Can one be good without God? Those who have no doubt – whether yes or no – shouldn’t bother reading Wendy Kaminer’s Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety (Pantheon Books, $24). Those who do will find it thought-provoking.
Kaminer, author of five books, is like a preacher looking for sinners in Las Vegas; she relishes finding the snake oil and she knows it’s everywhere. “Ours is an evangelical culture,” she writes. From Nancy Reagan’s astrologer to Hillary Clinton’s ghosts, Kaminer chronicles what she dubs “the celebration of subjectivity.” Citing, among other groundless claims, the repressed memory hysteria that resulted in hundreds of ruined, innocent lives, she argues that today’s world is dominated by the notion that, as she puts it: “A fact is simply what is true for you.”
Kaminer warns that subjectivism is poison – her chapter on junk science shows how – but she fails to offer the antidote and the lack of depth makes Sleeping an extended essay on what she thinks is wrong with the world.
Kaminer’s philosophy, however, is weak. Her definition of faith – ”the capacity to entertain ideals in spite of harsh realities” – is seriously flawed; grit is not faith. At least Kaminer is honest about her shortcomings. “Not quite brave enough for atheism,” she writes, “or absolutely sure of my judgment, I fall back on agnosticism–either a cowardly or judicious alternative to religious belief.
Still, she cuts through much of today’s nonsense. After quoting some gibberish about the womb of the universe from Deepak Chopra, she asks: “What is he talking about?” and rips him to shreds. Those who regard The Celestine Prophecy and Conversations with God as harmless will be shocked by Kaminer’s cogent warnings, which reveal that Conversations insists that Hitler went to heaven and Celestine is an assault on reason. During an especially horrifying critique, Kaminer shows that most of these bestsellers propose that victims of murder actually chose to die.
Kaminer offers lots of attitude–even intelligent evaluations–but not a lot of answers. By the end, she admits that she regards faith as a talent and her some-have-it, some-don’t, philosophy explains why Kaminer fails to grasp the spontaneous mourning of Princess Diana and the appeal of the CBS drama Touched by an Angel. Focusing on the religious aspects, it never occurs to Kaminer that their popularity may be, for some, rooted in that which is completely rational. Diana was also intelligent, beautiful, and, at times, independent and the unhip Touched by an Angel offers a comprehensible plot about human values in a sea of plotless shows about random human action, (i.e., ER).
Mystics will have no use for Kaminer’s doubts. Neither will the doubters, whose rejection of religion is often a sneer at the universe. For those who reject irrationalism while seeking to embrace a meaningful life, they may appreciate Kaminer’s observations, but they will have to find rational salvation elsewhere.
A version of this review was published in the Memphis Commercial Appeal and Dallas Morning News upon the book’s publication.