Sunday, September 19, 2004
How exciting. However, like Cara I think I will just put my book reviews in with the rest of my posts -- I need all the topics I can get! The book is titled The Probability of God: A Simple Calculation that Proves the Ultimate Truth. It is written by Stephen D. Unwin, Ph.D. He received his doctorate in theoretical physics from the University of Manchester, migrated to risk analysis in his career, worked for the British government as a technical attaché to the US DOE, and now owns a consulting firm and lives in Ohio. I was very struck by his observation of the difference between his religious outlook from his upbringing in the UK and the religious outlook of his colleagues' at DOE in New Mexico. I quote from his book:"It was arriving in the United States almost 20 years ago that my religious sensibilities were shaken. I had become lolled into a somewhat lazy, complacent form of religious thought in which God had become simply a symbol of good ethical behavior, compassion, generosity, honesty, and other virtues. ... Now, suddenly, I found myself in the company of people—educated and smart people—whose perception of God was far more concrete than mine."
Wow! I experience this in the reverse living in England. However, back to the book, this experience made Dr. Unwin consider his beliefs much more stongly, and he ended up going to his probability and risk analysis experience and training to determine, for himself, the probability that God exists. The book does provide a good introduction to Bayesian probabilities (the details of which some might find confusing, but I think skipping them and reading the conclusions is just as valuable), and also considers specific areas of evidentiary interest. These include topics like the existence of moral good, moral evil, and natural evil. Humorous at times, my personal opinion is that occasionally the author tries too hard for a laugh at the expense of the thought being conveyed. Also, I found his argument at the end of the book that "faith-based beliefs can provide no legitimate basis for any form of human conflict" rather weak. While he may logically be correct, I think a bit of observation proves that humans are seldom logical in their behavior, especially as it relates to faith-based matters!
Overall, I found the book personally thought provoking and an interesting read, though I fear there isn't much future for mathematical theology.
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