Book(s) Review: Dan Brown, Deception Point (New York: Pocket Books, 2001); Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards, The Privileged Planet: How our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004).
One of the more surrealistic reading experiences you might engage in is to read Dan Brown’s Deception Point and Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards’ The Privileged Planet at the same time. In the Brown novel, the theory is that, since we cannot, find intelligent life anywhere in the universe (presumably including Earth) a meteorite crashes into earth comprised of sedimentary rock and a colony of – get this – giant fossilized lice. Bang your head on the desk a couple of times, take a deep breath and warp yourself into another universe wherein we evolved from the primordial slime and Earth was seeded by aliens and – like angels and Demons or The Da Vinci Code – you can just hang on for a Dan Brown kind of ride. Just ignore the traditional factoid page that always gets Brown into trouble with people who think. Because it is a novel, I will let you take the rest of the thrill ride without me.
Conversely, Gonzalez and Richards have a riveting introduction to their work, subtitled: “How our place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery.†After reading a review in Astronomy magazine wherein the book was panned, I went on-line to try and find out what the problem was – the reviewer left me clueless! I discovered that it is in the genre of “Intelligent Design†and the pseudo-intelligentsia, in its relentless attempt to stifle thinking people, simply lampoons rather than engages. After firing off a letter to the editor of Astronomy in which I trashed the review and pointed out the lack of credentials of the reviewer, I went right out and bought the book. I have not been disappointed!