A faith-based examination that tries to square Genesis with astrophysics, with mixed results.
An eager inquiry into how time works, invoking Christian theology to braid together diverse strands of theoretical science, including cosmology, evolutionary biology and quantum mechanics.
Predicated on the reasoning that God’s influence is unavoidable, the author’s theory on the origin of time winds back to when God created the universe and, with it, “universal time.” (Humans, on the other hand, define “relative time” with clocks, calendars, histories and timelines.) Driver describes the three states of time (past, present and future) and connects faith to the nature of time, observing that humans rely on the supposition that the future will happen in a certain way. “The expected future is based upon collective information on the aging process of many who have gone before us,” he says. “These are life expectations due to time.” Driver delves into astrophysics and illustrates some working theories with memorable metaphors. To describe how cosmologists have observed the expansion of the universe, he explains that the universe is like a curtain, its unfolding accelerating so that it expands faster than the speed of light; the hand pulling the curtain, according to Driver, is God. Even further, Driver argues that the Big Bang theory, the operating assumption most astrophysicists use for the creation of the universe, relies on a supernatural force that defies the laws of physics, which, in Driver’s mind, makes it as equally plausible an explanation as a divine creator forming the universe. Driver uses this explanation to set up a theory that God uses science to reveal his ways to humans, one discovery at a time. One of his pivotal points describes God as an intelligent creator, setting forth the material for the creation of the universe and the laws that correspond to how it will behave and then letting the universe develop on its own. He points to evidence supporting evolution as the workings of a divine creator rather than a theory drawn from natural observations: “Darwin, in his limited theology, did not understand that nature is another name for God.” To prove God’s presence in creation, Driver delineates biblical evidence for later scientific discoveries. Yet the argument’s reasoning gets murky when taken to its logical extremes. For Driver, at the beginning and end of time, there exist two realms—spiritual and temporal—and God’s omnipotent governing of the universe is greater than time itself. But the conversational tone treats scientific theory with broad sweeps of generalization, as with his explanation for quantum physics: “Subatomic particles that make up the atom are broken down to lower elementary particles….According to the Scripture, the universe is all made of that which is not seen, elementary particles.” Often switching to the collective “we,” Driver attempts to speak for humanity in reasoning that only Christianity provides a comprehensive explanation for the universe’s existence—a notion with which some readers might disagree.
A faith-based examination that tries to square Genesis with astrophysics, with mixed results.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-1622952571
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Tate Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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