Edward MacKinnon

Joseph Sheban attempts to prove that there is neither an Aryan nor a Semitic race, but rather one white race. He tells us that, according to the Bible, Abraham told his servant "Thou shalt go to my country and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac." The servant went to Nahor in Mesopotamia. Now archaeologists have not found Nahor but they have found Ur, the inhabitants of which were Aryan Sumerians. Sheban concludes, "Therefore Abraham must have been of the same race of his city. If the inhabitants of Ur were Aryans, Abraham must have been an Aryan boy." The Jewish people are not distinct as belonging to a Semitic race but only as a religious group, a group which includes diverse members of the single white race. Sheban first discusses the origin of the white race; it was located in the mountains east of the Mediterranean. This single race was a mixture of people with differing physical characteristics, with blond hair, black hair, brown eyes, blue eyes, etc. They had a religion, gods and a code of laws, much of which we still use. Sheban traces the migration of the white race by considering the movement of their gods. Sheban also argues that the Phoenicians are the original discoverers of America, that the Phoenicians did business with Solomon, which enabled Solomon to acquire the silver from America that made him one of the richest men of his age, that Columbus set out to rediscover America, not to go to India. In the opinion on this reviewer, the arguments in support of these points are unconvincing.—E. M.

The tension that many early scientists experienced between a reliance on religious tradition as a source of truth and scientific methodology as a guide to truth eventually led to a clash between theists who claimed that the existence of the universe required a creator and non-theists, who insisted that recourse to a creator to explain why there is something perverts scientific methodology. The present paper defends the position that physics and its foreseeable cosmological extensions neither requires nor excludes either opposed contention. Each has the status of an inference to the best explanation. This is developed in three stages. The first uses historical analysis to support the claim that the advancement of physics and cosmology do not rely on an appeal to supernatural forces. The second explains inference to the best explanation. The third shows how this accommodates these conflicting claims. An appendix examines an influential argument that the intelligibility of the universe requires a creator.