I offered to review this book because the title suggested it would be of interest to someone of my education and background. I was wrong. Within the first twenty pages I became frustrated by the author’s polemic, ignorance of the subjects, scientific and historical, on which he was commenting, disjointed arguments and outdated assumptions in statements such as ‘’Under monotheism, man shifted from a maternally structured society to a paternally structured society’’ and ‘’There was a time religious men feared science.’’

Among the basic mistakes the author makes is to suggest that matter can’t be created or destroyed only change form, and that ‘Electricity, for example, is a faster moving, less consolidated form of matter than the matter that comprises a rock.’ He is wrong, it is energy which is neither made nor destroyed but merely changes form. It’s called the conservation of energy. Electricity is the movement of electrons through a substance and rocks are made up of atoms in a crystal structure.

The author makes contradictory statements as well as blatantly incorrect ones. He also displays latent racism and sexism on occasion. Examples:
(1) ‘The average European cranial capacity is 90 cubic inches. The Hottentot natives have a capacity of about 65 cubic inches. Some Hindus have capacities as low as 45 cubic inches. This approaches the capacity of gorillas.’
(2) ‘Women, in general, have a greater sensitivity to emotions, such as love, than men. They are less capable of separating love and sex than men. Many women convince themselves that sex without love is impossible.’
He has a terrible habit of dumbing down his prose, assuming all readers will be as historically uneducated as well as scientifically ignorant, and that all atheists have the same beliefs as he does, despite claiming that he doesn’t.
I looked at the sources the author provided. Only four were less than ten years old, many much, much older. With such outdated attitudes I am not surprised he had had to find outdated sources to back his assertions.
The author clearly has a problem with religion but his sweeping generalisations about the nature of religion and the religious, and his ham-fisted attempts at scientific refutation of some religious beliefs does nobody any good. His tract may provide those with no education some basic, if inaccurate, knowledge, but anyone with even a basic education will be frustrated with this book.

Don’t bother with it.

It took me a good couple of months to read and I had to force myself to finish it. I wanted to punch the author after about ten pages. The spelling is atrocious (even if one takes Americanisms into account) he’s bombastic and insulting. Sorry I got really riled by this book. If you believe in something poorly disguised insults to your intelligence and education will not convince a person to take someone’s arguments seriously. if you are already an atheist or agnostic poorly constructed sources will do nothing to strengthen your resolve. Scientific arguments for evolution and the obvious great age of the Universe are strong enough that the this sort of pamphlet are no longer necessary.

Rant over, sorry again,

Rose