From: Foreword Magazine
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 11:19 AM
To: pjconway@realists.org
Subject: The Awful Truth AuthorPatrick Conwayhas bold ideas about the meaning of human existence in the universe and he wastes no time in getting right to the point in his book The Awful Truth.
“We are not evolving primates, nor under the care of a personal God!” he states emphatically in the Preface. “These conflicting intellectual concepts are inherently flawed; neither will survive as a viable explanation for human existence because they do not describe the reality in which we live.”
The theory that we grew from the apes is false,Conwaysays, in part because all other creatures live in harmony with nature, except man. Creationism doesn’t pass muster either because throughout its history, the Christian Church has made it a practice to simply choose to negate any new scientific discoveries that might weaken the faith of its followers.
While this book allows a committed belief in God, it is a belief that includes the idea that God has completed his experiment with conscious life on earth, and has ended his communication with us except through the Bible.
“The Awful Truth” of the title is Conway’s assertion that visiting alien forces, climactic change, disease and immorality have all contributed to a collapse of a perfect, ancient world and also in making man the flawed being he is today.
In defense of his argument,Conwaydetails historic assumptions of the greatest magnitude which we now know turned out to be false: for example, the earth was once believed to be the center of the universe.
Conway’s writing is clear and surprisingly easy to understand, considering the weighty issues he examines. He is at his best debunking both science and religion, though flaws appear when he analysizes historical happenings like the Holocaust, the Arab/Israel conflict, and the World Wars. More than a few short pages are needed to fully grasp the significance of these events.
This author should be commended for daring to struggle with these issues, even if the reader doesn’t always agree with his theories. He is correct in one important regard: Man still hasn’t embraced his role as ruler of life on our fragile planet.
-A.D. Larsen
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