The Stillborn God or Hackers Challenge 3

The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West

Author: Mark Lilla

A brilliant account of religion's role in the political thinking of the West, from the Enlightenment to the close of World War II.

The wish to bring political life under God's authority is nothing new, and it's clear that today religious passions are again driving world politics, confounding expectations of a secular future. In this major book, Mark Lilla reveals the sources of this age-old quest-and its surprising role in shaping Western thought. Making us look deeper into our beliefs about religion, politics, and the fate of civilizations, Lilla reminds us of the modern West's unique trajectory and how to remain on it. Illuminating and challenging, The Stillborn God is a watershed in the history of ideas.

The New York Times - Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

One can read Lilla's story and draw precisely the opposite normative conclusions from the ones he asks us to draw: that the West's experimental testing and retesting of political theology, trying to see if there is any safe way of mixing politics and religion, has delivered an answer from which all may learn. Separating church and state works; mixing them tends toward disaster. But draw what normative conclusions you will from The Stillborn God, this provocative book is to be applauded for doing justice to the complexity of our long attempt to reconcile our transcendental aspirations with human well-being.

Publishers Weekly

This searching history of western thinking about the relationship between religion and politics was inspired not by 9/11, but by Nazi Germany, where, says University of Chicago professor Lilla (The Reckless Mind), politics and religion were horrifyingly intertwined. To explain the emergence of Nazism's political theology, Lilla reaches back to the early modern era, when thinkers like Locke and Hume began to suggest that religion and politics should be separate enterprises. Some theorists, convinced that Christianity bred violence, argued that government must be totally detached from religion. Others, who believed that rightly practiced religion could contribute to modern life, promoted a "liberal theology," which sought to articulate Christianity and Judaism in the idiom of reason. (Lilla's reading of liberal Jewish thinker Hermann Cohen is especially arresting.) Liberal theologians, Lilla says, credulously assumed human society was progressive and never dreamed that fanaticism could capture the imaginations of modern people-assumptions that were proven wrong by Hitler. If Lilla castigates liberal theology for its naïveté, he also praises America and Western Europe for simultaneously separating religion from politics, creating space for religion, and staving off "sectarian violence" and "theocracy." Lilla's work, which will influence discussions of politics and theology for the next generation, makes clear how remarkable an accomplishment that is. (Sept. 14)

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Gary P. Gillum - Library Journal

Noted historian Lilla's (Committee on Social Thought, Univ. of Chicago; The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics) newest book is according to the back cover "a sobering and thought-provoking work making us question what we thought we knew about religion, politics, and the fate of civilizations." Lilla helps us to take stock and, as he writes in his introduction, "think harder about how we live now and what is required if we wish our experiment to continue." He addresses the strengths and weaknesses of current political thought and the modern institutions we take for granted, and he further distinguishes among the Ethical God, the Bourgeois God, the Redeeming God, and the Stillborn God of our current political thought. This is a fascinating and edifying analytical history of ideas offering many observations, among them, that our world is becoming as fragile as the medieval world-increasingly intolerant, dogmatic, and fearful. For readers who love theology and philosophy as well as such thinkers as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant, Lilla's reasoned survey of secular and religious politics is a major gift to modern thought. Recommended for academic and public libraries.

Kirkus Reviews

An elegant and timely investigation of the rise, and fall, and rise, of political theology. Once upon a time, everyone assumed religion and politics went hand in hand. Here, Lilla (Committee on Social Thought/Univ. of Chicago; The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics, 2001, etc.) traces the relatively recent Western divide between the two. Lilla opens by distinguishing three different kinds of political theology-those that imagine God as immanent, remote or transcendent-and by sketching the different ways Judaism and Christianity conceive of God's involvement with the world. He then tours post-medieval Western thought. On one end sits Hobbes (who, with Locke and Hume, untangled religion from statecraft); on the other end sit Kant and Hegel. In between those two poles is the most significant section of the book-Lilla's reading of Rousseau's "The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar," a section of Emile (and the most sustained treatment Rousseau ever offered of religion). Rousseau was the first to articulate the belief that religion is an expression of man's essential goodness. In wanting to have it both ways-wanting a secular politics shot through with some domesticated sense of piety-Rousseau was, in a sense, undermining the profound break that his forebears had made with religion. The titular stillborn God is Rousseau's step-child: The liberal religion Emile spawned was dealt a paralyzing blow in the mid-20th century, because it ultimately couldn't stand up to the monstrous reemergence of the political theology of Nazi Germany. Lilla offers no tidy answers at the end of the book. Given the purchase political theology has on so many people, even today, Westerners must ask whetherthey wish the separation between politics and religion to continue. Dense and rewarding.

Interesting book: Sex Power Conflict Evolutionary and Feminist Perspectives or Understanding Organizational Culture

Hacker's Challenge 3: 20 Brand-New Forensic Scenarios and Solutions

Author: David Pollino

The stories about phishing attacks against banks are so true-to-life, it’s chilling.” --Joel Dubin, CISSP, Microsoft MVP in Security

Every day, hackers are devising new ways to break into your network. Do you have what it takes to stop them? Find out in Hacker’s Challenge 3. Inside, top-tier security experts offer 20 brand-new, real-world network security incidents to test your computer forensics and response skills. All the latest hot-button topics are covered, including phishing and pharming scams, internal corporate hacking, Cisco IOS, wireless, iSCSI storage, VoIP, Windows, Mac OS X, and UNIX/Linux hacks, and much more. Each challenge includes a detailed explanation of the incident--how the break-in was detected, evidence and clues, technical background such as log files and network maps, and a series of questions for you to solve. In Part II, you’ll get a detailed analysis of how the experts solved each incident.

David Pollino has a strong background in security, wireless, and networking. David is currently a security practitioner working in financial services. During his career, he has worked for an industry-leading security consulting company, a large financial services company, and a tier 1 ISP. David often speaks at security events and has frequently been quoted in online and printed journals regarding security issues. During his career as a consultant and network engineer, David has worked for clients across multiple industries, including financial services, service providers, high technology, manufacturing, and government. He co-authored Wireless Security (RSA Press, 2002) and Hacker'sChallenge and Hacker's Challenge 2 (McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2001 and 2002, respectively).

Bill Pennington, CISSP, has six years of professional experience in information security and eleven years in information technology. His duties at WhiteHat include managing research and development, guiding product and technology direction, managing web application assessment teams, and developing and delivering WhiteHat Security training. Bill has performed web application assessments for more than four years in a variety of industry verticals including financial services, e-commerce, and biotechnology. He is familiar with Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, Windows, and OpenBSD, and he is a Certified Information Security Systems Practitioner (CISSP) and Certified Cisco Network Administrator (CCNA). He has broad experience in web application security, penetration testing, computer forensics, and intrusion detection systems. Prior to joining WhiteHat, Bill was a principal consultant and technical lead for assessment services at Guardent, a nationwide security services provider.

Tony Bradley, CISSP-ISSAP, MCSE2k, has eight years of computer networking and administration experience, focusing the last four on network security and malware protection. Tony is a network security architect providing design, implementation, and management of network security solutions for a variety of Fortune 500 customers. He is also the editor and writer for the About.com Internet/Network Security website and frequently contributes to a variety of technical and security publications, both in print and on the Web. You can view his writing portfolio at http://www.s3kur3.com.

Himanshu Dwivedi is a founding partner of iSEC Partners, an independent provider of information security services and tools. He has 12 years of experience in security and IT. Before forming iSEC, he was Technical Director for @stake's Bay Area security practice. Himanshu's professional focus includes strategic security services, which leverages his experience with software development, infrastructure security, application security, tool development, and secure product design. He is considered an industry expert in storage security, specifically Fibre Channel/iSCSI SANs and CIFS/NFS NAS systems. Himanshu has presented at major security conferences throughout the world, including Black Hat, Storage Networking World, Syscan Singapore, and Bellua Indonesia. Himanshu also has a patent pending for a storage security design architecture that can be implemented on enterprise storage products for Fibre Channel networks. Himanshu has also authored two additional security books, including Securing Storage: A Practical Guide to SAN and NAS Security (Addison-Wesley, 2005) and Implementing SSH: Strategies for Optimizing the Secure Shell (Wiley, 2003).