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Looking into the face of our alleged ape ancestor, popular Christian apologist Hank Hanegraaff dissects and debunks the astonishingly weak arguments for the evolutionary theory, revealing it as nothing more than a "fairy tale for grown-ups." The author uses his own Memory Dynamics to make it easy for Christians to speak intelligently about evolution and speak persuasively about the Creator.
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Posted February 5, 2011
Reading this book is both an entertaining and educational experience. Hannegraff breaks the creationist's trend of simply stating that evolution doesn't exist, he goes out and finds proof.
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Posted October 2, 2003
A compelling analysis of the theory of evolution. This type of analysis should be presented in our schools to challenge the underlying assumptions and assertions of the theory of evolution. One can only conclude that the theory of evolution can explain changes within a species but cannot explain the beginning of the universe or how the different species came into existence. It's time to get honest and admit we've been pushing the theory of evolution way beyond what it can support.
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Posted February 3, 2001
It has been two years since my previous review. During that interval I have had the experience of an e-mail exchange with a person who characterized himself a 'vehement anti evolutionist', and I heard my review discussed on the author's call in radio program 'the Bible Answer man'. There have been other reviews posted as well. In light of all this I would like contribute some additional observations. I was fortunate to tune in to The Bible Answer Man program just when a caller was querying Hanegraaff about my posted book review. I found it remarkable how ineffectively the author responded on the air to some of the points of my review brought to his attention by the caller. To my charge that 'He tries hard to sell the logical fallacy: some evolutionists are racists, therefore evolution is a racist ideology.' he responded that I could not read, that is not what he was doing, and then proceeded immediately to do that very thing, vilifying evolutionists. Of course I did not say that was his only approach. To my charge that many examples of Homo Erectus have been found subsequent to the original find he attempts to discredit and that there are numerous example of fossil transitions he responded 'Where is his evidence?' This illustrates how out of touch this author is with the current state of scientific affairs and his reliance on inaccurate and out of date creationist literature. To the charge the 'Evolution is no more in violation of the second law of thermodynamics than is any other process of life' he invoked teleonomy (see page 87). This is a clever retreat to a design argument and a tacit admission that the second law of thermodynamics is not the real issue. In the book he writes 'If, on the other hand the sun beats down on a living plant, it produces a temporary increase in complexity and growth.' That's of course all that life and evolution require from thermodynamics. All of the order is temporary. Even non-living systems like weather derive order and complexity from the energy of the sun. How it all started is another area of inquiry - abiogenesis. Whatever might have started the first replicating, self-sustaining organic reaction, divine intervention or natural process, biological evolution proceeded from there. There is not one thermodynamic process required of biological evolution from that point which is not observed among living things today. The caller found it notable that my review spent so much time on the author's moral and racial arguments as if they especially troubled me. Of course that is the point. This is really a political and a religious book. All of the 'scientific' objections Hanegraaff presents to evolution have been credibly rebutted many times - I encourage readers to investigate this. There is no new ground covered in this book, but Hanegraaff, like other hard line creationists puts a special effort into poisoning the well for acceptance of theism and evolution together. People can be persuaded by reason and evidence to a point, but the way the human mind operates, if this involves too radical a change in one's map of reality a person will disregard all the evidence and arguments that can be presented. According to the author, in order to accept evolution we have to give up on purpose, ethics, love, racial harmony, even God. How many people are willing to discard all that for evolution? Fortunately we don't have to. The author's narrow and distorted representation does not reflect real world data about behavior and motivation and ignores many cogent opposing philosophical arguments. It amazes me that Christian apologists will rationalize the existence of evil in the world (not just personal but natural evils such as diseases, deformed infants, floods, suffering of humans and animals for no apparent good reason) with the unknown purpose theodicy - God must have a good reason, inaccessible or incomprehensible to us, for allowing the world to be as it is, for natur
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Posted June 27, 2000
Hank Hanegraaff deserves an award for putting together an excellent and memorable addition to the many books which reveal the farcical nature of evolutionary theory. As I have followed the Creation/Evolution debate in-depth and have even written my own book on the subject, I think I am qualified to say that, although much of Hanks information is not new, his approach and style which aids people in memorizing the facts is. Although it is commonplace for evolutionists and other 'believers' to ad hominem attack people who differ with them on the scientific evidence, Hank provides clear evidence from both evolutionist and creationist scientists that evolution is a theory in serious factual crisis (as the title of one evolutionist's book 'Evolution: A Theory in Crisis' points out). It is easy for some with biased and ulterior motives to ad hominem attack Hank by saying he quotes authorities out of context or quotes 'irresponsible' statements by scientists. However, instead of merely making unsubstantiated assertions, I decided to actually CHECK the authorities Hank quoted. My findings? Out of 64 quoted authorities surveyed, 36 were secondary sources (evolutionists quoted in creationist material), and 28 were primary sources (actual evolutionists quoted in their material). From my own personal library, I was only able to check 23 of the 64 quotations. Out of the 23 quotes checked NOT ONE WAS OUT OF CONTEXT OR MISREPRESENTED IN ANY WAY. This includes 8 primary creationist sources, 10 primary evolutionist sources, and 5 secondary evolutionist sources. It was actually getting tiresome to keep checking the quotes, since every one was turning up 100% accurate in detail and contextual content. This is what factual evidence shows, and I challenge any HONEST person to go even further than I have and find anything different. And how exactly does one judge a statement by a non-creationist scientist as 'irresponsible'? Simply because it may go against the grain of established evolutionary dogma? That seems like wishful thinking at best, and self-serving ideological bias at worst. Once the 'smoke and mirrors' of pro-evolutionary speculators using ad hoc rescues is dismissed, we find that Hank provides an excellent way to remember the fallacies of this science fiction pretending to be pure scientific knowledge. He employs the acronym FACE, which means Fossil Follies, Ape-Men Fiction, Frauds, and Fantasy, Chance, and Empirical science. From the Fossil follies section, we learn that the fossil record is indeed 'an embarrassment to evolutionists,' so much so that new and innovative theories of punctuated equilibrium had to be invented to explain away the very real gaps in the record, gaps which should not be there according to Darwin's own theory (pp. 33, 42-44). Some have argued that there are 'intermediates,' and yet after so many millions of years of alleged evolutionary change, we only have about 'two dozen' examples. That makes little sense, and the evidence from even some evolutionists shows that how one views a 'transitional' form can be very subjective. In the section on the Ape-Men and the fictions and frauds, Hank provides substantial evidence of the mishaps and mistakes science has made in an attempt to find and categorize the 'missing' evolutionary link between homo sapiens and his supposed ancestors like Nebraska Man, Java Man, Piltdown Man, and Peking Man. All of these were either outright frauds, misinterpretations of data, or serious cover-ups with deception in mind. I would have liked to have seen information on Donald Johanson's 'Lucy' and other australopithicines in this chapter since they are but more examples of scientists forcing evolutionary interpretations on the evidence; another example of what Hank seems to be pointing at. In the third letter of the acronym FACE we find Hank explaining one of the pillars of evolutionary theory, which is time mixing with 'Chance.' Chance in evolutionary theory is not denied
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Posted December 27, 2011
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Posted May 1, 2009
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Posted February 7, 2011
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Overview
Looking into the face of our alleged ape ancestor, popular Christian apologist Hank Hanegraaff dissects and debunks the astonishingly weak arguments for the evolutionary theory, revealing it as nothing more than a "fairy tale for grown-ups." The author uses his own Memory Dynamics to make it easy for Christians to speak intelligently about evolution and speak persuasively about the Creator.