Anthony Campbell's Blog

I have just published Medical Acupuncture: A Practical Guide. It is an illustrated companion to my textbook of modern acupuncture, Acupuncture in Practice: Beyond Points and Meridians. It is primarily intended for people who have attended one of my courses in modern medical acupuncture but it should also be useful to people who have attended other courses in this form of treatment.

I've decided to make my books available as e-books in a variety of formats, including those for Kindle and the Sony Reader. I don't suppose I shall be getting one of those devices myself (though who knows?) but I think they may finally be about to take off in a big way, after a decade of promises. We shall see.

The following books are now available:

1. Homeopathy in Perspective
2. Totality Beliefs and the Religious Imagination
3. Religion, Language, Narrative and the Search for Meaning.
4. The Assassins of Alamut

You can sample the books quite extensively before purchase.

My new book, Religion, Language, Narrative and the Search for Meaning is now published and available on Amazon.com. Also available as an e-book now.

This is a book about religion from a secular standpoint which nevertheless takes its subject seriously. Contrary to some secularists I don't think religion is likely to disappear any time soon, and here I look at some of the reasons why it is likely to stay. The early chapters consider a number of explanations for religion that are current today; all provide elements of the answer though none is fully satisfactory as it stands. In the remainder of the book I try to develop a way of thinking about religion, using two main clues: language and narrative. There are remarkable similarities in the ways in which we learn both language and religion. As for narrative, I think that religion is based more on telling stories than on assent to formal belief systems. Narrative is how most religious people encounter their religions. Humans are story-telling animals and for that reason alone it is likely that religion will continue to exist. Another reason is the capacity of the human mind to give rise to altered states of consciousness; unlike, some, I think that these are important in shaping our religious ideas.

This blog is primarily written for my own purposes, to try out ideas and pieces of writing that interest me but which don't (yet) merit a full-length article on my web page. Like the rest of what I write, the tone is mainly sceptical. In so far as there is a general theme, it's meant to be my own modest contribution to keeping alive the values of the Enlightenment, which seem to be under increasing threat today.

My new book, The Assassins of Alamut, is now available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Also available as an e-book now.

This is a historical study of the Muslim sect known as the Assassins, and includes an explanation of their extraordinary world view. The book will interest readers who are curious about Islamic heresies, the origins of terrorism, and the stranger by-ways of the religious impulse.

My new book, Totality Beliefs and the Religious Imagination, is just out and is available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Also available ad an e-book now.

Description

There seems to be a widespread notion that belief is, in itself, a good thing, but in this book I argue that, for at least some people, freeing oneself from all belief systems brings a huge sense of relief. I illustrate this by describing my own experience of Roman Catholicism and Transcendental Meditation. I also look at the evidence for miraculous cures for cancer and at ideas about the soul, with particular reference to survival. And I have a discussion of how religions are transmitted, which I think depends on story-telling and language as much as on formal belief.

You can read a review of the book by Taner Edis here and another by Edward Tabash here. There is also a review by John Floyd at amazon.com.

My book Homeopathy in Perspective is now available from Lulu and Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. Also available as an e-book now.

This is a book about what homeopathy is, how it developed, where it stands today. It is a critical book but not a hatchet job. It is written for people with questioning minds. Anyone who has already adopted a fixed opinion about homeopathy, either for or against, may receive the odd shock.

No prior knowledge is assumed but the book is not only for beginners. Even if you have read quite a lot about homeopathy you will probably find that you view it differently when you have finished.

The book is written with inside knowledge. I was a consultant physician at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital for over 20 years.

Richard Gombrich is an academic with a refreshingly colloquial style who has written some of the best books about Theravada Buddhism. How Buddhism Began has a lot of detailed textual criticism but would nevertheless interest non-specialist readers who already know something about Buddhism.

I've just posted reviews of two new books on evolution by Nicholas Wade: Before The Dawn and The Faith Instinct. Both are well written and readable though I have reservations about some of Wade/s arguments and conclusions.

My essay, Religion as Parasite, Parasite as Religion, won joint third prize in the recent competition in The Skeptic magazine.

My review of Before the Dawn, by Nichlas Wade, is now available. This book covers much the same territory as Stephen Oppenheimer's Out of Eden, though that book offers a more detailed examination of the genetic evidence for human migration. Both books are very much worth reading, in my opinion.

The Science and Technology Committee of the House of Commons concluded in February that homeopathy is a placebo treatment that should no longer be provided by the NHS, mainly because it entailed deception of patients which could do damage to the doctor-patient relationship. In its official response, published on 26 July, the government said: "... we do not believe that this risk amounts to a risk to patient trust, nor do we believe that the risk is sufficient enough for the Department to take the unusual step of removing PCTs' flexibility to make their own decisions."

Whatever on may think about the government's view (which seems to me to be a first-class example of buck-passing), "sufficient enough" is an absurd pleonasm.

The current issue of the BMJ has a long article by Klim MacPherson, visiting professor of public health epidemiology at Oxford, on mammography. The article finds that the present situation of screening is unsartisfactory and there is inadequate evidence to reach firm recommendations. "The misplaced propaganda battle seems now to rest on the ratio of the risks of saving a life compared with the risks of diagnosis."

For the individual woman, deciding whether or not to go for screening is difficult. "Arguments that polarise are unhelpful and render women, many with strong preferences, more helpless. For too long they have been misled and confused by too much agenda driven analyses of these data." The article, which is quite long and complex, deserves to be read in its entirety.

If women are likely to be confused by the propanda, men face a possibly even more contentious issue when thinking about screening for prostate cancer. The same issue of the BMJ summarises a paper in Arch Intern Med 2020;170:1256-61 which finds that in the USA most men with low-risk prostate cancer opt for invasive treatments that are likely to do more harm than good. This is largely due to widespread use of screening for prostate specific antigen (PSA). PSA is a poor test for cancer; indeed, as I reported in an earlier post, the discoverer of the antigen says that it should never have been used as a test.

I haven't posted here for a few weeks - we're in Greece and are just back from Arcadia (literally). Doing some reading and reviews will follow shortly.

I've just posted my review of Atheism and Theism, by J.J.C. Smart and J. Haldane.