An uneven rhetorical melding of the biochemical and the miraculous.
A biochemist attempts to map the discoveries of his discipline onto traditional beliefs of Christianity.
This slim nonfiction debut splits the study of human existence into two parallel narratives: the physical and the spiritual. Chalmers (Biochemistry/Flinders Univ.) hews closely to his pedagogical roots for much of his book’s length, instructing readers fairly and clearly on the basics of human physiology and biochemistry—from the structure and function of DNA to the composition and mutation of genetic material. These explanatory segments accompany the author’s passionate readings of Scripture and his emotionally generous interpretation of the Christian worldview: “There will never be anyone like you,” he writes in a typically stirring passage. “God loves and values you to the extent that He gave his life for you at Calvary, so that you could be freed from your sins and spend an eternity of happiness with him.” These and similar passages effectively appeal to the spiritual side of the Christian experience. However, they’re offset by other moments of biblical literalism, such as references to the Creation story or the Great Flood as “historical events,” an assertion that “rock strata indicate a massive worldwide flood, because the strata indicate they were laid down at about the same time,” and the idea that Earth, the galaxy, and the universe are all 6,500 years old. Looking at the complexity of living biology, the author writes that “Only God could design anything so beautiful yet complex,” and he calls any scientific argument to the contrary “a terrible insult to God, our Creator.” This perspective will limit the appeal of the book to Christians who already share the author’s views.
An uneven rhetorical melding of the biochemical and the miraculous.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5043-0496-2
Page Count: 114
Publisher: BalboaPressAU
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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