Customer Reviews

Science of Today & The Problems of Genesis

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As a missionary in China for 50 years, including during Teilhard de Chardin's "Peking Man" fraud, Fr. O'Connell got in on the ground floor of research into questions regarding man's origins. He read all the relevant literature in English, French, Italian, Spanish and German. Here he brings forth the archaeological, paleontogical and astronomical evidence which confirms the traditional Catholic teaching that the human race did not evolve from lower animals - and that it began with a single man and woman. Though he wrote in 1959, the research findings he reports are still almost unknown today and the crisis of faith caused by unfounded scientific hypotheses has worked havoc in the Church and undermined the faith of most Catholic intellectuals and of many "ordinary" Catholics. Fr. O'Connell gives the scientific evidence why the Church was right about Adam and Eve and the Great Flood. This book is a major contribution and is destined to have a tremendous impact on rebuilding the faith of Catholics! 439pp. PB. Imprimatur.

This is a very good book for those who wish to refute evolution, in favor of creation as written in the Bible.

The author uses many reference materials from both evolutionists and creationists to show that, when all is said and done, evolution is a religious viewpoint that has no foundation to stand on.

Some of the most interesting cases are those "hard-core" evolutionists, who, when they finally began to examine the evidence, chose to abandon evolution in favor of creation. The author goes on to show that those who are most strongly in favor of evolution are those who are the least education regarding it - people who are relying on theories abandoned a long time ago, yet still claim them as "fact" (i.e., those who still demand a man-from-ape evolution).

This book gives much needed strength to those wishing to combat evolutionism, for the truth of creation.

There are several major sub-headings in the book: the author first runs thru several of the days of creation; he then continues on with the well-known hoaxes of "the missing links". For me, the most interesting subject was the Flood of Noah, and how geological evidence quite squarely denies evolution.

The author is Catholic. That may not make a lot of difference to people, but being ex-Catholic turned Protestant, I admit I have my bias. However the author usually writes in such a way that is unbiased towards Catholicism. He does use references to the Pope's Encyclical Letters, but he generally refers to the Bible as the ultimate authority.

This book was a disappointment. The author, like so many other Catholic authors addressing the interpretation of Genesis, makes the fundamental exegetical error of accepting uncritically the Darwinian hypothesis of an old earth. While Father's arguments in favor of a literal interpretation of many of the histiorical events chronicled in Genesis, including the historical reality and necessity of Adam and Eve as our first parents, the Flood etc, are laudable and much needed in light of today's hyper-Darwinian dogmatism, it would have been a pleasant surprise to read Father's analysis of the age of the earth in light of hsitorical teaching of the Church and the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, who almost universally held to a very young age of the earth prior to the advent of the false theory of evolution.

Fr. O'Connell was a missionary in China for 50 years. He wrote in the Preface to this 1968 book, "The object of this book is to give the scientific conclusions about the Six Days of Creation and the origin of man arrived at during the past few years, but not generally known, and to show that these conclusions are in agreement with the Mosaic account of Creation, and are a vindication of the Papal Encyclicals issued for its interpretation."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"To explain how Moses could have written an account of Creation so vastly superior (to Laplace's), not only from a religious, but from a scientific point of view ... we must return to the view that Moses was not only inspired by the Holy Ghost so that his account would contain no error against faith and morals, but that in addition he had received sufficient information by revelation about the facts of Creation..." (Pg. xxviii)
"...every case of 'missing link' put forward by evolutionists since the time of Darwin was a case of either fraud or error." (Pg. xxxii)
"(George Gaylord) Simpson's verdict on Fr. Teilhard is clear---that he cannot be classed among scientists." (Pg. xlviii)
"Soon after this 'bible of atheists' (the Origin of Species) was published, Darwin renounced belief in a Creator and became an atheist, so that his whole system, which is a tissue of absurdities, is based on a supreme absurdity." (Pg. 38)
"(Teilhard de Chardin's) claim to be considered an authority on ancient human fossils has rested almost completely on his connection with the cases of the Piltdown Man and the Peking Man. In neither case did he give any indication whatever of critical ability or independent judgment. He was just a child that never grew up." (Pg. 133-134)
"Our seventh conclusion is that the Neanderthal race was a branch, but not the main branch, of the race of Cain." (Pg. 170)
"It has long been regarded as certain that the waters of the Deluge did not cover the whole world, and that all the animals did not perish... it would have been absolutely impossible to accommodate pairs of all the species of animals in the world (well over half-a-million) in a vessel of the dimensions of Noe's Ark..." (Pg. 208-209)
"There is agreement among all Catholic writers on the Deluge ... that the Fathers taught that all men in the world except Noe and those with him in the ark perished... Fr. Pirot and Canon Claimer... get over the difficulty about the unanimous opinion of the Fathers ... by saying that the question of the Deluge is not a question of faith and morals, but one of science and history." (Pg. 232-233)

I came across this book recently in a catholic bookstore and I was very impressed with it. The author does an outstanding job of refuting the claim that evolution is true. He shows how the account given in genesis is actually being proven by scientists today. He goes on to write that not only is evolution false, but that the universe is not billions of years old as some scientists continue to claim. He believes that society began somewhere in the middle east and that humans continued to populate the earth until we have present day culture as we know it. The author writes that he read many books on evolution to see the other point of view but he disagrees with evolution as being inconsistent with logic and know facts. There is no doubt about it. This book makes sense out of history. This is a badly needed book that should be read by those who are religious or non religious to clear the air about evolution. A definite must read.