Customer Reviews

And God Created Darwin

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After having met Duane Schmidt (read my below review), i was able to ask him about his target audience. "My audience are the 90% of Americans who believe who believe in God," he replied.

Not all of this 90% are creationists, and many (as i said below) will find some of the phrases foreign. But it gave me a clearer idea of his target audience.

Schimdt is publishing a second book; a version of this book, but for teenagers. I mentioned that many adults may find it more useful than this one, and he agreed. That one may be more accessible to those not familiar with evolutionary biology.

Duane Schmidt lives in my hometown. I was called upon by our local paper to write a review of this book.

Like so many creationist books, this one seems targeted not to scientists or atheist but to Christians who want to believe in creationism but find secularism too convincing. I myself have no problem with the co-existance of God and evolution, but when reading this book, I have to put my views aside and accept by faith that "if evolution is true, God cannot exist."

Content aside, this book is written in a style common to Evangelical journalism and prose. The sarcasm is trademark of Christians who address issues of secularism. His negative tone will give him no credibility with atheists or scientists.

However, if the book is written for Christians, than the tone poses no problem.

However, there is another problem. From the get-go, Schimdt plumits into his own views without clearly presenting the opposition. Schmidt seems to assume that Christians understand the most basic concepts of evolution. Many do not, and may find phrases such as "vestigal organs" troublesome.

This leads me to conclude that there can only be one audience for this book: people who understand evolution and are already in agreement with Schimdt.

That leads me to one question: why was the book written? I can't say.

As a Christian and Homeschooling mother I found this book to be right on the money! There are too many flaws in Darwin's supposed evolution of man and the author nails them all, one by one. I don't only want to teach my children what's in the Bible, I also want them to understand scientific theory, and why Darwinism doesn't adhere to the true definition of "theory" as put forth by science.

Human evolution from apes is myth not fact, and atheists continue to use Darwinism to expel God from science, school and intelligent conversation. God gave us intelligence, he gave us these wonderful brains to use and we need to use them to understand the scientific world He created. Atheists continue to "take over" science and eschew God from the physical world He created, and I find it sad and pathetic.

Christians can embrace science, REAL science, not the myths that atheists want us to believe. God gave us honey bees to pollenate the plants that become the food we eat. That's science! That's God! That's real, not a myth.

We can start to "take back" science from the people with agendas, and we can start by debunking human evolution, and waking up the world to the fact that as a scientific theory it doesn't pass the test!

As a self-proclaimed scientist who has studied Darwin's theories for 35 years, the author clearly has not gone through any critical thinking process as he wrote this book. Within the first couple pages of the first chapter, I was nauseated at the premise of his arguments, which were often flawed, unexplored, unexpanded (as a casual reader wouldn't dare to exploit the published words of such an ethos), or simply hold no ground to the ultimate conclusions of each chapter, serving solely as emotional fluff.

It must be acknowledged that the book does rarely hold some valid and strong arguments and skepticisms that would be good for evolutionists to hear. However, the criticism of Darwin's research as a way to debunk evolution no longer holds ground in our more educated era. The discovery of genetics, and deep expansions of anthropology, biology, sociology, psychology, and chemistry have all come to enforce, explain, and even modify inaccuracies in Darwin's original evolutionary theory since the mid 19th century. His research was merely the jumping off point of a new, empirically supportable and rational perspective on the history of life; not an unchanging gospel as this book proclaims. That's the nature of science; it inevitably build upon itself, and rectifies itself over time. The result in human progress. The whole premise of faith, however, is to remain stubbornly stagnant. If you sincerely want to find out about modern theories on evolution, I recommend you read Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (P.S.) with an open mind, just as I have read this book as an evolutionist.

As a final note, the entire notion that one cannot believe in a god and evolution at the same time is a harmful claim to all who accept it. Certainly, if you believe in evolution then you may find it difficult to accept any of the diverse religious creation theories, but that in no way reflects a disbelief in a higher power. Evolution is simply an explanation of how life changes; not how the universe itself was formed.

Duane Schmidt lives in my hometown. I was called upon by our local paper to write a review of this book.

Like so many creationist books, this one seems targeted not to scientists or atheist but to Christians who want to believe in creationism but find secularism too convincing. I myself have no problem with the co-existance of God and evolution, but when reading this book, I have to put my views aside and accept by faith that "if evolution is true, God cannot exist."

Content aside, this book is written in a style common to Evangelical journalism and prose. The sarcasm is trademark of Christians who address issues of secularism. His negative tone will give him no credibility with atheists or scientists.

However, if the book is written for Christians, then the tone poses no problem.

However, there is another problem. From the get-go, Schimdt plumits into his own views without clearly presenting the opposition. Schmidt seems to assume that Christians understand the most basic concepts of evolution. Many do not, and may find phrases such as "vestigal organs" troublesome.

This leads me to conclude that there can only be one audience for this book: people who understand evolution and are already in agreement with Schimdt.

That leads me to one question: why was the book written? I can't say.

The author tries to debunk Darwin's theory of evolution. He states that he has a sweeping case against Darwin, and will show the flaws of his arguments and the lack of supporting evidence. Amazingly he not only fails, but in all 13 error-ridden chapters makes a fool of himself by showing his ignorance about science and evolution. The other amazing thing is that Phillip Johnson, the ID guru, endorsed it. It clearly raises the issue of whether Johnson is really interested in the truth. This is the worst book I've ever read. People like this should not be allow to write such time wasting drivel.

This easy-to-read book is one of the best primers on Darwin's theory of evolution I've read in a while. Schmidt believes Darwin's theory is one of history's most subversive scientific lies. After reading this book, I can't agree more.

I have not read this book. I HAVE read Janet Browne's magisterial bio of Darwin (second volume due fall 2002, whoo-hoo!) and other books on Darwin and on evolution. I urge the reviewer from DC, below, as well as any who might be inclined to agree with him/her, to read Janet Browne. Again, I haven't read THIS book, nor do I intend to. Evolution is hardly a theory anymore, people; it's demonstrable fact. Accept it.