Author David Mills quotes Thomas Jefferson, who, in a letter to John Adams, wrote "I apologize to you for the lengthiness of this letter; but I had no time for shortening it." This book lives up to author Mills’ promise in the introduction to challenge conventional wisdom and use extreme conciseness and clarity for his message. He describes his writing style as slow and deliberate, requiring years to complete the book. He wrote it after coming to question his reasoning for becoming a "born-again Christian evangelist."

 With this book David Mills has delivered a coup d’etat to any thought of reconciling religion and science. Post-modernist apologies and attempts to bridge the gap between religion and science he gives no quarter. He very carefully and methodically attacks every religious argument outside the realm of human invention for the existence of a god. His favorite target is the irrationality of Christian belief and the Bible's contention of a young earth, Noah’s flood, Genesis genealogies, etc. One rather interesting point he made in an almost casual manner was an observation that the genealogies in Matthew and Luke of the New Testament describe (contradictory) detailed male lineages of Jesus back to King David, and thereby create a trap for the writers of those books: The virgin birth would preclude any blood relationship through Joseph, so how could there be a lineage between Jesus and David? In debunking the prophesy of the Bible, Mills describes an absence of accuracy, noting that as far as accuracy is concerned, the Bible is a non-prophet organization.
 

He clarifies a number of scientific terms abused by religionists. For example, Physical Laws he defines as human descriptions of observed phenomena, rather than universal truths, and therefore subject to revision as new observations warrant. He tackles head-on the idea that the universe was created from nothing into something at the Big Bang. Rather, he offers proof through the Laws of Thermodynamics (conservation of mass/energy) that the universe was always here in one form or another. This argument had a particular resonance with me, as I have long had problems with the something from nothing idea of a single Big Bang jump-starting the universe. 
 

Mills says he wrote this book for the forty percent of Americans  “… open-minded readers who are not afraid to learn—in fact who are eager and fascinated to learn—about the many conflicts and controversies between science and the Christian Bible.” My atheist and free-thought friends will highly appreciate his hard-hitting candor and rock-solid enthusiasm for the scientific method, will put this book at the very top of their arsenal of argument material for combat with religionists. Many of my theist friends who accidentally are exposed to it will probably have major heartburn and relegate it to the trash bin, if they don’t outright burn it. But perhaps a few of them will be swayed by Mills’ flawless logic and lucidity of expression. I will cherish this book and keep it with my major reference works. 
 

© 2004 R. Leland Waldrip