ones that all undergraduate philosophy students should be comfortably familiar with.  For any teens who like this kind of stuff the book will give them a head start before they enter university.

Most importantly though, this book is essential reading for all teens, to help them enter, and become participants in, that long conversation of human thinking.

---

The second book I've just finished reading is Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True, which I borrowed from the local library.

Reminiscing alert: I distinctly remember, back when I was 12, a conversation I had with a school friend.

I'd grown up in a moderately conservative Christian family, and it was simply part of my unquestioned worldview that God created the world from nothing.  I'd never even considered any other possibility than that he'd formed the plants and animals and us at some unspecified time in the past.

But somehow, and in some way, by the time I was 12 I'd heard about evolution, that humans had evolved from other animals rather than being created.  To me at the time it was a weird and curious new idea, so I mentioned it to my friend one day.  He just looked at me like "yeah, of course."

His reaction made a lasting impression, because his apparent "of course evolution" made me reflect on my earlier "of course creation."  How is it that we can have opposite reactions when we both live in the same world and see the same things?

A sizable chunk of the next 15 years of thought for me was reconciling this and reorienting my worldview to match the best evidence.  It was about spending time listening to experts.

Coyne, as a biologist, is one of those experts.  His 2009 book is an excellent summary of the evidence.

In multiple ways, with innumerable examples, Coyne explains how the physical evidence around us perfectly fits the theory of evolution by natural selection.  In fact it fits so perfectly that for practical purposes we can call it true, and we can treat it as true to the same extent that we can treat atoms, gravity and germs as true.  Its predictive and explanatory power has been extremely successful.

He also explains why the physical evidence does not fit creationism.  A big part of this is showing how biological structures are often imperfect and non-ideal make-do add-ons and adaptations of existing structures.  In multiple ways they are not what we would expect to see if biological creatures were made fresh from nothing.  Instead, they're exactly what we'd expect to see if creatures evolved.

Coyne plausibly replies to creationist objections against evolution, showing how the objections fail to disprove evolution.

All of this is written in a very readable way for non-experts like myself.  It was an enjoyable read, with plenty of examples well-picked to fit the clear and explicitly labeled argumentative structure.

I'd picked this book to read, in part because I occasionally browse Coyne's blog, but also because P Z Myers, who is also a biologist, recently again recommended Coyne's book.  (Here's Myers' review back in 2008.)

What Coyne's book reinforced for me is that the world around us shows abundantly that the only way creationism could be true is if God was a malicious trickster-god.  Firstly, if God exists he must have intentionally set things up to try to fool us with all the evolutionary evidence, and secondly he must have intentionally set things up to cause lots of unnecessary pain and suffering in his creation.  In the very unlikely event that a personal creator-God exists, his creation shows us that he's in no way worthy of worship.

Again, I'd recommend this book for all teens and up, and especially those who are interested in science and religion but prefer to get their facts right.

Frank Turek

Mulan has a good memory.

YouTube suggested that I watch this video while I was eating.  (Okay, it hasn't yet started giving breakfast  suggestions, but that's when I usually browse YouTube.)

It's a video by Drew McCoy of Genetically Modified Skeptic, who I've started watching lately.  I'm impressed by Drew.  He has a great attitude to discussing religion, coming across as super-nice and really emphasising being kind.  In the world of religion YouTubers he stands out as the nice guy, making his videos a pleasure to watch.

Mulan happened to pass by when I was about five minutes into the video.  She said, "isn't that Turek?"

I said, "who?"

"The one who [cousin] was studying for school and you commented on?"

Finally it clicked for me.  Yes, Drew was discussing the co-author of a book that I wrote about last year in response to my niece's Year 13 school assignment.

I have a sad habit of forgetting names and only (sometimes) remembering ideas.  But I was surprised that Mulan remembered Turek's name; I thought she hadn't been that interested in the topic.  I'm very happy that she is quietly taking it in.

Mulan stayed to watch, and we laughed at Douglas Adams' well-told puddle story.

Book review: I don't have enough faith to be an atheist

When I write my book reviews, or my more serious thoughts, I generally try to explain my reasoning as clearly as I can.  I try to understand the writers, and feel the views as charitably and accurately as I can.

This is partly for you, my readers, but honestly, it's mostly for me.  Spending time putting my thoughts in writing really helps me to get clear in my own head how I see things.  Until I write it out, I frequently have only a general and vague sense of my position on things.  And in writing it down I sometimes change my own views.

But there are exceptions to this.  And this is one.

In this post I'm not going to give my reasons.  I'm merely going to give my conclusions (with a bit of biographical background).  I'm not arguing; I'm merely stating.

It's not that I couldn't give my reasons.  It's just that I have no interest to take the time to do so.  In this particular situation, writing it down won't help me to get any clearer on how I see things.  And to be honest, it kinda bores me.

So, take what you will of what follows.

One of my nieces is in school year 13, and she is hugely busy with book work, getting up enough credits to go on to university or whatever.  Good on her!

The required reading for one of her courses is Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek's 2004 book I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.

My Big Sis, Gugu, and I chatted about this, and consequently I requested the Geisler/Turek book from the library.

The main claim of the book is that the evidence points in favour of Christianity, and so atheists are actually required to have more faith than Christians.

Gugu and I grew up in a Christian family, and since teenagers we have often had long and enjoyable conversations about religion, science and other deep matters.  A big chunk of my masters degree was on the philosophy of religion, and for a couple of years I was the tutor for the 2nd/3rd year undergraduate philosophy of religion course at Auckland Uni.

So, while my background is not enough to be considered a professional expert, I think it is enough to say that I am competent to evaluate good versus bad contributions to the subject.

And in my opinion, Geisler and Turek's contribution is in the bad category.  It is not worth reading, and should definitely not be used as the required reading for secondary school students.  It is a serious failing in New Zealand's education system that this is part of a course that gives university entrance credits.

As I was reading it, I was often finding multiple errors on each page.  There are far too many logical missteps, factual errors and misrepresentations of others' views.  Repeatedly, Geisler/Turek committed the fallacies of false alternatives and strawperson.  Repeatedly they made the mistake of being uncharitable to their opponents views, imagining that they had dismissed, in a few lines, the ideas of people who had spent decades on these complex issues; in reality all that Geisler/Turek did was dismiss cartoon versions that few take seriously anyway.  There was an overall sense of the authors not quite "getting" the ideas they were trying to present, but alongside that there was a kind of blissful, contented arrogance from them that they had got it right.  If I had to describe this book in a word, I'd say it was clumsy.

I want to be clear, this is not about religion.  It is about facts, logic and evidence.  Geisler/Turek made claims about where the evidence points, but repeatedly got the facts, logic and evidence wrong.  That they happen to be arguing against atheism, and for their version of Christianity, is irrelevant.  I have also said similar things about badly written pro-atheism books (eg, several years ago I read a bit of work by Sam Harris; in my opinion he's the atheistic scholarly equivalent of Geisler/Turek).

Unless my niece wants to go through any specific pages with me, that's all I feel the need to say.

'Tis the season

My new favourite Christmas song is here.

Book review: Jeannette Ng

A great way to choose new books is to check out the awards speeches of authors.

Last year I discovered N K Jemisin after clicking a link to her Hugo Award acceptance speech.  She is now definitely up there amongst my all-time favourite authors.  I wrote about her books here.

A few weeks ago I discovered Jeannette Ng, thanks to her awesome speech (text version here) when accepting the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer.  What she said was spot on.  Thanks to Ng, the award got a name-change; now it's the Astounding Award.  And rightly so.

So, I requested Ng's book, Under the Pendulum Sun, from the library, as well as the short story collection, Not So Stories, in which Ng has a contribution.

It was a great choice, and I thoroughly enjoyed both books.

Under the Pendulum Sun is a perfectly paced, incredibly creative, beautifully written novel with deep references to the Gothic novel tradition.  Ng's MA in Medieval and Renaissance Studies shows.

I won't say too much about the story, as each part builds and reveals layers of mystery.  But in brief the story is set in the Age of Discovery.  Captain Cook has discovered the Faelands -- you get there by becoming thoroughly lost for a sufficiently long period of time.  The novel opens with Catherine Helstone heading there, following her missionary brother who wishes to bring the word of God to the Fae.

The Faelands are definitely weird and wonderful.  The sun is, well, a pendulum -- a lamp set on a long string that swings back and forth.  Days and nights come and go according to where the pendulum sun is at in its swing.  The rest of the world is equally, um, different.  But in an incredibly beautiful way.

Several days ago, when I was part-way through the book, we were out and Mulan hadn't brought enough entertainment.  I passed the book to her and she sped through it, finishing it before I did.  She enjoyed it, although possibly some parts of the story are on the mature side for a 12-year-old.

---

The short stories that make up the Not So Stories are often equally creative.  But this is a much more overtly political work.

Most people should recognise that the Not So Stories references Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories.  Kipling was a brilliant writer, and his stories are deservedly classics.

But Kipling was overly optimistic and positive about British colonialism.  In his storytelling, Kipling (just like C S Lewis, who I discussed here) often presents colonialism as a good, decent, civilising influence on the natives.  He ignores the evils and atrocities.

Not So Stories is intended explicitly as a corrective.  Each of the writers takes Kipling-ish ideas or styles but twists them to acknowledge colonial evils.

Jeannette Ng's story, How the Wishing Tree got its Carapace of Plastic, is perhaps only going to be understood and appreciated by those who have a bit of Chinese cultural background.  Here in our home in the children's toybox we have got a plastic orange, which we picked up from a wishing tree; Ng's story brought back plenty of memories and images, and in my opinion nicely captured the feeling.

Zina Hutton's Strays Like Us is a sweet cat story.  I've passed it to Miya to read, though she hasn't picked it up yet.

Raymond Gates' There is Such Thing as a Whizzy-Gang is, as far as I could see, the least appropriate story in the collection.  All I could see was a campfire scary story, with little to no political or Kipling-ish references.

But in my opinion the final story, Paul Krueger's How the Camel Got Her Paid Time Off, was the most brilliant reply to Kipling.  It is the most perfect response to Kipling's How the Camel got His Hump.  It is an absolute must-read.

A few days ago I played our story CD of Just So Stories, and I've passed Not So Stories to Mulan to read.

Book review: Dune

Mulan is finally old enough to read Frank Herbert's Dune books.

A few weeks ago, over the school holidays, I re-read Dune, the first in the six-book series (Herbert's son, Brian, has also continued his father's story with over a dozen more Dune books).  It was something like the fourth time I'd read it, but this time my aim was to decide whether it would be suitable for Mulan.

I passed it to an initially sceptical Mulan, who at the time was several books into reading Terry Pratchett's huge Discworld series (Mulan had got into Discworld after we watched the Soul Music movie).  But she gave it a go and quickly got addicted.  The Discworld books were mostly abandoned; in Mulan's opinion Dune is much more exciting.

I buried my nose in the second book, Dune Messiah, trying to keep ahead of Mulan (the books do mature as they go along), but she caught up and passed me while I was part-way through the third book, Children of Dune.  Mulan finished the fourth book, God Emperor of Dune, ahead of me and started on the fifth book, Heretics of Dune.  However she said it's not so interesting and slowed down (reading other books instead).  I have now caught up and re-passed Mulan, and have just finished book five.

As I say, the books do mature.  The later books expand the thought-provoking social commentary, and there is increasing sexual content (on re-reading, I realise the fifth book is probably a little too sexually mature for Mulan right now; the fourth book was okay).  Mulan and I have agreed it would be best for her to pause in the series and maybe come back to it in a year or so.  (I first read the fifth book when I was 13.)

In Mulan's opinion, the first and third books were the best in the series so far.  In part this is because of the direct, exciting storytelling in those books, and in part because teens/children were the dominant characters.  Mulan also didn't like the way later books in the series were set in different times and had mostly completely different characters.

We also watched both the David Lynch movie and the more recent TV miniseries versions of Dune.

(The movie is a mess!  It's pretty incoherent.  And they seriously damage the plot by turning the "weirding" fighting style into merely a technological super-weapon.  But, as Mulan rightly pointed out, the TV miniseries is even worse!  They have basically turned a deeply thought-provoking story into a US-style soap opera.  It is Americanly beautiful people transparently telegraphing their every overly-emotional shallow thought.  Both the movie and TV miniseries were fun to watch for fan value only.)

I think there are at least four things that are great about the Dune books:

Firstly, it's an un-put-down-able story.  It's event-filled and exciting, with plenty of action and adventure.  The first book by far does this the best, and in my opinion it gets weaker as it goes on, but the others are also pretty good.

For a teenage reader we get an initially very relatable and likable main character in the form of 15-year-old Paul Atreides.  Paul is a nice guy -- smart, hard-working and well-intentioned.  As the son of a Duke, he's been given a great education by some of the best private tutors around (yep, he homeschools!).  While Paul has had a comfortable, secure, privileged life, he has still worked hard to make the most of his rare and lucky opportunities.

The excitement comes about because from the beginning of the book we learn that Paul's family is required to leave their comfortable, secure ancestral family home and travel to another planet to take charge of the business operations there (yes, Dune is a futuristic science fiction story).  This generates the conflict and excitement, because the previous owners of the new planet are the multi-generational enemies of Paul's family.

This leads into the second aspect of what, in my opinion, makes the Dune books great.  In my opinion, Dune is an especially aspirational and inspirational story for young adults.  It presents role models who strive to do the best they can, and to be the best they can.  Teenage Paul, as our first role model, listens to his teachers and parents, and wants to do well.  He enjoys learning, and gains satisfaction from his achievements.  He questions, challenges and thinks.  He makes mistakes, but he learns from them and incorporates the learning into who he is.

(In the second book things become more Greek-tragedy-like, in the sense that these smart, educated, well-intentioned and seemingly-right-at-the-time choices can still lead to awful outcomes.)

Soon we come to learn that Paul is part of a 100-ish generation breeding programme to create a super-person.  So, it turns out he is a little too perfect and idealised.  But nonetheless I think young Paul still remains an aspirational figure and role model for teenage readers.  Certainly he was that for me when I read Dune as a young teenager.  Dune was part of the package which inculcated my love of learning and willingness to push myself to the best of my ability.  Reading Dune made we want to get up and do challenging stuff, both physically and mentally.

Thirdly, Dune is beautifully written.  I recall reading somewhere that Herbert wrote Dune with Haiku poetry in mind.  That makes sense to me.  Dune is often like poetic prose.  It flows in a style that is unique to Herbert, inviting multiple re-readings with new rewards and discoveries.  It is the sort of style of writing that captures the emotions.  One can let the words flow, creating an overall feel, sometimes without pinning down the exact meaning of every single phrase,  To put it more cynically, Dune is an incredibly clever emotion-manipulator, which creates a certain frame of mind.

And this leads us into the fourth great aspect.  Dune is a deep, opinionated commentary on society, politics, religion and humanity as a whole.  It talks about the big questions of life, the universe and everything.  It challenges one's thinking about what is important in life -- what we are doing and where we are going.  Who are we?  What are our fundamental values?  What is the meaning of life?  The later books especially get into this a lot, with frequent deep conversations between characters or inner monologues contemplating what the right thing to do is.  Moreover, the book presents no easy answers -- characters frequently disagree and compete, but almost all of them are presented in sympathetic ways.

To me, those are the key things which make Dune great.  It is for these reasons that I passed the book to Mulan, and I highly recommend it to any thinking teens.

Nonetheless, Dune is far from perfect.  And re-reading it now as an adult shows more of these flaws.

As I see it, the biggest flaw is related to its seductiveness.

I read Herbert as having strong political views that he often promotes in his books (his other, non-Dune novels typically have similar political themes).  He brings these views into his storytelling, sometimes indirectly but also sometimes directly through authorial explanations or character conversations.  That's great.  Lots of writers are like this and it almost always adds depth to a great novel.  But I think it's important to flag this right at the beginning.  These political views are not merely entertainment that we can discard when we finish reading the books.  Readers do absorb the political views of novelists as they read their novels; it's important that we draw these out explicitly so we are not absorbing these views uncritically.

Moreover,  Herbert was a very clever writer.  Not only is his poetic prose beautiful, but he also knew how to phrase ideas in such a way so as to make these ideas more appealing to his readers.  Again, it's important to pick this out explicitly, so we are not tricked by his rhetorical force.

One common rhetorical approach that Herbert uses in Dune is one that is also used by various popular speakers in the world today (consider certain popular YouTube opinionators!).  The general method they use is to appeal to the reader's strong attraction to logic and reasoning, but without actually being rigorously logical.  To be convincing, Herbert and others rely on the fact that while their readers/listeners like the idea of logic, these readers/listeners generally haven't spent the time necessary to develop their own skills in understanding logic.  This means that Herbert and others can use superficial linguistic structures of logic, or assert that they are being logical, while at the same time use rhetorical misdirection to blur the intermediate steps between initial plausible assertion and desired conclusion.  The reader/listener is wowed and believes the conclusion.

With this in mind, in Dune (especially in the later books) Herbert created several compelling characters who are notably intended to be super smart or super knowledgeable.  This creates a plausible authority as Herbert's mouthpiece.  These characters start out by making clear and seemingly straightforward universal assertions which we might plausibly accept as true.  They also might make a few clear steps in basic reasoning.  This makes the reader feel as though they are smartly thinking alongside the super-smart character.

But intermingled with this, Herbert, through the character, also makes less clear assertions (which may or may not even be real assertions), which often use non-literal language that is multi-interpretable.  Herbert is especially brilliant at this pseudo-reasoning in seemingly-real-but-actually-nonsensical language.  This is done to reduce the reader to follower rather than active logic-analyser.  The reader is then brought along to the desired conclusion by emotion and poetic feel rather than by active reasoning.  The reader doesn't bother to try to figure out the hard bits in the supposed reasoning, assuming that since they understood the first bit, and since the character has been set up as super-smart, then the next bits should also be sound, too.

Occasionally, Herbert has another character doubt the super-smart character.  At this point the super-smart character may verbally abuse the simpleton for missing the "clear reasoning" or not being advanced enough.  The reader is also thus made to feel shamed to question the reasoning.  Sometimes, during this process the super-smart character might even wow himself, as we are told that he (usually it's a he) has reached a new high level of conscious awareness.  This intermediate-stage water-muddying may happen, with great rhetorical flourish, over a few pages, to further wow the reader.

Finally, Herbert presents the reader with his desired political claims, as if it has been reached by objectively rigorous reasoning.  Sometimes the conclusion is presented explicitly, but sometimes it is presented somewhat indirectly so as to make the reader think that they are also super-smart to have deduced the conclusion by themselves.

All this might sound silly and obvious when phrased in this way.  But as I say, Herbert is an excellent writer, and does this extremely well.  I never saw through much of this when I first read it as a young teenager.  Teenage me was Herbert's target reader -- excited by reasoning, but not especially skilled at it.  Sadly, middle-aged me is a bit more cynical, and unfortunately on this latest re-reading I am finding some of Herbert's rhetorical flourishes more amusing than inspiring.

(Mulan tells me that she was bored by parts of the books that did this, and while she read all the main text she sometimes skipped the italicised bits at the beginning of each chapter.)

Ironically, the Dune books are often precisely about these sorts language manipulations posing as reasoning.  There are prolonged discussions in the books about the uses of language manipulation to control others.  As I see it, the Dune books are themselves an object lesson in what they are warning us against.

To summarise, I think it is essential that as readers we explicitly recognise Herbert's rhetoric for what it is.  His writing is beautiful and challenging, and definitely worth reading.  But we need to also think critically as we read, so that we don't fall for Herbert's seductive writing and accept his political views unquestioningly.

Now onto the content of what I think we need to think critically about.

The central themes of Dune are about humanity and what it is to be human.  The Dune characters are human, and they repeatedly emphasise that they are human.  So it can be easy to confuse humans in the story with humans in the real world -- that is, mistakenly think that since we are all humans, what is said about them must also be true about us.  Thus, it can be easy to leap to the conclusion that the values and attitudes promoted in the story should likewise be promoted in our real world.

Consequently, I think that as we read the Dune series we need to evaluate the content of it with two main things in mind.  Firstly, we need to look at to what extent the Dune universe and Dune humans are factually and physically the same as (or different from) us real-world humans.  And second we need to look at the political, social, religious and moral claims that follow from these physical facts.  If we are physically different, then it is quite likely that our social and political values and systems will be different, too.

This, obviously, is a huge task.  There are many issues that stand out for me; I'll mention a few as examples:

One issue has to do with sex.  Not sex as in reproduction, but sex as in biological male and female.  Dune universe humans are very clearly divided into males and females (plus the genetically engineered sterile hermaphrodite Face Dancers).  

In Dune, males and females are distinctly different in far more ways than they are different in our real world.  Moreover, many of these differences in the Dune world are not merely a matter of degree, but a matter of kind.  That is, in Dune, males often have distinctly "male" properties and abilities, and females have distinctly "female" properties and abilities.  There are abilities that females have that males cannot have, and vice versa.

Herbert leaves unexplained how this could possibly be.  Given what we now know about the complexities of sex differences in our real world (chromosomes, sex organs, hormones, etc, etc), Herbert's either-or sex distinctions are not compatible with our current best scientific evidence.  I read Herbert as presenting an essentialist view of sex in the Dune universe, which is simply factually false in the real world.  That's okay in a fictional story world -- writers can imagine whatever they like.  But we shouldn't mix this up with real world evidence.  We need to remember that Dune universe humans are biologically different from our real world humans.

(For a very good quick introduction to real-world biological facts about sex, take a look at this video.)

Besides the potential for scientific confusion between fiction and fact, this may also lead us into thinking wrongly about people's roles in society.  In the Dune universe these huge biological differences between males and females result in huge social difference between the sexes.  In the Dune universe males are better suited to some roles while females are better suited to other roles.  In the Dune universe social role differences may be permissible because Herbert has written in these "factual" differences which explain it.  Herbert's super-smart characters sometimes even directly explain how these fictional Dune-world "facts" logically necessitate distinct sex roles.

In our real world this would be clear sexism and sexual discrimination.  The biological facts in the real world don't lead to these sorts of social role sex differences shown in the Dune universe.

I have no idea if Herbert really believed that these sexist attitudes were also justified in our real world.  But I think it is clear that his in-story "logical explanations" can influence the thinking of readers who are unaware of the real-world facts.  I think there is a genuine danger that Herbert's seductive language can help to normalise these sorts of sexist attitudes in our real world.  As we read Dune, we need to combat this and keep reminding ourselves that real world humans are not like this.

Related to this, homosexuality is mentioned a few times in the Dune books, and mostly in a negative way.  In the Dune universe homosexuality is typically presented either as a perversion or else something to merely tolerate in young adults as they experiment.  This is shown most clearly in the fourth book, where Herbert uses the super-knowledgeable character to lecture us on (Dune) human sexuality.

Again, it is important to remember that while this may be the case in the Dune universe (Herbert, as the writer, is allowed to do whatever he wants with his fictional characters) it is both factually and morally wrong in our real world (not to mention hugely offensive).  Again, let's not be seduced into these awful views when we leave the Dune universe and re-enter our real world.

A second issue has to do with psychology.  As I understand it, Herbert was hugely influenced by Carl Jung, and included many Jungian themes in his writings.

One theme has to do with what Herbert calls "ancestral memories".  A big part of the plot of the Dune books is the ability for humans to "remember" the memories of their ancestors.  It seems that this is (mostly) done via individual cells that are passed on from parents to child (secondly, they also have a Vulcan-like mind-meld which also passes on memories).  In the Dune world, individual human cells contain entire life-history memories, and certain humans are able to consciously unlock these, to be able to "remember" being their parents, grandparents, and so on into the far distant past.

(As a side note, a huge plot hole in the Dune books is that Herbert didn't seem to realise that this would mean that children would only be able gain the memories of their parents from before they were conceived/born.  Children would not have access to the memories of their ancestors' later life -- that is, after childbirth.  Throughout the story Herbert assumes that ancestral memories are super-wise/knowledgeable, but actually they would not be.  They would only be memories of young adults, and while there would be hugely many of them, they would not be memories of older, wiser seniors.)

Ancestral memories is, of course, complete nonsense in our real world.  It is merely fun fiction.  But we do need to remember this when we get to Herbert's discussions of how society should be.  Again, we shouldn't be seduced into preferring some sort of social system without considering how much that society requires Dune-universe "facts" that are nonsense in our real world.

A third issue has to do with what sorts of beings have moral consideration.  In Dune, Herbert always frames these discussions in terms of whether someone is "human" or not.  In the Dune universe they have various "tests for humanity," where one is typically killed if one fails to show one's humanity.  These are not biological tests of DNA or whatever; rather they are psychological tests to make sure that the being acts in what they consider to be a "human way."

In contrast to this, in our real world, conversations on this topic are typically framed in terms of "persons" rather than "humans".  This is because we consider that focusing on humans only is speciesist -- it fails to consider the moral worth of other beings who deserve moral consideration.  Defining personhood turns out to be quite complicated, but we might think it has to do more with the ability to feel, think, future plan, have conscious awareness and so on.  And it is quite clear that some non-humans may do this (it is also quite clear that many Dune-universe non-humans do this).

(Some real-world thinkers even prefer to frame the conversation in terms of "sentience", rather than "person" or "human", which is a wider category that necessitates giving moral consideration to even more beings.)

By framing the Dune conversation in terms of "humans" rather than "persons" (or sentience), Herbert immediately eliminates from moral consideration other types of beings.  So, when in the Dune universe humans come into conflict with non-human beings (artificial intelligence, genetically engineered beings, etc), there is no need for our Dune heroes to see these beings as deserving of life.  If these other non-humans are a threat (or even if they are merely an inconvenience) our Dune heroes coldly eliminate them without reflection.  Herbert repeatedly phrases the issue as a matter of political power and survival -- the opposition has no moral worth, and humans must be powerful to eliminate them.

This speciesist attitude that dominates Dune deserves pointing out.  Again, Herbert's seductive language may make readers assume that this is the right (or even only) approach to dealing with non-humans.  Instead, we need to remind ourselves that this Dune-universe attitude is morally repugnant, and deserves strong criticism.

But this human-focused attitude also fits in with Herbert's grand overall goal in the Dune universe.  For Herbert in Dune, the most important thing is that humanity survives into the far distant future.  This number one value is presented as an absolute, and never questioned (at least that I could see).

Apparently, nothing ever outweighs this future-humanity value.  In the Dune universe, trillions of human deaths is acceptable, as long as humanity continues into the future.  And as I say, in the Dune universe non-humans are considered even less.

This is clearly a hugely controversial claim, and one that deserves challenging.  As readers, we need to keep this in mind.  Are the horrific things that these main Dune characters do for the supposed greater good of humanity's survival really the right thing to do?  Is a humanity surviving into the distant future really worth more than the wellbeing of currently existing people?

(Interestingly, when I have presented this future generations argument to my students in the context of climate change, generally these students have a hard time morally connecting with humans just a few generations into the future.  They often remain unconvinced that we ought to make certain sacrifices for the sake of humans in 100 or 200 years time.  In contrast, in Dune, one of the main characters criticises another for her short-term attitude when her plans did not consider anything more than 50 generations into the future.)

One of the main methods that characters use throughout the Dune series to advance this overall humanity-first goal is to challenge individual humans to reach their full potential.  These challenges are not gentle -- they are life and death challenges that often result in death.  But the important thing in the Dune universe is that at least some humans survive and grow, and that they then breed and pass this survival on to the next generation.  For Herbert, it is about the weak being eliminated and the strong surviving and reproducing, creating a stronger humanity.  In Dune, breeding programmes are developed to encourage optimal human growth.

(My admittedly limited understanding of biology is that this is not the way that evolution works, but I won't try to get into the details here.)

This may make sense if our number one value is the continuation of humanity.  But this value absolutely needs questioning.  I would argue that a better society is precisely one in which our weakest members are protected, not eliminated.

To repeat, the Dune books are an incredibly seductive defence of the above extremely controversial moral views.  I think it's easy for a reader to come away from reading these books having the emotional mindset that deaths and abuses are okay for the sake of some ideal future goal.  Moreover, this emotional mindset will be defended with the equally emotional mindset that this is all completely rational and scientific.

Fourthly, dotted throughout the Dune books (especially the later ones) Herbert, through the mouths of his authoritatively knowledgeable characters, makes claims regarding the ineffectualness of all governments.  The suggestion is that government is necessarily a bad thing because of corruption, excessive red tape and slow bookish record-keepers who get distracted with irrelevancies. Unfortunately, no details are given beyond this caricature (in-book discussions of this topic fit the pattern of rhetoric I described above).  Herbert contrasts this with the superior effectualness of strong individual characters who trust their own instinctive judgement to Get Things Done.

Finally, here's a possible danger of the Dune books as I see it: Young people (particularly young men) who like the idea of logic and reasoning, but haven't (yet) put the hard work in to develop some proficiency in reasoning may get emotionally sucked into certain themes in thinking, justifying these themes to themselves with the thought that it is based on strict science and reasoning (when it really isn't).  These themes may be sexist, homophobic, cold-hearted and unsympathetic.  Moreover, these young men may insulate themselves from criticism by being overly suspicious of social authorities such as governments and universities and instead believing themselves to be among the superior.

To summarise my opinion of Dune in a few lines, read with a decent amount of critical awareness Dune can be an incredibly thought-provoking, inspiring, exciting, beautifully written, positive book series.  But read uncritically, through its clever rhetoric it can emotionally led one to an overly simplistic way of thinking that is dangerously harmful.  Read it with caution.  But have fun.  It's hugely worth it.