Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

Title:
First Fruits: From Promise to Provision

Author:
Paula White

Publisher:
Paula White Ministries

Date of Publication:
2006

ISBN:
978-0-9792092-0-8

Rating:
0/10

Summary:
The book is a drawn out justification for you why you should give, in addition to your tithing (a full 10%), your first month’s salary to Without Walls International Church (or whichever prosperity gospel church or megachurch you belong to).

Review:
I attended a meeting at Without Walls just to see what all the fuss was about. On my way out someone handed me a copy of this book. It was free. I took it. I didn’t want it, but they gave it to me anyway. I took the 20 minutes it requires to skim the book and realize what it says (see my summary above). It probably wasn’t worth my 20 minutes (and my additional 20 minutes to write this review) but hey, why not?

Just so people know I’m not making up what the book’s message is, I have a few quotes for you. From page 85, “People ask me why my husband and I set January aside as a season of private and corporate fasting, giving, and prayer. God set the Feast of First Fruits as the beginning of things for Israel… We are offering up that first month unto the Lord to establish what happens in the rest of the year… By presenting God the firstfruits: the first part of your day, the first month of the year, the first of your increase, you are saying “I present this as holy, consecrated to the Lord… and I cannot touch it.” It governs everything else that operates in your life.”

So, technically, what Ms. White (not Mrs. anymore) is saying is that you can determine what your “firstfruits” are going to be: one day’s salary, one week’s, one month’s, etc., but you have to give it in order to be in favor with god. If you don’t, well, that’s when she introduces the guilt complex (just 7 pages later), from p. 92, “I never want to experience the Lord’s absence. I cannot imagine trying to do anything without the Lord being with me.” And from page 93, “When we obey, we are blessed; when we do not, we open ourselves to demonic activity…” If you don’t give us your fucking “firstfruits,” god will curse you. Give us more, more, more!!!!!

Oh, and in case there is any question as to who actually gets what you donate, here’s her subtle clarification, “But – what happened to all those baskets of fruit afterwards? [the ones donated by the Israelites as firstfruits] They were not consumed by fire. God didn’t come down and eat them. So who did? The priests did.” (p. 113) In other words, Give us more, more, more!!!!!

But don’t think Paula doesn’t give, too, “At the beginning of every year, in the month of January, Randy and I, along with our entire congregation, dedicate ourselves to a holy consecrated fast and the offering of first fruits… We also present our first fruits of the year to the Lord in the form of one day’s salary, one week’s salary, or even one whole month’s salary as each person has the faith and ability to give.” Of course, for Paula, she gives herself her salary, so that’s kind of convenient. I wonder how much she sucks out of unwitting victims in a single day?

At the end of the book Ms. White gives examples of people offering their first fruits. Some give tons, others give a little, but not to worry, “God says that all first fruits belong to Him, great or small.” And by “God” Paula means “Paula. She’ll take your money if your rich or poor. Doesn’t matter to Paula, ’cause it’s all about the money.

Usually when I read a book I use a pencil to make very small marks around the paragraphs of interest then indicate where they are with removable post-its. In her book, I used pen and dog-eared the pages. Then I threw it away. You should do the same.

Title
Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands

Author:
W. Bradford Wilcox

Publisher:
University of Chicago Press

Date of Publication:
2004

ISBN:
978-0226897097

Rating:
3/10

Summary:
I caught a preview of Wilcox’s work in Context, a sociology periodical for lay audiences. When I read that short summary I knew that I was going to have to read Wilcox’s book because I knew he spun the data like a Bush Whitehouse press secretary. After having actually read the book all I can say is: Wow! I think Wilcox should look for work at Fox News…

The basic goal of this book is to argue that conservative Protestant men are actually close approximations of the “ideal type” of the “new man” – they spend lots of time with their wives and children, they are engaged parents, they do a lot of “emotion work,” and their kids turn out great. As a conservative Protestant himself, Brad Wilcox is hell-bent on finding exactly this, regardless of the actual statistical evidence.

To accomplish this, Wilcox first “[examines] the family and gender ideologies produced by conservative and mainline Protestant churches in the second half of the twentieth century” (p. 3). He then explores how those ideologies are related to the attitudes of married men with children (who are the only people examined in this book). Finally, he analyzes the effect of religious affiliation and attendance on a variety of measures of “ideal parenting” that reflect three dimensions: parenting, household labor, and marriage.

Wilcox ultimately finds that frequent church attending conservative Protestant men are, as he predicted, great fathers and husbands. At least, so Wilcox says at the end of the book. But, when you read what he has to say and scrutinize his analysis, the result is a completely different picture. In the sincerest way this is actually a compliment to Wilcox for reporting what he actually finds – by doing so he is giving critics all the evidence they need to illustrate that Wilcox is completely and totally wrong.

Review:
One of the better aspects of this book is the theoretical build-up (no sense building a house of cards on a house of cards). Wilcox explains that there are several theoretical arguments one must understand in order to address the issue of conservative protestant parenting. One theoretical position is the “family modernization” perspective which argues that “religion is becoming increasingly marginal as an influence on the culture and practice of family life” (p. 7). This is contrasted with the “gender reaction” perspective which “maintains that orthodox religionists are at war with modernity’s egalitarian and individualistic values and that the family is the primary battleground for this conflict” (p. 8). Wilcox doesn’t agree completely with either of these perspectives. Instead, Wilcox is arguing that conservative Protestants are the embodiment of the new man – they are egalitarian, though not individualistic – and that the influence of religion on the family is not diminishing. To bolster this perspective he draws upon Christian Smith’s “religious subcultures” argument. Smith basically argues that some religious subcultures “thrive on distinction, engagement, tension, conflict, and threat and that the evangelical movement’s vitality is not a product of its protected isolation from, but of its vigorous engagement with pluralistic modernity” (p. 63). In other words, conservative Protestantism is energetic precisely because it is (casting itself as being) under attack by secular society. The result is a pro-family ideology that results in healthy, happy, good fathers.

But what does Wilcox mean by “pro-family”? Or, to use his term, “familism”? “Familism is an ideology that sacralizes the obligations that individuals have toward their family members-children, spouse, and parents-and takes a highly sentimental view of family life” (p. 89). To arrive at a measure of “familism,” Wilcox created an index using seven questions. Some of the questions SEEM relevant to the issue as they measure things like the value of marriage and childbearing and the appropriateness of unhappy couples with children divorcing. Other questions are less relevant, like a measure of the importance of adult children caring for elderly parents. But the serious problem with this approach is that Wilcox is loading the dice: he measures familism in a way that is guaranteed to favor conservative Protestants. Let me give an example to illustrate. Let’s say I want to measure how intelligent my child is, but my child is an autistic savant that can do remarkable mathematical calculations in his head but can’t remember his name or tie his shoes. If I want to show that my child is a genius, I create an “IQ” test that requires people to do enormous mathematical calculations in their heads. I give the test to 100 “normal” kids and, guess what, my kids comes back looking like a genius. Wilcox did the same thing. He created this idea – “familism” – that measures people’s “commitment to family” but it does so using measures that are likely to favor conservative Protestants. A common belief (that is changing, as Wilcox notes) within conservative Protestantism is that divorce is never a good option. If you want to load the dice so conservative Protestants look more pro-family than non conservative Protestants, claim that a good measure of one’s attitude toward families is their resistance to divorce.

Wilcox claims that this pro-familism of conservative Protestants results from the ideology of conservative Protestantism, “The basic logic of conservative Protestant family-related ideology may be characterized, then, as an expressive traditionalism in which efforts to shore up the family have led to an intensive approach to family living for men and women. This leaves open the ironic possibility that in spite of their gender-role traditionalism conservative Protestant men may take an active and expressive approach to family life that makes them, in some ways, more progressive than their nonconservative peers” (p. 73). Wilcox then explicitly claims that conservative Protestantism has positive effects on the family, “In other words, at least when it comes to parenting and marriage, the soft patriarchs found in evangelical Protestantism come closer to approximating the iconic new man than either mainline or unaffiliated men do” (p. 13). This brings us full-circle in a circular argument: a pro-family measure is derived from the ideology of conservative Protestantism which makes conservative Protestantism pro-family. Isn’t that nifty!?!

Of course, Wilcox still has to illustrate that the ideology of conservative Protestantism is pro-family. To do so he reads some of the flagship magazines of mainline and conservative Protestantism and arrives at two “cultural logics”: Golden Rule liberalism and expressive traditionalism. Golden Rule liberalism is the position of mainline Protestants and Wilcox describes it as, “[combining] a progressive emphasis on tolerance of family diversity, egalitarian gender roles, and child autonomy with a familistic emphasis on a Golden Rule ethic of caring, especially in the family” (p. 25). This contrasts with conservative Protestantism’s expressive traditionalism, which “stresses the importance of patriarchal and parental authority, traditional sexual morality, and an ethic of familial duty, but softens these ideals with an expressive interpersonal ethic that suggests personal fulfillment can be found through adherence to traditional social and moral conventions. Golden Rule liberalism is more accommodating of family modernization, while expressive traditionalism is more resistant to the developments associated with family modernization” (p. 25). If you read these descriptions carefully you’ll see exactly what I described above in my discussion of familism – mainline Protestants are more accepting of family diversity (e.g., divorce, second marriages, homosexual marriages, step-kids, etc.) while conservative Protestants emphasize “familial duty.” But Wilcox isn’t done loading the dice; he still needs to teach the dice how to spin.

Having defined an ideology as pro-family if it emphasizes familial duty, Wilcox proceeds to decry the tolerance and acceptance of mainline Protestantism, “Thus, the mainline’s embrace of elements of cultural modernity-tolerance, gender equality, the impulse to inclusion, and the therapeutic ethic-has led it to reject key dimensions of 1950s familism. Its acceptance of unconditional divorce and remarriage and its affirmation of family pluralism contradict the familistic idealization of the nuclear family and lifelong marriage. The mainline positions on sex-related matters have pushed the churches in a liberationist direction that, symbolically at least, stands in tension with the familistic values of sexual restraint and, in the case of abortion, the mother-child bond. The mainline’s commitment to social justice to the exclusion of family matters, its focus on sex-related issues, and its desire to highlight its tolerant acceptance of all families have diminished its capacity to speak clearly to the everyday concerns and moral quandaries that confront all manner of families” (p. 42). Wilcox argues that secular society in general has moved this way as well (see p. 29). According to Wilcox, then, tolerating diversity is anti-family. When you look at it like that, intolerant conservative Protestants suddenly start looking very pro-family. Is your head about ready to explode, too? Hang on, though, Wilcox is just getting started…

Wilcox proceeds to argue that, while tolerance of diverse family forms is bad, one innovation of secular society is good, “The last two decades have witnessed increased public support for a “new fatherhood” ideal, according to which men take an active and expressive role in the lives of their children” (p. 97). But Wilcox claims this “iconic new father” isn’t very common, which flies in the face of the data we are seeing and even Wilcox cites, “…the amount of time fathers devote to child rearing increased 170 percent from twenty-one minutes a day in 1965 to fifty-seven minutes a day in 1998.” But Wilcox doesn’t think that is enough improvement to claim that these “iconic new fathers” actually exist because they aren’t doing as much as mothers. This, of course, is necessary for his argument because if that was sufficient, there would be no reason to argue that conservative Protestant men embody the “new men” he’s talking about. And, ultimately, that is the argument he wants to make, “conservative Protestant family ideology is connected to the warm, expressive style of fatherhood that scholars deem important to positive outcomes for children” (p. 107).

Let me recap, quickly. Tolerance of diverse family forms is bad (because conservative Protestants don’t tolerate them). Being a “new man” is good (hopefully because conservative Protestants score higher here). Everybody got it? Okay, I do too. But now Wilcox throws a wrench into the works, “However, fathers are not encouraged to be warm and expressive all the time. Although in most circumstances the “framing rules” supplied by conservative Protestant ideology guide the emotion work of these parents in the direction of a warm, expressive style, in situations in which the father deems a child’s behavior unwise, immoral, or disobedient, conservative Protestant family experts exhort the father to adopt a traditional approach to discipline largely in keeping with a classical Protestant disciplinary style” (p. 108). In case you don’t see the direction this is going, I’ll give you a hint: Wilcox is setting you up for his finding that the “intolerant new men” of conservative Protestantism are more likely to beat their children and their wives. But, according to Wilcox, that’s a good thing. That is the true embodiment of familism – if you love ‘em, beat ‘em. (The idea of “fostering” obedience in children also has a nice benefit for the money-grubbing pastors of conservative Protestantism – people are less likely to question authority and more likely to continue writing checks to James Dobson and Pat Robertson. Teaching the parents to teach their children to think for themselves is a one-way ticket to honest work, and what pastor wants that? Wilcox even admits this, “Conservative Protestant family experts treat children’s disobedience with particular concern because they view parental authority as analogous to divine sovereignty, and they believe that obedience to parents prepares a child to obey God as an adult” (p. 109).)

With the ideas of conservative Protestantism toward parenting laid out, Wilcox has to make an argument that ideology actually leads to behavior. This argument is always problematic as causal direction can rarely be asserted – people with views similar to those of conservative Protestantism may join conservative denominations while conservative denominations may influence peoples’ views. It’s hard to say which direction this works (it’s probably both). But in order for Wilcox’s argument to work, it has to be ideology to attitudes and behavior, and not vice versa. This leads Wilcox to assert, “Nevertheless, my models indicate that religious factors – especially a conservative Protestant affiliation and theological conservatism – are the most important predictors of familistic attitudes among married men with children” (p. 91). Note there is no discussion of causal direction here. Also, remember what I said earlier about his measure of familism – he is basically using his dependent variable (conservative Protestant views of what it means to be pro-family) to predict his dependent variable (familism). Ironically, I think Wilcox knows this is problematic, as he basically admits it, “given that conservative Protestant institutions are probably the only major institutional proponent of gender traditionalism in the United States and that an active conservative Protestant affiliation is more strongly associated than any other sociodemographic factor with gender traditionalism, we can conclude that conservative Protestantism plays a signal role in fostering gender traditionalism among married men with children” (p. 93). In other words, he knows he is using his dependent variable to predict his dependent variable, but he thinks that is okay.

If we assume it is okay, what does Wilcox actually find concerning the attitudes and behaviors of conservative Protestants relative to mainline Protestants and the unaffiliated? Using survey data from the General Social Survey and the National Survey of Families and Households, Wilcox finds the following:

• “Both conservative and mainline Protestant fathers are more involved in one-on-one activities than unaffiliated fathers;” mainliners are more involved than conservatives (p. 113; the difference is statistically significant, but tiny and practically insignificant; see p. 115)
• “conservative Protestant fathers spend about 2.0 hours and mainline fathers about 1.3 hours more per week in youth-related activities than unaffiliated fathers” (p. 116; again, the effect sizes are tiny and only the conservative Protestant effect is statistically significant; this also includes time spent in church as time spent with children, which basically accounts for the difference)
• “conservative and mainline Protestant married men with children are significantly more likely than their unaffiliated counterparts to praise and hug their children very often” (p. 118; again, significant, but weak effect sizes)
• “conservative Protestant fathers are significantly more likely than unaffiliated fathers to resort to corporal punishment” (p. 120; the differences aren’t huge)
• “there are no statistically significant differences between unaffiliated fathers and conservative Protestant fathers or between unaffiliated fathers and mainline Protestant fathers” in likelihood of yelling at children (p. 122, though Wilcox is quick to point out that conservative Protestant fathers “are less likely to yell at their children than mainline Protestant fathers” even though it is not a significant difference)
• “The data indicate that conservative Protestant, but not mainline Protestant, fathers are 65 percent more likely than unaffiliated fathers to report that their children have a regular bedtime” (p. 126; Wilcox interprets this as good parenting, but it is, in fact, authoritarian, which translates into bad parenting when you look at outcomes)
• “conservative Protestants are increasingly likely to express egalitarian attitudes about the public, economic and political roles of women, as well as greater openness to mothers working outside the home” (p. 143; notice the framing, they are “increasingly likely,” which is to say this is not a strong point of conservative Protestants – they score lower on this than any other group)
• “conservative Protestant married men with children spend almost one and a half hours per week less on household labor than their unaffiliated peers” (p. 146) and “Husbands with the highest familism scores spend five hours less each week on household labor than husbands with the lowest familism scores” (p. 147; differences are significant)
  “the wives of both conservative and mainline Protestant married men with children are slightly more likely to report that their household labor is appreciated, compared to wives of unaffiliated family men” (p. 151; the effects are not statistically significant)
• “4.8 percent of conservative Protestant married men with children committed domestic violence in the year prior to NSFH2, compared to 4.3 percent of mainline Protestant married men with children and 3.2 percent of unaffiliated married men with children. The differences between the results for these groups, however, are not statistically significant. Once religious affiliation is broken out by church attendance, however, the differences between religious groups become statistically significant. Nominal conservative Protestant husbands have a domestic violence rate of 7.2 percent and are significantly more abusive than unaffiliated husbands” (p. 181)
• “Religious affiliation is not related to the amount of quality time husbands spend with their wives; neither does church attendance make a difference on this measure. I find no evidence that active mainline or conservative Protestant men are more involved in this way than their nominal and unaffiliated peers” (p. 183)

So, that’s actually what Wilcox finds. Now here is how he interprets his findings:

• on yelling, “consistent with the literature review, we have modest evidence that conservative Protestantism encourages fathers to approach disciplinary situations in a spirit of self-control that leads them to reject yelling as an appropriate parental behavior” (p. 122).
• on corporal punishment, “These positive outcomes may be mitigated for conservative Protestant children, who are more likely to experience corporal punishment, which research on child well-being links to social and psychological problems. On the other hand, a number of studies indicate that the negative outcomes associated with corporal punishment do not obtain when parents balance spanking with higher levels of parental support, and my findings show that conservative Protestant children do experience higher levels of involvement and positive affect from their fathers” (p. 130; yes, he just dismissed corporal punishment)
• on conservative Protestant men not doing as much housework, “Although these findings do not provide direct evidence about husbands’ displays of gratitude for their wives’ household labor, they do provide strong prima facie evidence in favor of the theory that husbands who value family life are responding to gender asymmetries in their households by displaying heightened levels of gratitude compared to other husbands. There are two alternative explanations for the results documented here. First, it could be that men who are more familistic are generally married to women who are also more familistic and who, as a consequence, have lower expectations of their husbands’ gratitude either because they derive intrinsic pleasure from household labor or because they seek to convince themselves that their husbands appreciate their household labor in order to avoid facing the fact that their husbands are not shouldering a substantial share of the housework” (p. 153; this sounds an awful lot like Stockholm syndrome to me)
• also on not doing much housework, “In sum, the results suggest that churchgoing, theologically conservative, and especially familistic married men with children-particularly those who share faith and a commitment to familism with their wives-are making a strong effort to reciprocate their wives’ “gift” of extra household work with the “gift” of displays of gratitude” (p. 154; saying “thanks” while sitting on your ass isn’t saying thanks at all)
• on traditional gender-role attitudes, “Conservative Protestant institutions also foster inequality indirectly through their support for gender-role traditionalism, which is consistently and powerfully associated with gendered asymmetries in the division of household labor. Thus, we have evidence that conservative Protestantism plays a MODEST role in fostering gender inequality at the level of practice” (p. 155; emphasis mine)

These are just a few of the interpretations (read: spin) Wilcox provides. A few are so astonishing they deserve special attention. The one that really blew my mind was this one, “None of the results reported in this chapter [the chapter in which he found conservative Protestants are more likely to beat their wives] indicate that religion and gender-role traditionalism lead to lower levels of positive emotion work on the part of married men with children or to higher levels of domestic violence” (p. 187). When I read this I seriously couldn’t believe it. Five pages earlier he said conservative Protestant men were more likely to beat their wives, but now he is denying it. He is calling black, white. Astonishing.

I also really liked this gem, “These results suggest that the future of marital quality in the United States depends in part on the extent to which both spouses embrace a familist outlook that makes the husband more attentive to the emotional needs of his wife and the wife less likely to expect a great deal of emotion work from her husband” (p. 189). Basically what Wilcox is saying is: (1) everyone should be a conservative Protestant; (2) men should let their wives talk while they sit on their asses; and (3) women should not expect men to actually be listening. You could call this “Wilcox’s three-step approach to marital happiness” (also known as the “go get me a beer while I sit on the couch and watch Pat Robertson on TV and pretend to be listening to you” approach to marital happiness).

Wilcox isn’t quite done pretending black is white, though. He actually makes a remarkable claim that I’d love to verify with his wife, “Women who are married to active conservative Protestant men probably enjoy high levels of marital quality and are less likely to experience a marital breakup, given the comparatively high levels of appreciation, affection, and understanding, and the low levels of domestic violence, they report” (p. 198). This seems absurd. But then you have to recognize the comparison group he is using, “By contrast, women who are married to nominal conservative Protestant men are likely to experience low levels of marital quality and high rates of marital breakup, given the comparatively low levels of appreciation, affection, and understanding, and the high levels of domestic violence, they report” (p. 198). This is one of my favorite approaches to altering reality. Basically Wilcox is saying, “You can’t hold frequently attending conservative Protestants responsible for the actions of the infrequently attending conservative Protestants. Those two groups of people are completely different.” If only it were so easy and you really could pick and choose which groups you want to be representative of you. Wilcox is trying to distance the “better” from the “terrible” to salvage the “better than terrible” group.

If I alter just a couple words in this concluding paragraph, I think Wilcox has provided an accurate summary of his findings, “Overall, then, these findings paint a striking picture. Churchgoing conservative Protestant family men are soft patriarchs. Contrary to [In line with] the assertions of feminists, many family scholars, and public critics, these men cannot be fairly described as “abusive” and “authoritarian” family men wedded to “stereotypical forms of masculinity.”" (p. 199). Well put, Mr. Wilcox!

Charon, Joel M., and Lee Vigilant. 2008. The Meaning of Sociology: A Reader. 9th ed. Prentice Hall.

Rating:
6

Review:
comprehensive reader

I used this as a supplement to the John J. Macionis 9th edition Introduction to Sociology text. To be completely honest I’m not sure that given similar circumstances I would use them both again. The reason being that I taught a very condensed course (17 days of class, 13 actual lectures/discussion). Because the class was so condensed I didn’t feel that I could assign the students any more reading than a chapter from the Macionis text and a reading from this reader everyday. Given a more drawn out course, say the traditional 10-week quarter, I can see where this reader would be more useful because you could assign multiple readings to each corresponding chapter in the introductory text and actually cover more than 13 of the 65 readings in the book. Because I only covered about 13 of them I don’t think I’ll use this text in this format again (too expensive for 13 readings), opting instead to create a small packet of 10 articles or something along those lines.

As for the reader itself, I would say that about half of the included readings were superb and the other half ranged between mediocre and pretty poor. For instance, most of the readings by Peter Berger (not Berger and Luckmann) were very clear, articulate, and downright humorous for a sociologist to read; I’m not sure my class found them as humorous, but they did seem to enjoy them.

I also found in discussing the articles with my class that the articles that were most well-received, despite some students not agreeing with the methods or conclusions of the articles, were the articles that applied sociological understanding to real-world problems, for example the reading ‘Fraternities and Rape on Campus’ by Martin and Hummer resulted in a very lively and heated discussion.

I can understand that Charon is trying to incorporate some more traditional readings in the reader in order to give the students a sense of what some classical sociological writing is like and also to give them an opportunity to read classical sociology. It seems like a noble goal, but I’m not sure how effective it is. Most of the excerpts he included were typically so short that they didn’t really cover enough to get a good understanding of what the author was trying to get at (the exception being ‘Human Nature’ by Cooley). For example, the excerpt by Berger and Luckmann on socialization was just a snippet from their wordy but fascinating treatise ‘The Social Construction of Reality’ and by no means gave an accurate or comprehensive understanding of what it was Berger and Luckmann were getting at. Of course, my introduction to that text was actually an entire course focused on reading just that one book, so I’m kind of surprised that Charon would think a snippet would actually be useful to undergraduate students.

Overall I think the reader is designed to appeal to a broad array of sociology instructors by offering a little bit of everything (theory, application, critical sociology, etc.) but in so doing it becomes the task of the instructor to wade through the articles to find the ones that work for him/her. I’m not sure there is another way to do it when trying to appeal to a large and varied group of instructors, so it can’t really be honed in that sense. Nevertheless, the reader does contain a number of classical works (e.g. ‘The Saints and the Roughnecks’ among others) that are both engaging and interesting to undergraduate students and work well as supplements to an introductory text.

Ritchey, Ferris Joseph. 2008. The Statistical Imagination: Elementary Statistics for the Social Sciences. 2nd ed. Boston: McGraw Hill.

Rating:
10

Summary:
This is an introductory statistics textbook for sociology students. Perhaps uniquely, rather than begin straightaway with statistical calculations, this text begins with the theory underlying statistical analysis. In fact, a full third of the text is made up of statistical theory and basic explanations of statistical concepts.

The statistical calculations covered in the text range from basic t-tests to ordinary least squares regression (single IV variable). Each statistical test includes lengthy explanations along with an example calculation. In addition to the explanations, the book has questions and exercises at the end of each chapter as it is, of course, an introductory textbook for college students.

Review:
This is by far the clearest explanation of statistical theory (probability testing) that I have read. I would highly recommend it for basic statistical courses. It presents the tests and theory well enough that this could even work for an introductory statistical text for high school students.

There are two minor problems with the text. First, I wish it covered multiple regression in addition to single independent variable regression as the explanations in this text are very clear and I can only assume that it would help clarify the topic for those who must perform these tests (which are becoming increasingly common). Second, it is often the case that the author begins a chapter with one example then switches to another example for the second half of the chapter. While I can understand the utility in such an approach (it provides multiple examples for a single type of statistical analysis), it occasionally becomes confusing. Other than these two remarkably minor problems, the text is superb.

Two features of this book really stand out. First, the book specifically lays out when you should use a particular test. This element of the book is worth the price alone. The second element that stands out is the tone the author takes; a tone that has two elements: First, he is funny and tries his best to integrate wit and humor into a statistical text (like admitting to having been struck by lightning; p. 269). The second tone is a positive view of scientific skepticism that pervades the entire text. The author clearly lays out the value of skeptical thinking (see p. 16).

Overall, I highly recommend this text for introductory statistics courses. It is easy to understand yet does not simplify the concepts and analysis. Perhaps there are other introductory texts that do as good of a job, but I have yet to see one that comes close.

Author:
Christopher Hitchens

Publisher:
Twelve Books

Date of Publication:
2007

ISBN:
978-0446579803

Rating:
8

Summary:
I listened to this book over this past summer but haven’t had a chance to write a review of it until now. I picked it up, of course, because I am an atheist and because it was getting a lot of press.

Hitchens starts out by detailing his personal experience with religion – he was raised religious but was a skeptic early on (which is actually common for a lot of atheists; see Altemeyer and Hunsberger’s 2006 book). His skepticism led him to realize there are a lot of inconsistencies in religious dogma. By his teens he was basically a non-believer.

After describing his own experience, Hitchens jumps into his project with gusto. The first chapter explains exactly what it means to be an atheist (i.e., someone who lacks a belief in a god; every person reading this is an atheist toward one god or another, e.g., Thor). This chapter is extremely well-written and, as an atheist, I found it to be an accurate portrayal of atheism as I understand it. Unfortunately, this may be one of the strongest chapters in the book.

In the second chapter Hitchens talks about religion-inspired violence around the world. While an old argument, I have to give Hitchens credit for a new approach. Rather than point out the obvious examples of religion-inspired violence (e.g., 9/11, the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack, etc.), he frames this issue in a really intriguing way. He was asked in an interview if he would be comfortable passing a group of religious people coming out of services. His answer, for all religious groups, “No.” Why? Because, as he argues (and there is some evidence to support this; see Mark Juergensmeyer’s 2003 book on religion-inspired terrorism), religion can lead to fanaticism, fundamentalism, and black and white thinking. He has actually been in this situation before and felt uncomfortable. Hitchens, accurately, argues that he does not know of any fanatical secularists who would blow themselves up for their cause. He also makes it clear that this has nothing to do with racial or ethnic minorities, as he has been in a number of situations where he was the racial/ethnic minority and he felt comfortable. He makes a good point in this chapter about religious fanaticism, but I didn’t come away from this chapter feeling like he had won the argument decisively.

The third chapter is a bit odd as it doesn’t really attack religion so much as present one of Hitchens’s pet theories. Hitchens raises the argument that I have heard many times to explain Jewish dietary restrictions surrounding pork: pork, unless cooked very well, is a relatively dangerous meat to eat as it has a high probability of containing trichinosis. Thus, the argument goes, the ban on pork was instituted in Jewish law because it made biological/evolutionary sense to avoid dangerous meats. Hitchens, compellingly I believe, argues that this explanation doesn’t make a lot of sense considering so many other cultural groups ate pork and were just as successful (and many more successful) than Judaism (e.g., Romans). Hitchens argues, instead, that the ban may have resulted from the Jewish recognition that pigs are actually very similar to humans (they aren’t primates, but they are like humans in a lot of other ways; see basically any episode of Mythbusters that involves projectiles). Hitchens proposes that the similarity between humans and pigs led to pigs becoming sacred in a way that is similar to the sacredness of the bread and wine of Christian sacraments – the Christian sacrament is a symbolic gesture of eating one’s god. Eating a pig, Hitchens argues, was like eating a human, which could only be done under special circumstances and when accompanied with substantial ritual. It’s an intriguing argument, I’ll give him that. But I really didn’t see the relevance to religion or atheism. It kept my attention, but that may just be because, as a sociologist, I’m always looking to contextualize behavior.

In chapter four Hitchens returns to his attacks on religion. In this chapter he attacks religion for intervening in health matters. I forget all of the details of his argument (as I’m writing this six months after having read it), but the basic gist was that religious beliefs like those of Christian Scientists and Jehovah’s Witnesses can interfere with modern medical care and ultimately result in serious harm. If adults want to subject themselves to these situations, I don’t think many people really care. But when adults force their ridiculous beliefs on children, seriously harming or killing them in the process, I believe most people do care. I often raise this issue in my sociology classes when talking about the “inviolate rights” of parents to raise their children how they want – should religious parents be allowed to refuse medical treatments that would save the lives of their children? People are very supportive of parents’ rights and the freedom of religion until faced with this issue… I don’t have an answer, but it’s fun to think about.

Chapter four takes a slightly different approach. Rather than attack religion, Hitchens discusses evolution. He gives a very simplified version of evolution, but his version is clear and accurate (at least, from my perspective as a moderately well-educated non-biologist). The point, of course, is that evolution is a key scientific finding that makes it very easy to dismiss god (I’ve long held that many deists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries would have been atheists if it were not for the issue of creation). Hitchens makes a similar connection between evolution and religion, arguing that it undermines religious belief. There are a lot of people who readily accept that evolution is an accurate theory for understanding speciation but who also believe in a supernatural entity. Believing in evolution doesn’t mean you can’t still believe in a supernatural being (or beings), but it does mean you have to change your understanding of the characteristics of that being – no longer is that being THE CREATOR but rather THE GUIDER, which is a neutered version of traditional and orthodox understandings of god. In short, Hitchens details how just how plausible and attractive atheism becomes in light of evolution and other scientific advances.

Chapters seven and eight continue the attacks on religion, dissecting the Bible and illustrating just how idiotic it really is. Hitchens doesn’t break much new ground here; Thomas Paine tore the Bible to shreds at the end of the 18th century. That said, Hitchens’s arguments are, again, clear and very compelling. I would be interested to hear how a non-dogmatic believer in the Bible responds to these two chapters.

The next chapter (nine, I believe), moves from the Bible to the Quran and basically illustrates that it is not a step up in terms of literary quality or factuality. I really liked this chapter because it tackles an issue that isn’t often raised in Western culture as acceptance of the Quran is not nearly as pervasive as acceptance of the Bible. Hitchens goes into pretty good detail about the history of the Quran and illustrates that it is just as poorly compiled as the Bible (the central characters didn’t write these books – Moses didn’t write the Pentatuech, Jesus didn’t write the Gospels, and Mohammad didn’t write the Quran). Hitchens also points out that the Quran plagiarizes a lot from the Bible and other Arabic writings (which didn’t come as a big shock to me having read a lot of the Quran and having discovered the same is true of the Book of Mormon, which was my primary scriptural resource for the first 25 years of my life). Hitchens also attacks the claimed miracles of Islam, illustrating that they are just as much hot air as the miracles of Christianity.

The discussion of miracles leads Hitchens into his next chapter where he discusses his role in the beatification of Mother Teresa. He was actually brought in by the Catholic Church to play the role of skeptic; he had previously written extensively about how terrible a person Mother Teresa really was (for those who are unfamiliar with this argument, I suggest you read another of Hitchens’s books “The Missionary Position” as it details that she was actually more of a sadist, encouraging suffering and not relieving it). Hitchens easily illustrated that the miracles attributed to her after her death were bunk, but of course the beatification council didn’t listen to reason (not a strong point of religions) and beatified her anyway.

The next chapter roams about in discussing Hitchens’s understanding of the origins of religion (what I call misattributions or the false belief that something unexplainable is the work of supernatural powers). In this discussion he hits on things as far ranging as Polynesian cargo cults (which are remarkable to study), the experience of Marjoe Gortner, a child evangelist who was basically pimped by his parents to make money by fleecing the religious (his 1972 Academy Award winning documentary is a must see), and the LDS religion (which I’ll return to below).

The last third of the book really started to lose my attention. It’s not that it is terribly written, it’s just that Hitchens tries to develop a relatively untenable argument that I didn’t find all that compelling. A classic criticism of atheism, one recently echoed by bigoted and self-interested Pope Benedict XVI, is that it has lead to its own atrocities (e.g., Russian gulags, Chinese torture and imprisonment, etc.). Personally, I don’t think that is the fault of atheism any more than Catholics believe the Holocaust is the fault of Catholicism; the people responsible for these atrocities may have been atheists (i.e., Stalin, Mao, etc.) or may have been Catholics (i.e., Hitler), but I don’t think their religious or irreligious beliefs had anything to do with their actions. Hitler may have used Catholicism to justify his actions, but I don’t believe Catholicism inspired his bigotry toward Jews. And I don’t think Stalin or Mao ever said that the lack of belief in god justified their atrocities. In both cases it was the appeal of power that motivated these individuals and their followers to commit atrocities. I don’t think you can put that on the respective religious/irreligious belief systems.

Now, that’s not to say that religions haven’t been responsible for some atrocities (e.g., the Inquisition and the Crusades are easy examples), but even those atrocities were probably motivated, if not primarily, at least in part, by ulterior motives – power and resources. All the arguments surrounding atrocities and religion really illustrate is that religion is instrumental – it is, as Machiavelli and Marx pointed out hundreds of years ago, a useful tool for those who want power.

So, what is Hitchens’s argument here? Hitchens, wrong-headedly I believe, tries to argue that most communist countries are personality cults (i.e., they worship their dictators). As a result, they are really religions and not atheistic. While there is certainly some truth to the argument that they are personality cults (just look at the pictures of Mao everywhere in China, Stalin and Lenin in the Soviet Union pre-1989, and Castro in Cuba), personality cults aren’t religions. Regardless, this is a very tortured argument. As I pointed out above, all this illustrates is that you can manipulate people using the fundamental elements of religion (i.e., devotion to a higher cause) for your own ends.

Hitchens basically tries the “atheism leads to immorality and violence” criticism by turning it back on religion. Yeah, I can kind of see it, but in the end I don’t think either side is going to win this argument because there isn’t anything to win on this front – both need to admit that elements of religion are regularly used to manipulate followers and empower leaders. If that is an argument against religion, so be it. But I see it more as an argument against blind devotion and willful ignorance.

That basically wraps up what the book covers…

Review:
But there are a few more things I want to mention. First, Hitchens is a great writer. I don’t think anyone can really argue that. His writing is generally very clear and very engaging. And he’s witty. Two witticisms stuck out. Hitchens couldn’t help but mention the Catholic pedophilia scandal, but with a Hitchensonian twist: he calls it “No child’s behind left.” (Yeah, we shouldn’t make fun of it, but it is kind of funny.). Hitchens also skewers Mormonism, which I’m not going to argue with. He does a great job illustrating how preposterous Joseph Smith’s claims are. In the process he makes a point that can only be considered a witticism. Mark Twain called the Book of Mormon “chloroform in print” (chloroform, for those who don’t know, is a chemical that will put you to sleep). Hitchens actually says that Twain wasn’t as witty as people give him credit for – the name “Ether” is actually in the book (it’s the name of one of the alleged contributors). I hate to admit it, but I think Hitchens may have one-upped Twain.

Hitchens is also insightful. He made a few points that I had not heard others make before. For instance, Hitchens says at one point, “Who but a slave thanks his master for telling him what to do without consulting him?” If you think about that for a second, the idea is intriguing. Would you thank someone for telling you what to do without consulting you? Or would you take affront? Hitchens argues that religious people regularly shower their god/s/esses with praise for telling them what to do without consulting them. Basically, they are exhibiting a slavery mindset, which may not be a disorder in the DSM, but probably should be. I have to point out there are two ways of interpreting this, one of which is even more intriguing. The first interpretation is more in line with what Hitchens was saying as religious people often are subjected to the will of others who they believe receive revelations on their behalf (e.g., Catholics, Mormons, and even other less hierarchically structured religions that have pastors who make pronouncements a la Pat Robertson). It is really in this sense that people accept “divine” edicts without having been consulted and do so gratefully. As Bob Altemeyer has argued for years now, this is not healthy (he calls it right-wing authoritarianism and has shown that it is associated with bigotry, dogmaticism, fanaticism, and all sorts of problematic behaviors and beliefs). The second interpretation is more intriguing to me: When it comes to personal “revelation” – when an individual believes he/she is receiving direct revelation from god – their god is, in fact, consulting with them. In a very Durkheimian way, people in that situation are their own god – they are holding a conversation but they are the two participants. I think you can generally see this in personal “revelation” as people generally tend to get the message from their god that they should do what they wanted to before consulting with their god. So, only in the dictatorial sense are people slaves to their gods and religious devotion; in the personal revelation sense, people are slaves to themselves… Trippy, huh?

So, what’s my recommendation? I highly recommend this book, but with a caveat – you don’t have to read the last third. The first two-thirds are insightful, witty, well-written, and compelling and well worth reading. The last third, well, do with it what you will.

(Note: I listened to this book on my iPod.)