Correspondence
BRESSLER, C. STEPHEN & KLOPACZ, JOHN & MILLS, MARK P. & LANOUETTE, WILLIAMJ.
Correspondence Israel's parties Brookline, Mass. To the Editors: Congratulations are in order for Professor Alan Dowty on his insightful article on religious influence in Israel [July 15]. I...
...Lastly, Mr...
...Paul, Jerome, Augustine, John the Golden-mouthed, Dominic and even that most Buddhist of saints, Francis of Assisi, demonstrate some or all of these characteristics...
...The prophet Jesus told his followers to make a "turning" of repentance...
...Such an approach is certainly justified given the widespread popular attention that has been afforded some of the outrageous claims...
...McCracken's book for errors...
...McCracken addresses only technical claims, not motives or personalities...
...And he ignored the fact that the two U.S...
...A recent survey (see Public Opinion, August/September 1982) found that 89 percent of scientists, 98 percent of energy experts and 100 percent of nuclear experts felt that the nation should "proceed with nuclear energy" and that, when asked to assess the risks involved, 69 percent of scientists, 80 percent of energy experts and 98 percent of nuclear experts involved were willing to "locate nuclear plants in their cities...
...Lanouette identified), the presentation of the facts is accurate and fair...
...My review offered five detailed examples to demonstrate a few of McCracken's many selective inaccuracies...
...Rather than address the many examples in my review, Mills presents "a recent poll," published last year but actually conducted in mid-1980, before the Washington Public Power Supply System's nuclear-plant bond default, the emergency planning fiascos at the Shoreham and Indiana Point plants, and the failure of automatic shut-down equipment at the Salem reactor...
...The transformation of Buddhism into "Bud-dyism" simply shows, as the transformation of Christianity into the Inquisition or the Moral Majority, the lengths to which the ego will go in self-preservation...
...JOHN klopacz An atomic war Vienna, Va...
...Indeed, the sections of the book which cover the people in the debate, a topic which tempts most writers on nuclear topics, both pro and con, to lapse into ad hominem argumentation, are remarkable for the care with which Mr...
...Lanouette is clearly disturbed that he does so...
...McCracken...
...While praising U.S...
...Yet Mills dismisses these as "minutiae" - without even trying to show how they might be wrong...
...Consider just one, McCracken's blooper on the breeder reactor...
...Even after Auschwitz the Vatican Council II was not able to issue a statement of Christian repentance, but only a mild censure of anti-Semitism as something other people did...
...Lanouette devotes fifty percent of his space to this one book...
...We Christians have simply refused to repent of the authoritarianism, lust for temporal power and prestige and exclusive claims to the truth which have characterized our religion from its earliest days...
...C. STEPHEN BRESSLER 'Religious imperialism' New York, N.Y...
...Lanouette's that there remains substantial scientific disagreement over the merits and need for commercial nuclear energy, this is clearly not the case...
...Christians have much more to learn from Buddhism about compassion, tolerance and understanding than Father McNamara would lead us to believe...
...And he misunderstands that the genre I identified is not pro-nuclear books but those in which an apparently rational and dispassionate scholar defies conventional wisdom on a current controversy...
...If such fundamental details are "minutiae," then I wonder what Mills considers significant facts...
...MARK P. MILLS The author replies Although he doesn't say so, Mark Mills served as McCracken's technical adviser for this book...
...The anti-religious Communist countries of the world hold no appeal for religiously observant Jews...
...To the Editors: In his review of The Myth of the Great Secret [July 15] William McNamara displays toward Buddhism the classic attitudes of religious imperialism...
...Christianity traditionally sees this phenomenon as a result of original sin...
...While there is a popular impression given by accounts such as Mr...
...In reviewing five books, Mr...
...Admittedly, Mr...
...Lanouette presents in rebuttal to a few of Mr...
...It is possible to illustrate that the minutiae that Mr...
...To the Editors: William Lanouette's review of Sam McCracken's book, The War Against the Atom, reveals his misunderstanding of the technical facts surrounding this complex subject [May 6...
...Unfortunately, in his haste to praise and defend a book that presents the "other side" of the nuclear debate, Mills betrays his own attachments - to McCracken and the pro-nuclear vision he advocates...
...Second, with respect to the effect that the "linkage between religion and nationalism" will have on Israel's foreign policy decisions, it should be apparent that this will further attract Israel to the Western democracies and to the United States in particular...
...Indeed, there is an unfortunate shortage of books such as The War Against the Atom in which the consensus of the scientific community is reflected and the"other side" of the story presented for public scrutiny...
...Furthermore, Mr...
...Yet for all his knowledge of the field, and of this book, Mills fails to offer a single example of what he calls my "misunderstanding of the technical facts" in the nuclear debate...
...Are we to assume that it was impossible for them to import "mystical" Christianity, pure and unde-filed...
...Is he going to overlook the fact that Christianity is responsible for the hatred of Jews, pathological fear of women, intolerance for opponents, masochistic glorification of suffering and alienation from the body exhibited in the lives, not of those "twisted by dark clouds of Jansenism and gnosticism" but of the church's greatest saints and teachers...
...Lanouette in his review is guilty of the faults he ascribes to Mr...
...breeder technology, he ignored federal studies that favored overwhelmingly the "pool" over the "loop" design for both safety and economy...
...It is clear that while there are some minor errors (none of which Mr...
...Is it not time for Christians to abandon claims to "the Way," mystical or otherwise, and join the worldwide religious community on an equal footing...
...as he accurately describes it, is the nature of the false and craving ego...
...McCracken dissects (Continued on page 542) (Continued from page 514) some of the more fatuous technical assertions of some responsible nuclear critics...
...It is no argument for the inherent superiority of Christianity...
...He claims that it is "almost impossible for Americans to import Oriental spirituality...
...A cursory examination of any science/technology section in a bookstore reveals the opposite to be the case...
...McNamara speaks of people who in turning East have lost their balance and ended up "with deracinated minds and deciduous hearts...
...loop-type breeders had core-melt accidents while the one pool-type didn't, and is in its nineteenth year of operation...
...Father McNamara wants us to compare the trivialization of Buddhism with the pure essence of "mystical" Christianity...
...I would like to add two observations of my own: First, while the (ultra-religious) Agudath Israel might not officially proclaim ideological solidarity with the secular nationalist Zionist groups, certainly many of its members share a fervent desire for Israel's continued ownership of Judea and Samaria, part of Eretz Yisroel - the Land of Israel...
...Lanouette writes that pro-nuclear books "are almost a genre these days...
...This undoubtedly holds true for members of the National Religious Party also, which accounts for the shift in votes from the NRP to the Likud...
...i.e., of "minimizing," "simplifying," being "loose with facts," and using "ad hominem" arguments...
...How does he then recommend a "Christ-centered, worldwide revolution...
...McCracken's purpose is to state the case "for nuclear energy," Mr...
...The problem, Commonweal welcomes letters on subjects treated in its pages...
...Would it not be equally impossible for Orientals to import Western Christianity...
...A more pertinent comparison would place the spread of Buddhism throughout the world by peaceful persuasion alongside Christianity's record of persecutions and conversion by the sword...
...WILLIAM J. LANOUETTE...
...However, it would be more instructive to note the consensus of the scientific community, rather than the public debates on this topic...
...While he acknowledges the fact that Mr...
...Letters of not more than 250 or 300 words naturally have a better chance of being published...
...As a physicist involved in this debate, I have carefully scrutinized Mr...
...Mills says the whole book is "accurate and fair," whereas I praised its first chapter as "lucid and generally accurate" but criticized the rest as biased and loose with the facts...
...McCracken's assertions are in themselves incomplete or inaccurate...
Vol. 110 • October 1983 • No. 17
