2.0 out of 5 stars Little interest, 8 Jul 2009
By G. Proctor (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
I flicked through this book in a shop, expecting it to be full of the normal debunked creationist claims. In fact, it isn't. The problem is, it's not really full of anything.

The author is not, apparently, a creationist. Nor does he support intelligent design, which he believes is a bad idea. He is firmly behind the evidence for evolution, and all he's really doing is pointing out that it's possible to interpret the first chapter of Genesis in such a way as to seem to be consistent with several events that have occurred in evolutionary history.

It's remarkably weak stuff - a coincidence doesn't make an argument. Indeed, his justification, after several pages of biblical evidence that nobody denies, is more or less: 'the Bible describes real events; who's to say Genesis isn't equally real?'. I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way.

His views on atheism are equally weak: he claims, without any evidence, that atheists often quote the views of Darwin, but not Wallace, and in his view this is because Wallace was spiritual and Darwin was not. I'd like to know which atheists he is talking about, since I don't know any atheists who take Darwin as a source of inspired knowledge, and many who warn against doing exactly this. He also notes that atheism is unsatisfying; again, many atheists agree, yet that says little about the truth or falsity of it.

The main problem I had with this book is the lack of meat. With such weak arguments, the book is filled with irrelevant tangents. These may provide interesting reading if you're unfamiliar with them, but if not you'll find them a chore.

Comment Comments (4) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)




3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Not Even Wrong, 20 Jul 2009
By I. F. Braidwood "(-: Ian :-)" (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
These comments are based on the Daily Mail feature on this book by Christopher Hart, 18th July 2009.

Nothing I read in the Daily Mail feature, this page or any other research I've done on this book or its author indicate this book has anything interesting to say at all.

Basically, the author is trying to state that the account of creation in Genesis is actually an accurate account of how our universe came into being.

The first question to ask Dr Andrews is which one? Genesis contains two seprerate and contradictory accounts of creation. In the first, God creates Man on the sixth day, while in the second God created Man from the dust of the earth and goes on to create all the birds and animals etc, so the first thing Dr Andrews had to do was take his pick, which incidentally, is of the first myth.

More serious though is what the author has to do to reconcile the Bible with science. The Bible says that on the third day God said: "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so." Here the Bible neatly lists comparitively modern plants, jumping over older lineages like conifers and horsetails without a mention.

Andrew's attempted reconciliation is that the bible passge here should be taken to refer to the evolution of blue-green algae and of photosynthesis itself. But I have to ask whether, once you become so loose with language, you are actually saying anything meaningful at all? Whether more is lost in trying to reconcile two disparate accounts than is gained in leaving them as they are?

Frankly, this sort of reconciliation may be of interest to those dismayed by the bible's apparent lack veracity, but to the rest of the world, this subject is completely banal and jejune. It will teach you nothing about the world and contribute nothing to your wellbeing or knowledge of how to live.

This book seems to be candy for believers, a comforter which has nothing relevant to contemporary discourse.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)




1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars pseudo science, pseudo religion, 21 Jul 2009
By I. T. Turner (South Wales, UK.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
After reading Christopher Hart's review of the book in Saturday's Daily Mail, I have no desire to buy it. From his description of its contents the author Andrew Parker appears anxious to please both parties to a long-running scientific/religious dispute, but ends up satisfying neither.

In common with atheistic scientists and recent creationists dominated by a western mind-set, he has no understanding of ancient Hebrew language and culture. For the opening chapters of Genesis were never meant by its author(s) to be a scientific treatise, nor was chapter 1 ever meant to be understood chronologically. If God had intended to impart infallible scientific knowledge by inspiration it would have come in the form of ultimate science, understood neither by the first readers of Genesis nor, most probably, by us.

Increasingly, conservative evangelical Old Testament scholars interpret this chapter topically. Their change of emphasis has resulted, not from fear of biblical/science conflict, but from a better understanding of Hebrew language and poetic form. The Genesis author(s) purpose was to show, by contrast with prevailing beliefs of idolatrous nations around Israel, that Israel's only God, Jehovah, made everything. In chapter 2, and in accordance with the literary style of the day, the Genesis author summarises the contents of chapter 1, then focuses attention on this man and woman made in God's image in order to develop the narrative in succeeding chapters. There is no conflict between chapters 1 and 2.

Because Andrew Parker understood none of these nuances his book is not worth reading.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
› See all 3 customer reviews...