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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This is NOT what you're thinking!,
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This review is from: Science Declares Our Universe IS Intelligently Designed (Hardcover)
This book is a gem -- buy it. The only reason I didn't give it five stars is that the copy I had contained a number of spell-checked typographical errors (e.g. "most" instead of "must") that I found amusing, but nit-pickers may find annoying or distracting. Also the cover material could be improved, but I prefer a bargain over slickness and substance over appearance. This book is not at all like most books dealing with creation and/or evolution. I was reminded more of books like Douglas Hofstadter's _Metamagical Themas_ and popular-level works on chaos theory, fractals, and the strange implications of modern physics. Professor Herrmann's attempts to explain the mathematical logic of his work should hold some interest for people involved in a number of fields such as computer simulation, linguistics, probability, advanced physics, etc. Professor Herrmann does not bombastically state that one view is obvious and anyone who doesn't accept it must be an idiot. Rather, he demonstrates that at a fundamental level, the purely naturalistic (atheistic), designed/theistic-evolutionary, and direct creation frameworks are equally valid, and therefore secondary evidences should be examined without ruling out any of them. What was especially fascinating to me was the way Dr. Herrmann illustrated his strict mathematical proofs (available on the Web) with amusing and imaginative extended analogies. In our every day modern life, we experience examples of human thought producing designed phenomena that purposely appear to be chaotic but have an underlying logic. These phenomena can be encoded in compressed forms, filed and catalogued with labels that are essentially further compression or packaging of the phenomena, edited by the insertion of similar media, etc. Then by simply popping a videotape, computer CD, or DVD into a machine, the designed phenomena comes to life in all its glory. Dr. Herrmann shows that we can just as easily believe that God created the Universe in a similar manner. Although we can't know if He simply thought up the universe in a mature form, or if in some sense He created it in a virtual or "parallel" form (or if our concepts of such things can begin to do justice to the workings of God), these simple images give us some basic concept of how a universe could appear suddenly but with an appearance of age. Dr. Herrmann explains with as little math as he can (you may need to brush up on your set theory and logic) that this is a perfectly valid possibility. Dr. Herrmann completed his original, purely mathematical work in this area before the Intelligent Design movement was formed, and has since expanded it to (in general terms) a Grand Unified Theory of Everything. As noted, it is open to several interpretations, but this should encourage everyone to take a good look at it. What I liked best about this book is that it serves notice that belief in an active and rapid Divine creation of a universe with many appearances of age is logically valid, that there may be (and in many cases today there is) intelligent design operating to produce apparently random or chaotic phenomena, and that the question is not, "How do we explain everything without reference to God?" not "How many universes does it take to explain away the Anthropic Principle?" but "Are there evidences that THIS universe, and everything in it as it is, was more likely produced by design than by the raw forces within it?" Again, Dr. Herrmann does not use bombast and pontification, but he does burst the pompous bubbles of scientific snobs -- he doesn't insist that only one choice is intelligent, but he demonstrates that it is intelligent to make an open choice rather than insisting on naturalistic blinders.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Truth goes beyond the pop presentation,
By
This review is from: Science Declares Our Universe IS Intelligently Designed (Hardcover)
It has been a while since I read this so I am putting a review out based on generalities from the last read. However I will get more specific on the second read and post another review. I am also reviewing from a perspective of studying several other works by this author.
Like one reviewer of this book, we typically find it easier to read the novels written so frequently on the scientific subjects including this subject. However, those "novels" often go no further than stroking people's pre-conceived ideas. If there is anything both the secular and non-secular communities need now it is a fresh unbiased approach in the pursuit of truth. By this I do not mean without premise - I mean without the dishonest employment of power-position exploitation to try to indoctrinate people by taking advantage of their ignorance. Scientific writing today is full of this exploitation where speculation is cast as fact. I have found Dr, Herrmann's writings refreshing in this sense. Surely he has the strong formulated opinions on many matters. I would expect that from those really pursuing truth. Eventually they should find settled truth as foundation for further pursuit. In the midst of this he rigorously pursues the realm of logic - that realm which keeps the check and balance of consistency both in everday life and as overseer of the Sciences. Dr. Hermmann makes it clear that to read his works requires a certain measure of prerequisite understanding. Not having that understanding is of course no reason to declare the book "boring" - for that surely will be true for the uninitiated. To one who is sufficiently initiated and interested it is exciting to pursue. An exciting realm is the capability of (mathematical) logic to extend our exploration of implications into the realm beyond the physical limitations. Dr. Herrmann has taken this logic into that realm. The realm of the super-mind is shown to be logically consistent. To say that there is no supreme intelligence - whether one attributes this to the God of the Bible or not, is shown to be illogical. I surely recommend this book.
3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Important Work,
This review is from: Science Declares Our Universe IS Intelligently Designed (Paperback)
Science Declares Our Universe Is Intelligently Designed explains how mathematical modeling can demonstrate that the behavior of all physical systems, from astronomical to atomic and everything in-between including biological, are designed. It is a new approach to an old problem. I read about a book a week, mostly in my field of molecular and cell biology. I find that I can breeze though most without much effort. I also read extensively in the area of creation and evolution, both books for and against evolution and creation, most of which are easy reads. This book was more challenging, but it has the potential of being more important than most other books on this topic. Most books on both sides in this area contain much fluff and repeat the same points over and over. As I am not a mathematician or astronomer, it is more difficult for me to evaluate this work, but it clearly needs to be evaluated because, if correct, it could revolutionize science. I have read some of the author's other works in the scientific literature (he has published 62 articles in the scientific literature, many in leading journals) which were well done. Dr. Herrmann has a PhD with honors in math from American University and a BA, also with honors, from Johns Hopkins University. He was, until his recent retirement, a full professor of mathematics at the US naval Academy. One could hardly have better qualifications than this. This work is not in the class of Lee Strobel's book, which is excellent for the general reader, but more scholarly, yet well written for educated laymen. I encourage others to read this work and evaluate it. It could be an important groundbreaking work. Only time will tell.
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