Provides meaningful, accessible contributions to the science vs. creation debate, but “proof” continues to be elusive.
In his debut foray into religious writing, Bunting puts his scientific background to work in examining how the Judeo-Christian Creation story can be reconciled with modern understandings of origins.
Throughout this highly accessible offering, Bunting admits to his own long and, at times, uncomfortable journey from adherence to strict creationist concepts toward a more nuanced understanding that allows for conventional scientific theories on creation. Nevertheless, the author remains committed to his faith and to his belief in a creator God who also offers the promise of a personal relationship with the divine. After a short comparison of the Creation stories of various major faiths, Bunting explores the problematic issues arising from the Creation stories of the Bible. Among the most important points Bunting makes is the use of the Hebrew word yom in Genesis, which has traditionally been translated as “day,” but which could mean any period of time. In the context of a creation period lasting seven “days,” that knowledge is game-changing for the believer hoping to find bridges between biblical truth and scientific evidence. Later, Bunting tackles the problem of Adam and Eve’s creation being a mere 6,000 years ago, according to Genesis, while archaeology proves the existence of humans and humanoids for tens of thousands of years prior. Bunting believes that Adam was the first being endowed with God’s spirit, while other humanlike “animals” had existed long before. As the author puts it, “The truly significant event isn’t when God first created an intelligent being. The truly significant event is when God first breathed His spirit into such a being.” The author’s theory is an intriguing workaround, but it’s shaky at best and certainly bound to be controversial. Bunting faces a problem common to all modern thinkers attempting to reconcile faith and science—strong adherents to either extreme of the argument will not be so easily swayed. Nonetheless, Bunting has provided a thought-provoking work to counter the extremes of creationists and atheists alike. Above all else, this is a work of Christian apologetics, urging the reader to consider the big questions of existence and ultimate purpose in life, as well as what may come after death.
Provides meaningful, accessible contributions to the science vs. creation debate, but “proof” continues to be elusive.Pub Date: March 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-973653-14-1
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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