The best books I've read this year

Following a friend's example (with a slight difference), I share below the books I've read so far this year, and why you should read them too:

Carl Trueman does a brilliant job of analysing our current cultural moment as a product of a potent cocktail of post-Enlightenment thinking. He does not draw a sharp distinction between modernism and post-modernism and does not much dwell on the likes of Derrida and Foucault within the latter. But if you're looking for a thorough philosophical and historical explanation of why our current moment seems more mad than manageable, this is the best place to start. It's meaty academic stuff, but still accessible. I've read it twice to try and fully digest it and honestly believe that it is the most important book that any thinking citizen could read right now.

Debra Soh is a trained sexologist turned journalist who is deeply concerned about what she sees as highly misguided (and horribly aggressive) trans-activism. There are only two genders, and they reflect biological sex. There are just no good grounds on which to doubt this, and the rare cases of intersex challenges are genuine biological anomalies, hence there is no good evidence on which to sanction 'gender fluidity.' Soh would have done well to locate her biological evidence within the broader historical and philosophical framework provided by Trueman, but either way, it is important to read both books together. The conversation on the end of women's sports is alarming and worth a read for anyone who may be swayed - through misguided compassion - to blindly jump on the trans-activism bandwagon.

Nancy Pearcey argues that the kind of gender confusion described by Soh is a function of a body-mind dualism in modern and especially postmodern thinking. This is a must-read for a thorough evaluation of the transgender and 'pro-choice' debates. It's also an excellent apologetic for a standard Christian view towards sexuality that Trueman shows to be the specific target of thinkers such as Reich and Marcuse. The latter essentially fused Marxist and Freudian thinking to build a worldview that envisaged utopia as being utterly free of restrictive Christian sexual moral norms.

Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay do a thorough job (from a classic liberal perspective) of exposing the toxic thinking entailed in critical theory, especially as it pertains to race and gender. There is a new Social Justice orthodoxy in which debate is silenced by castigating any dissenters as bigots (or whatever kind of 'phobe' fits the flavour of the month). The upshot is that we cannot have the kinds of conversations required for making genuine progress. The authors rightly demonstrate that weak arguments (espoused by largely postmodern thinking) create polarisation that drowns out any kind of sensible middle.

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, in a similar vein to Pluckrose and Lindsay, reveal how regressive leftist thinking is starting to dominate university campuses in the US. They show how this spills out into the broader culture and often inflames radical right-wing responses. Instead of universities being places where truth is sought and debate encouraged, the toxic mix of viewing students primarily as customers and the ascendancy of critical theory (especially in the humanities), has wrought destructive repercussions. Students are increasingly pressurising lecturers to remove 'triggering' material from course syllabuses in a plea for 'safety.' As Lukianoff and Haidt show, though, such a confusion of 'psychological safety' with physical safety is incoherent, and it justifies physical violence against anyone seen to be espousing a view that is considered psychologically 'violent'.

David Benatar shows that ideas have consequences. The kind of thinking that is the target of many of the above books has radicalised the University of Cape Town. Critical Race Theory, in particular, has had devastating consequences, especially in the Humanities. It is startling to read Lukianoff and Haidt before reading Professor Benatar's book because one can almost predict the sequence of events described therein. The Fall of the University of Cape Town was a difficult read because it's my alma mater - I started as an undergraduate in 2002 and completed my PhD in 2019, and was taught by Professor Benatar for two years in a row. I myself taught there in 2010 and 2011. I taught many students from underprivileged backgrounds and there were many excellent support programmes to help them. Unfortunately, the Rhodes Must Fall movement, followed by Fees Must Fall, did not tackle the very serious resource-disparity questions. Instead, it created a toxic environment in which academic freedom was heavily undermined, racism was fully condoned and acquiescence to unreasonable demands became standard fare. I've got a full review of this book coming out in the next edition of our Africa Governance Papers journal, so I'll post a link once that's published.

Stephen Meyer has written a massive treatise in this excellent book. I have to confess to not having quite finished it yet. Either way, it's in an entirely different category from the books above. I was bemused to see the Wikipedia write-up of Meyer as a proponent of the 'pseudoscience' of Intelligent Design. It seems to me that if you want to dismiss someone's ideas without actually engaging them, you should just call them a 'pseudo-...' or, even worse, a 'bigot.' Any serious scientist must engage the arguments presented here by Meyer. He essentially posits that standard scientific hypotheses cannot provide an adequate account of:

• The origin of the universe (the big bang). That the universe had a finite beginning was not easily accepted at the time and many physicists and cosmologists saw that it had theistic implications.
• The fine-tuning of the universe. The sheer improbability of us being here at all strongly suggests an intelligent mind behind the ordering of the universe with the kind of precision that we observe. The parameters on the dials have to be extremely precise and in perfect harmony with one another.
• The sheer volume of specified functional information in even the most basic cell. Evolutionary theory (either biological or chemical) cannot adequately account for the origin of life. DNA code, for instance, is highly unlikely to have originated by blind chance.

Meyer engages respectfully with those who disagree with him. He also writes in a compelling, neutral, objective tone. You may of course still disagree with Meyer in the end, but the book is a serious accomplishment in the philosophy and history of science. It will make you marvel at the sheer beauty and complexity of our universe. My response is one of worship and gratitude to a Creator.