A thorough introduction to the controversy with much to teach both sides.
An evolution proponent writes about his encounters with creationists.
Rosenhouse (Mathematics/James Madison Univ.; The Monty Hall Problem: The Remarkable Story of Math’s Most Contentious Brain Teaser, 2009) has been meeting anti-evolutionists on their turf—at Intelligent Design conferences, Christian universities and Kenneth Ham’s state-of-the-art creationist museum in Kentucky —since he worked on implementing math standards for public schools in Kansas two years after that state banished Darwin and the Big Bang from its science curriculum. A Jewish atheist, Rosenhouse sought to understand the mindset of Christians who not only dismiss the overwhelming evidence of natural selection in favor of a literal interpretation of Genesis, but also use their political influence to try to outlaw any view but their own in public schools. Contrary to the stereotype common among his fellow science defenders, the author discovered opponents who were as intelligent and sincere as they were determined. It isn’t ignorance or stupidity that makes a creationist, Rosenhouse learned; it’s firm and consistent belief in the divine origin of the scriptures and their teachings. While the author has greater respect for creationists as a result of his encounters, he maintains that if evolution by natural selection is true, then creationism and even Christianity as a whole, with its anthropocentric view of the cosmos, cannot be. However, for all their biased selectivity toward the evidence and misuse of science and history, at least creationists (unlike more sophisticated theological evolutionists) recognize what is really at stake. Rosenhouse is an amiable storyteller and a fair-minded reporter. The narrative drags and diffuses a bit as the author wrestles with theology, but that has more to do with theology’s abstruseness than Rosenhouse’s.
A thorough introduction to the controversy with much to teach both sides.Pub Date: April 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-19-974463-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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