RepTIDE

Review

Rating: 6

I have to admit I never would have bought this book if it had not been recommended. Just looking at the cover of the book I would be put off. The subtitle is “The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism” with the word “Answer” in bold. Then there is a sort of badge in the lower right of the front cover that states “Makes the case against Intelligent Design”. Both of those things seem very gimmicky to me and without having been recommended I would have passed. That being said…

Overall the book was decent. I felt the first chapter “Interview with an Atheist” to be entertaining and somewhat informative. The second chapter though about made me give up. I felt that chapter, “Origin of the Universe: Natural or Supernatural?”, was weak at best. I felt other than a very brief overview of the standing thoughts on the conservation of mass-energy it didn’t “prove” anything. I continued on though at the book got much better after that. Chapters thee, six, seven, and 10 were all excellent with regards to their respective topics.

While in general I enjoyed the book I get left with a feeling of dread. Logic states that one is not required to prove the negative. That basically means that it is up to the Christians to prove that god exists and not for the non-believers to prove he doesn’t. This book, and I assume the others I plan on reading, spend an awful lot of time talking about fallacies in Christian/Creation logic. They spend their entire time trying to prove the negative which, aside from trying to make a buck selling a book, is entirely unnecessary. I guess the one redeeming quality if that they put the information out there to “balance the scales” against the opposite point of view. Maybe that is enough of a reason to contradict the above stated logical principal. We shall see.