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Homo Novus: A Brief His-story of Tomorrow by Amakiri Welekwe

Homo Novus: A Brief His-story of Tomorrow

by Amakiri Welekwe

Pub Date: Sept. 15th, 2023
ISBN: 978-9787987988
Publisher: Forerunner Press

Welekwe, a technology consultant and evangelist, looks to the biblical past to understand our future.

As he has watched flurries of technological innovations and trends toward interconnection change our world, the author has identified positive developments, but he is also alarmed by much of what he sees. He notes how a sense of impending doom seems to hang over contemporary civilization—but as a Christian, Welekwe believes that everything happens according to God’s plan. In his introduction, the author explains that his book is a response to the works Sapiens and Homo Deus by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari. Like that author, Welekwe moves from the deep past to the present to trace how we got here and predict where we’re going. But where Harari relies upon science to draw his conclusions, Welekwe depends on his faith. This is not to say that he ignores science; indeed, he writes a great deal about science in this book. Rather, the author believes that science and religion “address different sorts of questions”—a perspective common among intelligent design advocates and others who seek to reconcile these two very different approaches to unraveling the secrets of the universe. For Welekwe, the Bible is the ultimate authority. His attempts to construct rational explanations supporting the literal truth of the Bible are unlikely to convince nonbelievers—for example, he argues that the text of Genesis must be true, because no human was present at the moment of creation, so the biblical account of creation must be the product of direct communication with God. That’s quite a leap in logic, but the author’s feelings of awe and gratitude may well resonate with people who share his religious beliefs, and this book may offer them a much-needed message of hope. These readers will likely also appreciate his many biblical citations and his clear, inviting style.

A search for meaning in a rapidly changing, often frightening, world that mostly preaches to the choir.