Verónica De itibaren Susquehanna Trails, PA, USA

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11/21/2024

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2020-01-11 07:41

Felsefenin Tesellisi - Alain de Botton TrendKitaplar Kütüphanesi

Tarafından yazılmış kitap Tarafından: Sel Yayıncılık

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.

2020-01-11 10:41

Adm Keman Yastığı 3/4 Ve 4/4 Tam Boy Kemanlar İçin TrendKitaplar Kütüphanesi

Tarafından yazılmış kitap Tarafından: Adm

[ETA: I read a news item about the author, and I feel compelled to say this: the author seems like a really, really cool woman. The kind of teacher you'd love to have, or visiting teaching companion, or whatever. She even supports The King's English, an independent bookstore in SLC! So, I hope she sort of refines her voice, I suppose. A screenplay, maybe? Adult fiction? Non-fiction? Journalism? All sorts of genres could suit her better than this. Also, I don't hate this in the way I hate a Stieg Larsson novel or Bruce Willis movies, not in an F-minus-minus way. Just a D+ way. I'd give it 1.5 if I could, is what I'm saying.] Oh, where to begin. I don't know what made me want to get this book. I think it's its attractive cover design. Just pause to look at that cover. I'll even go get the book. (Gets book.) Theresa Evangelista was the graphic designer, and she did a hell of a good job, because she sold me on a book I don't like, a book that is stupid and vapid and dull, a book that she probably could have written herself. I am not a teen-dystopia hater by nature. Look, I was at the IMAX of I Am Number Four faster than you can say "Dianna Agron," capisce? I don't think new books are necessarily worse than old books, that teen books have any less merit than adult books. But books need good dialogue. It's late, and I should go to sleep, but here is what I mean: "Matched," random page (114): "My legs ache a little: I look straight ahead and will myself to see Grandfather's face within my mind, to hold it there . . . My parents talk upstairs. My brother does his schoolwork and I run to nowhere." UGH. No one talks like this! No good narrator is this mechanical, this syntactically awkward, this repetitive. NO ONE says "Grandfather" instead of "Grandpa," or half-assed "poetic" phrases like "run to nowhere." Save it for Bieber's opening act. You could sing the last line there to an All-American Rejects song, and that ain't a good sign for a book. Now to turn to the same random page in a GOOD book: "'Our only course is to recover the book from Byng.' 'How do you propose to do that?' He pondered, frowning. Then the little grey cells began to stir." See? FUNNY. CHARMING. Natural. Witty. Referencing Poirot! I will do this in my best Ally Condie voice: "I thought that we had really ought to get that book from Stephanie Byng, Stephanie, whom I've referenced before. I told him as much. That made him frown. He was pondering." Good prose is like good food (or dare I say, pornography, chief justice?)...I know it when I see it. Condie has bad syntax, Wodehouse good. She strings along her sentences with an "and then, and then, and then" whereas someone like Agatha Christie has discovered something called coordinating conjunctions. In a book like Madame Bovary, you keep reading, because you care. Who is this dorky doctor, why did Emma marry him, what about this splendidly described feast? Look, all fiction is fake. Therefore, it's kind of astounding we care at all. That's why you need to build up a world we can believe in. Characters who breathe with verisimilitude. Witty or strange or moving dialogue. SOMETHING. I assume Ms. Condie is Mormon. (Didn't notice her provenance when I purchased the work.) I am coming to believe the death knells that are sounded about Mormon literature. It does seem to lack depth. It does seem forced and amateurish and cheesy. This is just Jack Weyland meets The Giver. Sorry, Theresa Evangelista. (I link her website here: http://www.tevangelista.com/covers.html seriously, this cover is like some kind of magic serum of graphic design. Me likey.) But sometimes old maxims about book covers and judging hold true,

Okuyucu Verónica De itibaren Susquehanna Trails, PA, USA

Kullanıcı, bu kitapları portalın yayın kurulu olan 2017-2018'de en ilginç olarak değerlendirdi "TrendKitaplar Kütüphanesi" Tüm okuyucuların bu literatürü tanımalarını tavsiye eder.