Customer Reviews

The Rise & Fall of Atlantis: And the Mysterious Origins of Human Civilization

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WONDERFUL COMPILATION OF KNOWLEGE.... BEST BOOK I HAVE READ IN A LONG TIME. HOPE HE WRITES MORE!

Having read hundreds of metaphysical and quantum physics writings and studying the mystical sciences extensively, I can say without hesitation that this book is a beacon of higher knowledge.

Like any higher knowledge, it will challenge those who hold tightly to social norms and programs. This book is written for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.

Bravo J.S. Gordon! You are ahead of your time but the world is catching up!

Gordon is an `alternative historian', one of the latest representatives of an essentially fringe amateur tradition which holds that the sober accounts of ancient history presented by mainstream scholarship are largely false. His focus is upon Atlantis, the 'sunken island/continent' which was apparently invented by Plato as a central feature of a moral tale. The story as presented by Plato finds no empirical support and is regarded as plausible only on the fringe. Gordon links his ideas about Atlantis as a real entity with argument in support of the 'trendy' theory of the universe as pervaded by consciousness, set up in opposition to mainstream scientific evolutionary theory, Judaeo-Christian-Muslim creationism, and the view that 'ancient astronauts' provided major early input to human development.

Gordon's work is vitiated by a number of factors (common in such books), including: a) seriously inadequate referencing of quasi-factual claims; b) loose/over-simplified argumentation (frequently the truth of one of his claims, if itself granted, renders a further more dramatic claim merely possible, other things being equal, and by no means demonstrates it as Gordon suggests); c) acceptance of highly dubious earlier fringe sources (notably Blavatsky and the proponents of Vedantic ideas about long time-depths for homo sapiens); d) overstated criticisms of mainstream ideas (eg (post-)Darwinian approaches to evolution); e) sheer errors of fact and usage (eg acceptance of the debunked theory of Egyptian 'mystery religions'; a badly non-standard and thus confusing definition of the term 'scientism'); etc.

My own main area of expertise is linguistics, and in this area Gordon displays vast confusion and advances/accepts some very poorly-grounded ideas. For instance: i) he repeatedly discusses key linguistic matters in an impossibly vague manner; ii) he fatally confuses linguistic levels (pronunciation and grammar) in using the term 'aggulutinative'; iii) he relies upon earlier non-standard thinkers whose ideas have not been judged plausible and even upon ill-informed and dated sources such as Blavatsky; iv) he proposes wildly implausible and unsupported scenarios involving the development of languages and scripts (intended to replace well-established mainstream ideas about these matters); v) he largely ignores the two hundred years of historical linguistic scholarship and thus employs the usual loose fringe philological/etymological methods; etc.

I welcome interest in historical linguistic matters from all comers, whatever their non-linguistic ideas and whatever their initial degree of expertise. But, as in any learned discipline, advancing novel theories is pointless if one does not first acquire (or gain access to) a reasonable degree of expertise - if only to disagree rationally with well-supported positions that one now understands. Gordon has not achieved this, and it does not appear that he has made a serious attempt to do so.

I suggest that the book cannot be taken seriously as it stands. With more effort on Gordon's part, it is conceivable that it might have been somewhat more interesting.

Mark Newbrook, PhD Linguistics

From page XX of the introduction: "In his misguided efforts to support early Christian evangelism at any cost, the theologian Euhemerus (lived 316BC) tried to ..."

Now, I'm no PHD but Euhemerus seems to be a man before his time. Umm, author, sir, your bias is showing... ::rolleyes::