2 out of 4 stars
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This is a review of the book The Genesis One Code by Daniel Friedmann. This is a non-fiction that attempts to reconcile Judaism’s Genesis with the scientific views on creation of the Universe and creation of life on Earth. The target audiences for this book are those who are seeking to find out more about any relationship between the religious verses and the scientific facts.
The book begins with the need for reconciliation between the scientific and the religious views. The Genesis timeline of the creation of the Universe is provided. The logic behind how a single day of Creation is equivalent to billions of human years is well articulated. After this, the Genesis’s timeline of life on Earth and the corresponding scientific timeline are explained.
The author has made tremendous efforts to research on the topics of Genesis as well as the scientific evolution as illustrated by the numerous references listed. The author puts forward detailed calculations that link the Genesis time to the scientific time in an attempt to justify the reconciliation. There are pretty interesting points on how balanced the Universe is and how a slight change in the cosmic parameters would collapse the Universe. The scientific explanation behind ‘half-life’ and how it is useful to determine the age of a substance is well explained. Tidbits of information like potassium-argon having a half-life of one billion years are interesting.
The arguments made by the author to reconcile between the religious and scientific timelines fall short of being convincing. There are several instances of these arguments being shallow; for example, equating Wisdom with Hydrogen gas. The interpretations of the Genesis verses lack depth. The scientific reasons behind the explosion of life and appearances of new animals are not sufficiently covered. The reasons behind the major extinctions that happened before Adam’s sin are not provided. For reasons like these, the reader feels aporetic while reading this book.
There are several glitches in the narration, which indicates that proofreading has not been done thoroughly. There’s a passage in Chapter 3 that says “from the flowering of dinosaurs to the origin of human consciousness”, which should be “from the origin of dinosaurs to the flowering of human consciousness.” In many places, the hyperlinks don’t work or point to the wrong location. There are instances of redundant links for the same word. There are some spelling mistakes in the book; for example ‘subtle’ is spelled as ‘subtil’ in Appendix A. There are some mechanical errors; for example, ‘concludes’ should ‘conclude’ in Chapter 4. The formatting is mostly neat. The organization of the chapters is good.
Overall, I found this book falling short of its objective to reconcile between religious verses and the scientific observations with regards to the creation of the Universe as well as the creation of life on Earth. The reasons quoted for the need for reconciliation between religion and Science are not convincing, as religious and scientific people do co-exist peacefully today with their own views and beliefs. The interpretations of the religious verses are without depth. I would have rated this book a 3 out of 4 stars giving credit to the author’s extensive study of both the religious and the scientific texts. Since the book does not meet its objective, I rate this book a 2 out of 4 stars.
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The Genesis One Code
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Great review. I am really curious about this book. On how the author reconcile the scientific facts and the Holy Scripture for somehow it is unbelievable. I also reviewed the part two of this book. It's convincing but I give it all to God all the mysterious ways of God.
