David L. (marauder34) reviewed on 8/14/2009 + 63 more book reviews

There are books that are worth reading if you want to understand creationist thinking. This is not one of them.

In "The Lie: Evolution," author Ken Ham takes the rather extreme position that anything less than a strict literalist interpretation of the book of Genesis leads to an erosion of ethics, morality, and religious truth. Arguing from this slippery slope fallacy, Ham asserts that this reading of Genesis is the only responsible interpretation, and that anything else undermines the foundations of biblical Christianity.

The science, when it is present at all, is weak. Creationist books such as "The Genesis Flood" at least offer alternate interpretations of scientific data to support their conclusion of a Young Earth. Ham, more widely known for his role in Answers in Genesis and the Creation Science Museum, is not interested in presenting science as much as he is in presenting stubborn denial.

Unfortunately, Ham's biblical scholarship is as poor as his science. While Christians and Jews alike since the time of the Babylonian Exile have understood the power of the Genesis account to be in its value as a story, Ham dismisses this much older understanding as irrelevant and useless, favoring it for the much more recent modernist view that insists the text must be read literally.

For anyone who is not already inclined to agree with Ham, this book is one to miss.

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