Susan K. Perry Reviews My Book!

Multiply-published author and Creative Atheist blogger here at Patheos, Susan K. Perry, reviewed my book!

Who Would Have Thought?

Reason makes strange bedfellows, so to speak. Sharp thinkers aren’t limited to blue states or big cities. Those who “get it,” those who think rationally rather than having mindless faith in the impossible, are everywhere.

Even after you’ve written and published a book or two, you still tend to think an “author” is somebody distant and impossible. Can’t be you. So it’s always strange, and strangely wonderful, to hear other people’s views of you and your writing, especially when it’s as positive as this.

His paragraphs are short, nothing like academic-ese, and his conclusions are sometimes pleasantly original. I heartily recommend book Red Neck, Blue Collar, Atheist for a bracingly imaginative take on the value of reason and the potential harm of faith. I, for one, will be looking out for his next two atheist-themed books, due out sometime this year.

(Sharp thinker! Pleasantly original! Hey, that’s ME she’s talking about!)

Thank you, Susan! You’ll be first on the list if — no, when, WHEN! — those next two books come out.

……………….

BTW, those of you reading this, take a gander at Susan’s own books. If you’re an aspiring author, read her recent piece in Psychology Today, 25 Truths Learned While Writing a First Novel.

 

 

Book Review — Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique (Part 4)

[ I’m reviewing this book because I liked it, but also for a larger reason which will become evident here, and in the weeks ahead. ]

[ Also, in case you missed it: Part 1Part 2  — Part 3 ]

Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique by John Gribbin

What’s So Special About Us?

When you think about it, just our one solar system alone is evidence of the rarity of our type of life. Out of the presumed trillion or so objects orbiting the Sun (counting the planets, asteroids, the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud), only one of those objects managed to produce living things (as far as we know). Lifelessness is the rule, life the extreme exception. Continue reading “Book Review — Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique (Part 4)”

Book Review — Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique (Part 3)

[ I’m reviewing this book because I liked it, but also for a larger reason which will become evident at the end of Part 3 of the review, and in the weeks ahead. ]

[ Also, in case you missed it: Part 1Part 2 ]

Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique by John Gribbin

What’s So Special About the Earth? Well, for one thing, it was once a great deal smaller, a solitary planet with no moon, until it served as a target for a Mars-sized object. Billiard balls might collide and rebound, but when solid objects the size of planets crash into each other, the effect is more of a molten splash. Earth ended up about 90 percent the size it is today (with more matter, including lots of water, to come in countless minor collisions later). It also ended up with the relatively rapid day-night rotation we enjoy today (although it was quite a bit faster originally), a molten iron heart that powers what amounts to a magnetic force field guarding us from the atmosphere-destroying blowtorch of the solar wind, and a sister-planet (the Moon) that simultaneously helps power active tides and serves as a gravitational stabilizer keeping the Earth’s slightly-tilted rotational axis (the bit that gives us our relatively mild, life-permitting seasons) from varying wildly. Continue reading “Book Review — Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique (Part 3)”

Book Review: Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique (Part 2)

[ I’m reviewing this book because I liked it, but also for a larger reason which will become evident at the end of Part 3 of the review, and in the weeks ahead. ]

[ Also, in case you missed it: Part 1 ]

Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique by John Gribbin

Asked about the likelihood of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, or in the galaxy, or in the neighborhood (of a size for technologically-conceivable visits), most of us here would say it was possible. We wish it to be, want it to be, yearn for it to be. We might point to this or that argument from common sense, or common experience, or simply private hope, and proclaim even that it MUST be.

But in the same way we rein in our religious neighbors, drawing them away from all their wishes and wants and arguments from common sense, at some point we have to rein in ourselves, and look at, not just those factors that seem to make it likely, but those that seem to make it less than likely. Continue reading “Book Review: Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique (Part 2)”

Book Review: Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique (Part 1)

Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique by John Gribbin

From the dust cover:

John Gribbin is one of today’s greatest writers of popular science and the author of bestselling books, including In Search of the Multiverse, In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat, and Science: A History. He trained as an astrophysicist at Cambridge University and is now Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex.

Regarding life in the universe, I some years back concluded on my own that life is not some rarity, but a natural state of matter, pretty much inevitable given certain minimal planetary conditions. I based the conclusion on an odd idea I have about entropy – that life “hitchhikes” on the flow of energy from greater to lesser concentrations, and in the process ratchets up the speed of that flow, accelerates entropy, which is something the universe “likes” very much. So there’s a natural condition that pushes things toward … life-iness. Continue reading “Book Review: Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique (Part 1)”