I won’t go into it now, but as a result of a series of odd events, I decided that at some point I needed to read a book by Rick Warren. I had picked up a copy of his Purpose Driven Life at a used bookstore, and despite the fact that California evangelical megachurch land …
Book of the Month/December
A month or two ago, I got a book recommendation from Nate, of a kind that was worth paying attention to. He had spoken at a conference for Christian artists together with a writer named Leif Enger, and was really impressed with him. As a result he got and read one of Enger’s books titled …
Book of the Month/November
This book is only available in electronic form, but given the nature of the book, I want to make it my book of the month anyway. It is the kind of book that every church that practices church discipline (which should be all of them) ought to have on the premises. Correction: there is …
Book of the Month/October 2013
Reading is an odd thing. If it is a delight, as it clearly should be, then reading a book that is about reading should be like . . . eating ice cream that is about ice cream. Except that it is not like that. The failure of that metaphor is probably one of those imponderables, …
Book of the Month/September
So this is a book that I really did not expect to be reviewing as my book of the month selection, but life is funny. Mind & Cosmos is subtitled “Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.” When a book with this kind of subtitle comes out, written by a philosopher …
Kicking Evolutionary Euro-Butt
Coyne’s last two chapters might best be treated together. This is because the closer we get to the end, the faster the evolution of this review wants to accelerate. In these chapters, Coyne addresses the evolution of man. Chapter 8, “What About Us?” tackles the evolution of man, and his last chapter, “Evolution Redux,” also …
Book of the Month/August
I owe a lot to George Gilder, and with his release of Knowledge and Power, that debt has increased significantly. Decades ago, I first read Sexual Suicide, a book that later became Men and Marriage, and which I have read again several times in that form. I was greatly influenced by Wealth and Poverty when …
The Turtle On the Fencepost
As providence would have it, last night I read the next chapter of Coyne’s book in order to mull over it a bit before writing my next post. And then this morning, as is my practice, I spend some time reading through any magazines that have accumulated during the course of the week. And, as …
Evolution’s Alligatornado
Coyne’s next chapter is on the “engine of evolution,” which is to say, natural selection. One of his examples was one I was already familiar with, and since it is quite a fun one — let’s just go with it. There is a kind of roundworm that is a parasite to a species of ant …
His Brother Was Joktan, If That Helps
In his next chapter, Coyne addresses the subject of biogeography, “the study of the distribution of species on earth” (p. 88). In responding to this chapter, I want to begin by pointing out how much of it was beside the point. Coyne spent a great deal of time and energy showing the various ways that …