Life — How Did It Get Here? (1985)

This is an interesting example of creationist argumentation. (Whether it is typical, I cannot say, as it is the only one, I've read, but it is rhetorically well constructed). The structure is a little backward as it starts with the creationist-evolutionist discussion and gradually moves on ending with 5 'missionary' chapters, on the veracity of the bible and the coming of doomsday.

The 'scientific' part of the book is marked by a lot of quotation: they have plenty of sources. The sources are OK, in the sense that they quote religious sources very little, and thus are not 'self-referential', but still it is a strange mixture of encyclopedias, popular science sources, off-topic and on-topic scientific quotes, some quite out-dated. To exemplify the weird use of sources, they quote Crick, the geneticist, on Big Bang and a little later The New England Journal of Medicine on meteorology.

Generally their strategy is to take a controversial, but still bona-fide scientific theory, like Fred Hoyles panspermia theory or the theories of Dawkins or Stephen Jay Gould, and pit them against more traditional. If A say B is wrong and B say A is wrong, then both of them must be wrong. The same strategy is of course good to use on all later corrections of Darwins original theory.

All in all I can recommend the first 2/3 of the book for people interested in creationist argumentation. It is not preposterous, but slightly pedestrian. Next on my reading list is Daniel Dennetts book on Darwin. ( )

Trusting the Bible.