Blasphemy
Douglass Preston and Lincoln Child write some fantastic word crack. Every time one of their books comes out I consume it with eager ferocity.
Blasphemy was a disappointment.
Douglass Preston is a good writer, but in this last solo effort he sacrificed his story telling to his agenda. I felt sorry for him. A solid fifth of the book was a strident defense of the big bang. The big bang, as my distinguished readers already know, depends on the theory that things happen without a cause. The big bang just happened; it is without causality. There can be no proof in the absence of cause, so this must be a frustrating position to hold. He spends long segments expounding on theory, which would be better titled hypothesis, since it comes in the absence of observation and evidence.
He also spends time showing what barbarians the christian evangelicals are. In the course of his book various christian groups take steps and perform lunacies that would never happen outside the imagination of a man who wants to blame them for the fact that the richest, most powerful, nation in the world has not yet established anything near an egalitarian utopia where science is the unquestioned rule of thumb.
He has, without his knowledge, touched on something. The story involves hysteria over a super-collider. It makes one reflect on the uneasiness over the Hadron. What did people get so worked up about? Last time I checked, the vast majority of Evangelicals pay lip service to the ideas that 1)God created the world and 2) He has already determined its end. That said, what was all the worry over the Hadron? Yes, the people who made it said they expected to recreate big bang conditions. Why did so many Evangelicals find that so alarming?
We men are weak and we are liars. Men doubt even as they confess. Many Christians were worried about the Hadron, not because it implied that some wicked scientists disbelieved God, but because they disbelieved him; they were worried that the scientists would be right. Men are weak, but, thanks be to God, for he is merciful and forgives our shortcomings.
Stridency exposes the weaknesses and imperfection of our faith, just as Preston shows his own weakness and fear in his. There is no element of the natural world that will stand as an argument against God or a rebuke of true faith, because the universe is his and he made it.
Blasphemy was a disappointment.
Douglass Preston is a good writer, but in this last solo effort he sacrificed his story telling to his agenda. I felt sorry for him. A solid fifth of the book was a strident defense of the big bang. The big bang, as my distinguished readers already know, depends on the theory that things happen without a cause. The big bang just happened; it is without causality. There can be no proof in the absence of cause, so this must be a frustrating position to hold. He spends long segments expounding on theory, which would be better titled hypothesis, since it comes in the absence of observation and evidence.
He also spends time showing what barbarians the christian evangelicals are. In the course of his book various christian groups take steps and perform lunacies that would never happen outside the imagination of a man who wants to blame them for the fact that the richest, most powerful, nation in the world has not yet established anything near an egalitarian utopia where science is the unquestioned rule of thumb.
He has, without his knowledge, touched on something. The story involves hysteria over a super-collider. It makes one reflect on the uneasiness over the Hadron. What did people get so worked up about? Last time I checked, the vast majority of Evangelicals pay lip service to the ideas that 1)God created the world and 2) He has already determined its end. That said, what was all the worry over the Hadron? Yes, the people who made it said they expected to recreate big bang conditions. Why did so many Evangelicals find that so alarming?
We men are weak and we are liars. Men doubt even as they confess. Many Christians were worried about the Hadron, not because it implied that some wicked scientists disbelieved God, but because they disbelieved him; they were worried that the scientists would be right. Men are weak, but, thanks be to God, for he is merciful and forgives our shortcomings.
Stridency exposes the weaknesses and imperfection of our faith, just as Preston shows his own weakness and fear in his. There is no element of the natural world that will stand as an argument against God or a rebuke of true faith, because the universe is his and he made it.
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