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Angel Whisenant _ngel_hisenant — Rated 1 star for fear-mongering, conspiracy theorizing, repetitiveness, naivete, and disturbing authoritarian overtones. This was a terrible book, a book which is little more than an extended rant where the author regurgitates the same set of ideas over and over again. While the presentation of the ideas is bad, the content of these ideas is far worse. Nevertheless, this book provides a valuable little window into the mind of Ken Ham, one of the leaders of the "Creation Science" movement... a scary little window. After reading the kind of arguments made in this book, it would seem that Ham is a deeply credulous and inconsistent thinker. When it comes to any scientific hypothesis (what fundamentalists like to call "a theory of men") where there is room for any doubt and uncertainty (which is the case with many if not most scientific theories), Ham approaches it with a fierce, radical, and uncompromising skepticism. Any room for doubt and that theory must be thrown right out! Yet, at the same time, this almost Hume-like skeptic in regards to all matters scientific and philosophical clings to an inflexible and laughably simplistic understanding of his own Christian religion and it's Bible. His is a belief that takes no cultural, historical, or interpretive issues into account when trying to understand and evaluate the Bible or his own Christian dogmas. The bumper sticker, "God said it. I believe it. That settles it," was created for people like him. The Lie has it's share of other random and bizarre ideas. According to Ham, people only wear clothes because it is a practice mandated in the biblical book of Genesis. Ham goes on to claim that that if one were to invalidate the Book of Genesis as a record of literal history and fact, the practice of wearing clothes would thereby be called into question which could lead to some sort of anarchy of nakedness. (Presumably the ancient natives of Asia, the Americas, Australia, etc. who all developed their own customs of clothing themselves had a copy of the Bible?) For some reason Ham also makes the claim that all fathers are biblically appointed to be the priests of their families. Make of that whatever you will. (Dad's duty to offer up sacrificial animals on the grill?) Taken as a whole The Lie fails to make a coherent, logical argument. The book opens with a rambling tirade on the growing evils of society where the author would have us believe that all of these growing evils stem from a single cause - the scientific theory of evolution, the supposed root of all evil. Following this is more rambling on about how true Christianity and the Bible are. This is a given we are supposed to take for granted without any proof. Around and around we are led in the same loops of absurd illogic. There is a term for people who reason and argue like this - cranks. (Cranks always want to oversimplify reality to a singular evil that threatens society which can be defeated with a silver-bullet solution. For prohibitionists booze was the singular evil destroying society, for Scientologists psychology is the one, true evil, for the Cold Warriors, it was Communism, etc., etc.) The Lie makes it clear that Ken Ham is one of those black-and-white thinkers with no room in his brain for either ambiguity or nuance. Conservative, right wing, authoritarian types like him reduce everything to a simplistic morality tale of Good and Evil. Ham's mind is made up, and he and his like-minded compatriots will not abide any other members of society deviating from their own narrow-minded ideas of proper belief, thought, and behavior. What makes this all the more clear are Ham's favorite words (or the variant forms thereof) popping-up frequently throughout this text: "lawlessness", "right and wrong", "dogmatic", and "authority". The single word (and it's variants) which Ham uses most frequently is "absolutes". (Out of curiosity, I went back and counted it as having been used 24 times throughout this short text.) Given his deeply conservative, authoritarian outlook, it's not surprising that Ken Ham's religion is one of rigid discipline and law. He pictures God first and foremost as being the Absolute Authority - God the Divine Cop. What distresses Ham is that the world is no longer the squeaky clean, never-never land he imagines it once was back in those glorious, moral days of yore that never were. In order to save the world from itself, Ham believes he must sally forth and lead a crusade against, in his own words, "the Satanically backed religion of evolution." Make no mistake, the "Creation Science" and "Intelligent Design" movements are the groups with the truly evil agendas no matter how innocent they might try to pass themselves off as being. To paraphrase Ham's stated views in this book, Creation Scientists view themselves as Christian soliders fighting to take back control of society in the name of Absolute Authority. "The Lie" isn't evolution, it's all of Ham and company's talk about bringing balance and fairness to science classrooms. The real goal these people (or at least their leaders) have is to take over the public schools, the courts, the government, and any other seats of power in order to foist their fundamentalist brand of right wing Christianity on to us all. As individuals, members of the Creation Science movement can be nice, well-meaning people, but as a collective, their ideas and goals, insofar as they follow what Ham has outlined in The Lie, are on par with that of the Taliban.

Vlad Zorin vladzorin — This is a great book for helping students in my film class understand the mythic structure. I only wish I'd started it earlier in the year! A terrific read as a writer and as a teacher!

Justin Traina justintraina — The Ingalls family is now living in the small town of De Smet where there are about 80 other people living. An Indian comes to town and predicts that it is going to be about 7 months of a hard Winter. The first blizzard starts in October takes them into a very fierce winter that lasts until April. I wasn't sure if I was going to like this book because I don't really care for Winter but I did find it enjoyable to see how the early settlers had to be fighters to survive. The train couldn't make it to their town to bring supplies so when they ran out of kerosene and wood for light and heat they burned hay. Someone had to be constantly getting the hay ready to burn which was an all-day job and then watching the fire so they wouldn't freeze to death. When their food supply got down to only wheat someone had to constantly be grinding the wheat to make flour for bread. They weren't able to keep their spirits up all of the time. Angelic Caroline snapped at Charles at one point. But when Spring finally came it felt so relieving to know that they made it. The simple things became so wonderful. Their joy for a simple thing like butter was expressed when they finally had some.