Book Report on Christopher P. Toumey's book, God's Own Scientists

Book Report on Christopher P. Toumey's book, God's Own Scientists

Why is the scientific theory because of all these ills (many of which pre-Darwin)? What forces have shaped and driven modern creationism? These are ultimately matters of social sciences, and anthropologist Christopher Toumey attempts to answer in this book. Toumey's book is not about scientific merit (or merit theological) of movement. Instead, their efforts are dedicated to understanding; in particular social and cultural factors that attract people to it, their followers join together and determine their direction.

The integral part of comprehending expertise coincides with the understanding of a network. Slack and Wise formalize a rudimentary comprehending with their delineation of network. A mesh summarizes the diverse connections and methods that develop between these actors. Slack et al use the concepts of metaphors. Networks are like “connections” that either add, delete, or adjust the actor-network theory. The task of this idea is to find out how systems get conceived, sustained, changed and the matter behind these creations (Slack et al, 2007: 121). Networks evolve through communal awareness. Actors engage themselves in these methods and the outcome is human mediating expertise and vice versa. Through this mediation method, scholars can then calm simultaneously where the mesh arrives from and what it is comprised off.

THE recurring theme is connection between evolution and immorality. Creationist rhetoric is not always clear as to whether evolution is the cause or an effect of moral decay in society, but association is always made. Often this is connected with concept of "secular humanism." THE good description of how it is run, from late 1970, secular humanism rose from obscurity to the conspiracy perception that became main enemy in eyes of many Christians.

Historical material in these chapters includes the description of development and positions of various creationist organizations. An interesting contrast is drawn between creationists who want to win battle in science and those whose focus is on litigation and political action.

An interesting observation is changes in emphasis in creationist movement since time of Scopes trial. Much of focus is now at age of earth floods and Noah, in 1920's only important issue was human origins (many leading anti-evolutionists of time, such as William Jennings Bryan, accepted an old earth). This change is attributed to influence of Henry Morris, who made "flood geology," centerpiece of its worldview. THE second change is the creationist criticism of evolution. In 1920's, outcome was reported as deterministic and therefore dehumanizing. Now emphasis is reversed so that "randomness" of evolution is main objective of creationist rhetoric. This looks to be the consequence of view that moral decay of society (associated with secular humanism) is characterized by chaos and abuse of human freedom, caricature of evolution as "random" is used to connect more closely to decline.

Toumey's Gods' Own Scientist serves as an demonstration of how the actor-network dialogue orchestrates in society. Humans may have adversity comprehending that a robot is born for cleansing their ...