Nonfiction Summer

So far this summer I've been working on something unusual for me in summer writing. I've been revising a nonfiction manuscript on evolution that I first completed about five years ago. My original plan had been to write a far reaching treatise on evolution versus creationism. The science part of that book came relatively easily.Oh, there was a lot of research to do, but I already had a pretty good grounding in the field and the information was straightforward.

The religious side of this discussion, though, proved to be a nightmare that I struggled for a couple of years to wade through. There were certainly disagreements to discuss on the scientific side, but there is so much more variability on the religious side. I read widely and learned a lot, and a good section of that part of the book is done. There's still a lot more to cover though.

In the meantime, I've been teaching a class called Comparative and Evolutionary psychology at Xavier for the past ten years. A few years back, I started using the scientific part of my book as a supplemental text in the class. It has gone over pretty well.

This year, I've essentially decided to cut my original book idea in half. I'm now working on turning the scientific section into a complete, standalone work discussing the history of evolutionary theory and what exactly the theory says. And then I'll seek a publisher for it. There will still be discussion of the creationist viewpoint in the book because some of it is tied up with the history of evolutionary theory. It's been there since the beginning. But the focus of the work is no longer on a compare and contrast of these two approaches.

My working title for the book is: Evolution: A Work in Progress. Here's the chapter outlines for the first two chapters. There will be 7 in all, and I'm doing the expansion on chapter 5 now.

Chapter 1. A Man and an Idea  ..........………………………….……   P.     

     A Book that Changed the World

     The Faithful React

     An Idea Whose Time had Come

     Darwin the Man

Chapter 2. Darwin’s Concept .............................................................    P.     

     Natural Selection

     Natural Selection in Action

     Natural Selection on the Galapagos Islands

     But Finches are Still Finches

     Addendum - The Age of Things

Local Borders Closes

Many of you probably know that Borders is closing a lot of its stores. No bailout for the bookstores, I guess. One store that’s closing is the store in Metairie, Louisiana where I’ve bought most of my Bricks & Mortar books over the last decade. It’s also the store where my Wordsmiths Writing Group meets, so we are for the moment a group without a home. Anyway, Borders is having a going out of business sale and I naturally stopped by last night to pick over the carcass. I’m enough of a scavenger that way, although I will weep while cracking the bones for their marrow. A lot of other folks had the same idea I did. Too bad business couldn’t have been that good for them before bankruptcy.

I bought some $300 dollars worth of books, mostly nonfiction, with about 75% of it being related to the Darwin project I’m working on. These include books by Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins on the anti-creationism side, a book on the cool new area of evolutionary theory called “Evo-Devo,” and several books by religious thinkers who are trying to resist the Fundamentalists’ attempt to hijack the Bible and Christianity for their own ends. A lot of good reading ahead of me.

I did buy some just-for-fun books. I picked up three of the “Chuck Norris” is the man books by Ian Spector, including one entitled Chuck Norris vs. Mr. T. Some light, quick reading. I only bought one novel, Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry, which I’ve been intending to get for a good while. I also bought a Batman graphic novel, and books on Dave Mustaine, Motley Crue, and AC/DC.

I do not need more books to read. But that has never stopped me before. A couple of months back I bought a new bookshelf that I intended just to hold 1) my highest ranked TBR pile, and 2) unread books by friends of mine. I’d hoped to keep that shelf under 50 books but it’s over 200 already, not counting the ones I’ll be adding to it today.

I have to face it, I suppose. I just can’t stop. My name is Charles, and I’m a Bookaholic.
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December 1

December 1. One more week of classes and then final exams. After that it’ll be Christmas break. There’ll be a lot of work before then, though. The end of the semester is typically the hardest. This year won’t be quite so bad for me, though, because I had release time so that I only taught two classes instead of my usual three.

The release time was for a long-term project to write a book about science and religion, particularly where the conflict between evolution and creationism occurs. That conflict is a tremendous waste of energy in my opinion. In the first place, acceptance of the theory of evolution certainly does not require one to believe in God, but it doesn’t require that you disbelieve either. No scientific theory can require a belief in God. That’s just not the way science works. Science attempts to explain the physical world, and it applies to the physical world only. Science can answer many, many questions, but it does not tell us if there is an ultimate truth about the purpose of humankind. People of faith approach the great question of ultimate meaning from a different direction. Both ways of looking at the world are legitimate, and—-I believe—-can even compliment each other.

My project is not finished. I completed three chapters of the work, to go with seven chapters that I had previously finished. However, as I moved into the section on religion I found that I needed quite a bit more reading to ensure that I got the views right. That won’t be easy. Despite appearances, the creationism front is itself full of divergent views.

I did make good progress, though, and also managed to finish three reference articles in addition. Unfortunately, that didn’t leave much time for fiction. Maybe during the break I’ll be able to do some more of that.

In the meantime, with the holidays coming, don’t forget great gift ideas from the Charles Gramlich library: ;)

Cold in the Light

Swords of Talera

Wings Over Talera

Witch of Talera

Wanting the Mouth of a Lover. (See Sidebar to the Right. Scroll down just a bit.)

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Last Post on Creationism

This will be my last post on Creationism for a while. I hope I didn't bore everyone too much but it was fresh in my mind from the project I'm working on. Below, I give you the most open minded approach yet mentioned.

Theistic Evolutionists: That there is no necessity for conflict between science and religion is shown by the existence of theistic evolutionists. These people are creationists, and evolutionists. They believe that God set the universe in motion but that He works through natural processes that were encoded into the universe at the beginning. Natural selection and other evolutionary processes are examples. The majority of professional scientists in the United States who are believers in God would fall into this category.

However, there are subtypes even here. Many theistic evolutionists believe that God can and does occasionally intervene in the natural affairs of the world. This would allow for miracles, although they would be rare events. However, some theistic evolutionists are also “Deists.” Deists place great store on the ability to “reason” and do not believe that God intervenes in his creation. The universe was set to run in a particular way and God leaves it alone to do so. Thus, Deists would be unlikely to pray for God to directly intervene in their lives, as in to cure some illness, while non-Deist theistic evolutionists (say that three times fast) might well do so.

Surprisingly to some, theistic evolution, although not of the Deist subtype, is actually the officially sanctioned view of the Catholic Church and many mainstream Protestant religions, as well as of many Jewish people. With this viewpoint, there is no conflict between science and religion because no line is drawn in the sand. Churches reserve spiritual matters for themselves and leave physical explanations of the world to science. Science as it exists now simply cannot adequately investigate supernatural phenomena because they are—-by definition—-outside of nature. At the same time, science, with its slow but ultimately self-correcting approach, is the only method thus devised by human beings to uncover ultimate physical truths.

Another Form of Creationism

Here's another type of creationism that I thought I'd share with you from my research.

Gap Creationists: There is much more variability among adherents of this group than among young-earth creationists. Many members of this group accept that science has proven the earth to be very old, but they still generally want to interpret the Bible literally. The result is the concept of the “gap.” Essentially, gap believers think there has been both a creation and a “recreation,” and that the period between these two is not recorded in the Bible and could be very long. Humans appeared only in the “recreation.” There is debate about exactly when the “gap” occurs in the Bible, but it is definitely before the “fall of man,” meaning when Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden. Gap creationism is one type of “old-earth” creationism.

Creationism Versus

This may seem like a rather weird post but I'm working on a non-fiction book about the conflict between evolutionists and creationists, and I've been doing a lot of reading lately on the creationist positions. (There are more than one.) Last night I was working on a section on Young-Earth creationists and I thought I'd post it here.

Why you ask? Two reasons. 1) I think it's pretty interesting that folks can hold the Young-Earth view despite the evidence against it. 2) I do not want to give a false or misleadingly negative description of anyone's views. So, if you happen to know anything about this issue, please let me know if you feel I've misrepresented anything in my description of the Young-Earth viewpoint. I want to get it right.

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The term “Creationist” is often used to designate people who believe that God created the universe, the Earth, and human beings in pretty much the form that these things exist in now. Creationists are often depicted as accepting the Bible literally, not only as a guide to how humans should live, but as an actual history of the universe and its life forms. These commonly held beliefs about creationists are incredible oversimplifications. I want to talk here about some of the different viewpoints within the creationist camp.

Adherents of the young-earth view most closely resemble the stereotype that people at large have of creationists in general. Although there is variability even here, most young-earth creationists accept a literal interpretation of the Bible’s Book of Genesis for the creation of earth. They believe that God took six literal days to do the work, and that the earth is only about 6,000 years old. This date is arrived at by counting the generations listed in the Bible. They also tend to support the Biblical report of an earth-wide flood, which is thought to have happened about 4,000years ago.

One of the most outspoken proponents of young-earth creationism is Duane Gish, an American who is trained as a biochemist, although his work for the past few decades has been outside the laboratory and in the creationist arena. Gish, who is also considered to be a fundamentalist Baptist, denies that evolution meets the criteria for a scientific theory, and urges the teaching of “Creation Science” in the classroom. This would include teaching the “young” age of the earth, and that most “fossils” are the remnants of animals killed in Noah’s flood. He is currently affiliated with the Institute for Creation Research.