Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

What a can an objective reader tell from the widely differing reviews of Jonathan Sarfati's "The Greatest Hoax on Earth - Refuting Dawkins on Evolution? Clearly, America is sharply divided about the validity of biological evolution and deeply troubled by its theological implications. Folks who give this book 5 stars are doing so because it reconfirms what they want to hear, albeit with Safarti's pseudoscientific spin. It helps to link young earth creationism into a general attack on atheism, and Richard Dawkins- the British biologist who also happens to be a controversial and widely published atheist. This book provides comfort for a so-called Christian world view, mostly because readers will be predisposed to accept what Safarti claims "on faith". Other reviewers, like me, will take Safarti to task for his steady stream of inaccuracies and reliance on "god can do anything he wants" explanations. To anyone who understands the scientific methodology (with many Christians, being among them) Safarti's writings seem disingenuous - clearly he has to carefully skirt around the evidence which undermines his credibility. Safarti says, "despite claims by Dawkins and other evolutionists that "perfect missing links" have been discovered, the claims evaporate under careful analysis. However, Safarti avoids giving his readers a serious look at the morphological adaptations in countless transitional fossils. He simply "pooh pooh's" serious anatomical studies that have been going on for a century and a half. I actually challenged Jonathan Safarti to back up a few of his claims on these Amazon forums a few years ago and he deflected my simple questions about his interpretation of the "Cambrian Explosion." Although I won't buy his books and will only read them in bookstores, I'm very familiar with his writings and theological assumptions. It is simply amazing, that in this day and age, those Americans who view the Bible as an infallible natural history - and they represent a slight majority, according to most polls - won't take the time to read a single "real" science books. They do not accept the findings that their nations colleges, finest universities, research hospitals, scientific organizations, biotechnology companies and museum curators teach and incorporate into their work, every single day. They never stop to contemplate, why would thousands of evolutionary biologists, paleontologists and geologists continue with this grand delusion, if it did not produce tangible results? Is it really a vast "godless" conspiracy that involves the Smithsonian Institution, The National Science Foundation, The United States Geological Survey and millions of scientists, worldwide? For too many fundamentalist Christians, their local pastor, a TV evangelist and a creationist author, like Safarti, provides all the information needed to convince themselves that the earth is just a few thousand years old and that dinosaurs and man once coexisted. We are a polarized society and an increasingly unscientific America. This is a national tragedy with serious intellectual, economic and social consequences.