Conversation With An Unapologetic Theist: Review of Nonsense of a High Order by Rabbi Moshe Averick

I don't remember the name of my eleventh grade English teacher, but I remember to this very day one invaluable lesson she taught me forty-one years ago.

She introduced a new composition assignment to my class that day, having shared some great pointers and warning us to avoid the all too common pits into which student writers  often fall.

"Choose your topic with the utmost care," she advised, a woman oh ... I would guess in her mid 50s, very well-spoken with a trace of British English in her speech and always deporting herself like a genteel English lady. I liked those qualities about her very much.

"Remember," she continued, "teachers read quite a few of these papers and frankly it gets tiresome after a while, and I get a little bit cranky. If you want my positive attention, select a topic that will catch my eye as if it were an original piece of research. I'd rather not read the same drivel (yes, she really did say that!) over and over again. Oh, one final piece of advice," I sat there thinking: ‘Gosh, these are pearls.' "Define the scope of your topic narrowly because if you do your research properly, you'll have more than enough information to digest."

Rabbi Moshe Averick, Author

Two score years later, I am seated across from Rabbi Moshe Averick who-though he was not in my English class-seems to have followed my teacher's advice to the letter.

Author of Nonsense of a High Order, Rabbi Averick explained his book's title is from Sir Fred Hoyle, a distingished English astronomer who coined the term "Big Bang" for the cosmological theory which was a rival to his own and had once used the phrase "nonsense of a high order" to characterize earlier misguided efforts to explain the origins of life.

Subtitled "The Confused and Illusory World of the Atheist", Nonsense of a High Order is an engaging and polemical analysis of ideological atheism, published in 2010 by Tradition and Reason Press and available through www.RabbiMaverick.com, www.amazon.com and Kindle.

Rabbi Averick arrived for our interview, as the kids say these days, ready to "rock n roll". Flourishing a rapier-like tongue with the acumen of an accomplished debater, he led me on a tour of the world of ideological atheism, a gray place beset by meaninglessness and cynicism.

Armed with an impressive arsenal of scholarship, Rabbi Averick gains the upper hand over such luminaries as atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens by a combination of literary pugilism and lightheartedness. Oh, if you like comedic actor Bill Murray, hurray up, buy the book and turn to p.114, but even if you don't, I think you'll enjoy the author's sense of humor.

I questioned him about his polemical writing style. "Honestly," he began, "you can just die from reading these dry, humorless philosophical treatises."

(Note to readers: Entirely unrelated to this review is my observation that any author worth his salt knows that even the most dedicated reader is going to turn that book over, place it face down on his chest and drift off. Hey, no negative reflection of the author-just one of life's most enjoyable experiences.)

An orthodox rabbi by training and, as one might expect, a passionate believer in G-d as the sole Creator of the universe, Rabbi Averick is, as well, a fiery advocate for G-d as "the One and Only" answer to the enigma of the "origin of life", which so baffles the G-d deniers on the other side of the aisle.

As a parent knows his child, so does G-d know Man because, we are taught, He created him in His image, each with his unique assortment of strengths, weaknesses, gifts, deficiencies, the potential for both good and evil and, free will- the most important of all.

As much as Man has grown up over extraordinary lengths of time, he remains a "dwarf" in the realm of "The Giant". Yet Man stands out as the pinnacle of Creation despite the self-deprecatory cynicism of atheists who pull Man down to the level of the lowly microbe whose organic chemistry they can't explain anyway.

"Rabbi, a child of an atheist becomes critically ill (G-d Forbid!) or is struck by a car and called to the hospital, what does he think about as he sits outside the operating room, awaiting word?" "That's a good question," he began, sitting straight up in his chair. "Some people have this irrational capacity for denial, as if adhering to a meaningless and bleak ideology were somehow more important than the truth and just maybe partaking of a small cup of comfort for themselves."

Imagine a total "disconnect" between an artisan and his artifact in which all evidence of human participation in its manufacture has been eradicated. It exists as it were by spontaneous generation. Imagine an acorn but without the tree from which it fell, a baby born without attachment to its mother by the umbilical cord, a book but without author, a bridge without a structural engineer. Seems strange, doesn't it? Well, try this on for size: Imagine the Creation without The Creator, without G-d.

Introducing the "Origins of Life"

Over a cup of coffee at a local Starbucks, I listened with care while Rabbi Averick addressed the possibility of "cracking the divine code"-that if ever achieved, would allow Man access to the secrets of the "origins of life".

"Now," I thought excitedly, rubbing my hands together as if about to undertake a new and exciting project, "here's where it "gets real good." However, the "code" remains a conundrum even to the best minds in organic chemistry-otherwise known as "carbon chemistry" who seek to explain how the inanimate becomes animate, chemistry becomes biology and a chick comes out of that egg eventually if you only let it be and don't touch the glass.

"The only rational explanation," Rabbi Averick conceded "is that it wasn't given over for Man to know." And as high up as the pinnacle is on which Man sits," I thought, "he still looks up, doesn't he?"

Rabbi Averick takes issue with the atheist notion that- while it rejects all theories of divine responsibility-the origins of life are really nothing more than a naturalistic witch's brew of organic molecules that effect (dare I say "miraculously") a qualitative leap from inanimateness to life.

"The proponents of this view are at a loss to explain how even the most rudimentary of creatures, the self-reproducing one cell bacterium, first came to be. The engineering sophistication of single cell mitosis far surpasses that of the F-15 fighter." I was stunned by the remark.

It is testimony to how blind sighted people can be when they dismiss an alternate explanation out of hand for reasons of its religious content only.

"It's a sorry state of affairs," said Rabbi Averick when science no longer pursues the truth but an agenda."

"G-d created time," Rabbi continued ... but I've decided, Dear Reader, better you should purchase Rabbi Moshe Averick's book Nonsense of a High Order than read any more of the meanderings of this writer who, I wish to emphasize, assumes responsibility for any idea of Rabbi Averick that I may have misunderstood or misrepresented in this review.

I wish to congratulate author Rabbi Moshe Averick on the publication of his new book Nonsense of a High Order. May his book sales soar. Please purchase your copy by visiting www.RabbiMaverick.com, www.amazon.com and Kindle.