Creationists to distribute Charles Darwin books for free. What's the catch?

Evangelical Christians plan to distribute more than 100,000 free copies of Charles Darwin's seminal work on the theory of evolution, "On the Origin of Species," on college campuses this month. Are the evangelists affiliated with the religious organization Living Waters really spreading the word of Charles Darwin?

Yes -- but.

"All we want to do is present the opposing and correct view," says actor Kirk Cameron, a supporter, in a video on the website. That view, which both precedes and counters Darwin's theory in the copies of the book they will distribute, has been penned by the organization's leader, Ray Comfort. In a 50-page introduction, no less. An excerpt:

Keeping in mind that the most intelligent of human beings can’t create even a grain of sand from nothing, do you believe that the “something” that made everything was intelligent? It must have been, in order to make the flowers, the birds, the trees, the human eye, and the sun, the moon and the stars. If you believe that, then you believe there was an intelligent designer. You have just become an unscientific “knuckle-dragger” in the eyes of our learning institutions that embrace Darwinism. But you are not alone if you believe in God.

Which learning institutions may expect Living Waters representatives to show up on their campuses with boxes of the Comfort-introduction edition of "On the Origin of Species" hasn't been announced, although Living Waters described the schools as "100 of America’s top universities" in an e-mail to the Los Angeles  Times. According to the website, Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort will pass out copies of the book together on Nov. 19, perhaps here in Southern California.

Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" was first published 150 years ago, on Nov. 24, 1859. It begins:

When on board H.M.S. Beagle, as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species -- that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.

The book, having been in the public domain for quite some time, is also available for free via Project Gutenberg. With no introduction but Darwin's own.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: A Galapagos giant turtle, one of the creatures Darwin studied during his expedition on the HMS Beagle. Credit: Pablo Cozzaglio / AFP / Getty Images

God, in books: Richard Dawkins, R. Crumb and making the case for God

In books this Sunday, we look at God. And may lightning not strike us by beginning with Richard Dawkins, mobbed by fans at an atheist convention. Susan Salter-Reynolds talks to him about his new book.

In "The Greatest Show on Earth," he's more proactive, laying out the issue of evolution and natural selection with subheads like: "WHAT IS A THEORY? WHAT IS A FACT?" He writes of "softening up" his readers, as if kneading dough. By mid-book, however, Dawkins is his old scientist self, delighted by his subject, tossing off phrases such as: "What happened next is almost too wonderful to bear."

This is the upside of popular science writing. It's why Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould and Stephen Hawking left their labs to write. They trade in awe, the desire to restore to science the sense of sublime wonder that drew them to it in the first place....

Dawkins is very keen to establish that his new book is not "The God Delusion." He wants, as much as possible, to distance it from conversations about God. "I have a strong feeling that the subject of evolution is beautiful without the excuse of creationists needing to be bashed," he says.

Two other books also take on evolution... the evolution of religion. Reviewer Jack Miles writes:

Can the later scriptures of West Asia -- the Jewish and Christian Bibles and the Koran -- be read as the record of a process of human domestication, a further taming and gentling of mankind over time? In "The Evolution of God," Robert Wright argues laboriously that they can indeed be so read.... Karen Armstrong would unhesitatingly dismiss Wright's vision of a deity inferred from the evidence of human evolution as a lamentable instance of the mistake lying at the core of the West's disaffection from received religion -- namely, regarding the case for God as one to be made from such evidence. "The Case for God" is in fact largely an elaborate history of the spread of this mistake from the late Middle Ages to the present.

These authors are probably not the readers R. Crumb is worried about when he writes that he may offend with his new "The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb." David L. Ulin writes:

In Crumb's interpretation, [Tamar's] is the story of a "fiercely determined woman, [who] takes it upon herself to ensure the survival of her lineage." That is what Genesis is about, and by portraying it in all its messy humanity, with blood, fear, violence and even graphic sex, Crumb strips away millennia of interpretation, returning this core text to an unexpected accessibility.

See our preview of "The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb," in bookstores on Oct. 19. The excerpt opens with the story of Lot in the town of Sodom.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Richard Dawkins. Credit: Houghton Mifflin

In books: Huston, Mitchell, Bialosky and money keeps walking

Allegra Huston, the daughter of Ricki Soma, grew up a Huston -- as in director John and actress Angelica. When Ricki died in a car wreck, 4-year-old Allegra went to live with the Huston clan. At 12, she learned that her biological father was someone else entirely; years later, she "decided to write this magazine piece about my two fathers and how lucky I felt to have them both." That piece was the beginnings of "Love Child," the story of an unusual childhood and fragmentary history. She tells the L.A. Times:

I think you have to stand for something, and what I wanted to stand for was the possibility of making a fractured whole, bringing happiness out of sadness and the blessings and the gifts in loss and tragedy -- to sort of hold up the candle for what can be if you keep your heart open and rise above resentment and tragedies and pull the pieces together.

Other pieces are coming together in the L.A. Times serial novel, "Money Walks." Written collaboratively by L.A.-based fiction writers, all of whom will appear at the L.A. Times Festival of Books, "Money Walks" follows the mystery of disappearing money and the intersecting lives of a reverend, some petty crooks and Bunny, a rich lady with an oxygen tank (so far). Today's chapter is written by Aimee Bender; in it, Bunny does  a lot of clapping.

But she uses both hands -- which would leave no puzzle for translator and zen scholar Stephen Mitchell. He talks to Susan Salter Reynolds on the release of "The Second Book of the Tao." The book, Salter Reynolds writes:

Consists of adaptations from the work of two ancient Chinese scholars: Chuang-tzu, a Laotzu disciple, and Tzu-ssu, Confucius' grandson. Mitchell chose 64 chapters, each including a text and commentary. In his commentaries, Mitchell sets out to emulate the irreverent tone of Chuang-tzu: "If Lao-tzu is a smile," he writes, "Chuang-tzu is a belly-laugh. He's the clown of the Absolute, the apotheosis of incredulity, Coyote among the bodhisattvas."

Asked to elaborate, he says: "I have no pretensions to scholarship. I just love to play with the Taoist masters. For them, nothing is sacred. The best tribute is contradiction."

In Jill Bialosky's powerful new collection of poems, "Intruder," reviewer Bernadette Murphy sees continuity: "She knits throughout this keenly live collection a visceral thread that ties the poet inextricably to her reader." In the opening poem, "Demon Lover," lovers watch snow falling.

It won't end, she said.
Will you stay with me?
I won't leave, she said.
I must go then, said the lover.

There's more online in L.A. Times books.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Poet arrested in Jordan for insulting Islam

Reporting for the L.A. Times from Beirut, Borzou Daragahi writes that Islam Samhan, a 27-year-old poet, was arrested and charged with "harming Islam by incorporating Koranic imagery into his love poems" today.

According to the National, the Abu Dhabi daily, Samhan's work, "Slim Shadows," caught the attention of Jordanian clerics, including Jordan's Grand Mufti Noah Alqdah Samas, who called him an enemy of religion for comparing his loneliness to that of the prophet Youssef in the Koran.

Suddenly, Samhan's nightmare began. His book was banned and he began receiving death threats.

Next came today's arrest. According to a report by the Associated Press, authorities have charged him with harming Islam by violating the press and publication law "for combining the sacred words of the Koran with sexual themes."

The collection, called "Grace Like a Shadow" by the AP, is said to violate Jordan's law banning insults to religion. "But in the heady world of literature," Daragahi asks, "who decides when something is insulting faith or inspired by it?"

Exactly who decides depends on where you are, and some places are more dangerous for writers than others. The PEN American Center currently has 20 active campaigns to help writers who've been imprisoned across the world, in China, Syria, Cuba, Uzbekistan and elsewhere. They don't ask much -- simply that supporters send "clear, politely worded messages to the foreign governments involved." Many of these writers were journalists, deliberately challenging restrictive regimes.

Was Samhan aware that his lines about loneliness would put him in jeopardy? That isn't clear. But certainly, many other poets have written on the topic without such severe repercussions -- the Poetry Foundation's archive includes 85 poems that use the word "loneliness," written by Carl Sandburg, Tony Hoagland, Lord Byron, Dorothy Parker, Robert Creeley and more.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo of Amman, Jordan, by Argenberg via Flickr

For Narnia

 

On Monday evening, my daughter Sophie and I went to a screening of Prince Caspian, the new Chronicles of Narnia movie that opens tomorrow. Sophie is nine, and she had just read the book a couple of weeks ago; no sooner had the film started than she turned to me and whispered, "They left a lot of stuff out."

I was willing to take her word for it because, if truth be told, I don't remember many of the details; I read the Narnia books a long time ago, when I was Sophie's age. But the film was pretty good, I thought -- fast-paced, nicely constructed ... until, that is, the last 20 minutes when Aslan saves the day.

This has always been my problem with the Chronicles of Narnia, the way  Aslan is so often absent, until, after 1,000 years or so of suffering, he decides to step in and make everything right. I understand the metaphor, understand C. S. Lewis' notion of faith and Christian humility, but (without getting into theology), I think it's a poor narrative device. What kind of beneficent force is Aslan, when he's so often negligent? And what does it do to the human agency of the characters that they get bailed out by this external power, rather than having to work things out (or not) themselves?

Sophie had a different issue. Although she liked the movie, she found its at-times-relentless violence off-putting; it's more fun to read, she told me, because you imagine what's going on in the story for yourself.

Yes, I thought, that's it exactly. No external agency.

David L. Ulin

Photo credit: Disney/Walden

Sewage and Ahmed's refrigerator ...

Frustration was palpable Sunday among participants in the lone L.A. Times Festival of Books panel discussion specifically aimed at the Middle East. The occupation of Iraq, the now 60-year-old conflict between Israel and dispossessed Palestinians, as well as the vilification of Islam and Muslims in the West -- all have made the region more combustible than ever and our own U.S. democracy that much more tenuous.

"We are one or two terrorist attacks away from a police state in this country," journalist and writer Chris Hedges told more than 200 people in a packed UCLA auditorium Sunday for the panel, "Contentious Ground: The Middle East."

Hedges, a former New York Times correspondent who has covered the wars in Iraq, Kosovo, Bosnia and El Salvador, decried the "gross mischaracterization of Islam as a religion of violence," which has skewed the U.S. public's perceptions about Muslims, the Arab world and the real sources of instability in the Middle East. Citing his experiences while covering the war in Bosnia in the early 1990s as just one example, he said, "Bosnian Muslims were the only peaceful ones in the conflict."

But what does that have to do with sewage, or a refrigerator?

Before Lewis: What inspired his Narnia tales?

Well, it seems that C.S. Lewis doesn't hold the patent on inventing the magical wardrobe that transports children to other worlds. Edith Nesbit deserves more of the credit for her 1909 story, "The Aunt and Amabel," in which a young girl, banished by her aunt to a bedroom for committing some vague act of mischief, escapes her loneliness thus:

She went straight to the Big Wardrobe and turned its glass handle.

"I expect it's only shelves and people's best hats," she said. But she only said it. People often say what they don't mean, so that if things turn out as they don't expect, they can say "I told you so," but this is most dishonest to one's self, and being dishonest to one's self is almost worse than being dishonest to other people. Amabel would never have done it if she had been herself. But she was out of herself with anger and unhappiness.

Of course it wasn't hats. It was, most amazingly, a crystal cave, very oddly shaped like a railway station. It seemed to be lighted by stars, which is, of course, unusual in a booking office, and over the station clock was a full moon. The clock had no figures, only 'Now' in shining letters all round it, twelve times. ...

A train station too, huh? Shades of Mr. Potter. This delightful short story is among a rich selection that Douglas A. Anderson includes in "Tales Before Narnia: The Roots of Modern Fantasy and Science Fiction." Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen: A Tale in Seven Stories" gives us not only a

Bookstore finds in Istanbul

Here in this sprawling Turkish city on the Bosphorus Strait is a wide hilltop boulevard full of pedestrians and trams and lined with bright shops, both local and international. Between the fashion and the food found along this street, Istiklal Caddesi, there are also many bookstores. They sell Turkish- and English-language books, and even Turkish translations of literary classics.

Turkey doesn't have a tradition of public libraries, so bookstores have a greater social role to fill. A wonderful example of such an oasis of erudition is Homer Kitabevi ("kitabevi" means "bookstore" in Turkish), just off Istiklal on Yeni Çarşi Cadessi, a steep, narrow street often crammed with taxis heading uphill.

Homer's owner, Ayşen Boylu, is a former urban archeologist who opened the bookstore 13 years ago; she was working on her PhD and found a dearth of the kind of books she needed. Today, Homer is packed with smart books on history and criticism, architecture and art, literature and religion. Most popular, Boylu says, are books on archeology, history, philosophy and photography. The store's runaway hit? Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason." You can see Boylu in her store, and pics of more bookstores in Istanbul, after the jump.

Boycotting the Paris book fair over Israel?

A decision to make Israel the guest of honor at the upcoming Paris book fair has angered Muslim countries around the world. On Saturday, Iranian authorities announced that they would boycott the five-day book fair.

Iran wasn't the first country to opt out of the fair. It may not be the last.

The Salon du Livre is a huge event in France and on the international book publishing circuit. The festival, which begins March 14, draws thousands of authors from around the world. (Full disclosure: My wife will be promoting her book at the fair.) This year, about 39 writers from Israel will be honored on the occasion of the Jewish state's 60th anniversary.

"Iran was a regular participant of Paris book fair each year but this time it has refused to take part in the event protesting at the presence of the Zionist regime," Deputy Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Ali Ali-Pour told the Islamic Republic News Agency.

But vehemently anti-Israeli Iran is merely jumping on the bandwagon as far as boycotting the bookworm fete. Lebanon announced Wednesday that it would stay away from the confab. 

"Lebanon will not participate this year in protest at the cultural event's organizers' decision to select Israel as guest of honor," Culture Minister Tarek Mitri announced.

That was a big blow for France, which considers francophilic Lebanon its cultural backyard. On Tuesday, the 50-nation Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization called on all Islamic states to boycott the event.

"The crimes against humanity that Israel is perpetrating in the Palestinian territories ... constitute, in themselves, a strong condemnation of Israel, making it unworthy of being welcomed as a guest of honor at an international book fair," the group said.