Dr. Grady S. McMurtry

Hey there everybody. I am an atheist. And as such every couple of years I seem to be the receiver of some nonsense book trying to make me stop being an atheist and be something more Christian. Having gone through this four times now I don't really need to read these books to know what my reaction will be. Frustration at the author's misprepresentation of science in both fact and method. Anger at the logical leaps in which a simple statement of the author's position is considered evidence without any reference to data or honest look at counter arguments. Revulsion at twee exclamations telling me how obviously wonderful god is and whatever irrelevant tid bit the author has decided shows how wonderful and amazing his god is. The inevitable result is the stoking of my atheistic passions and a renewed depression that there are probably a scary number of people lacking the rudimentary science education and critical thinking skills it takes to see what's wrong with books like this one.

This book, when compared to others of it's ilk, is only notable in it's astonishing shittiness. The illogical arguments, strawmen and habitual substitution of the author's claims for evidence of those claims is completely unremarkable. However, this is the first I've come across that doesn't seem to have been edited, like, at all. McMurty's disregard for science may actually be rivalled by his disregard for the English language and bookcraft if this book is any indication. There is no real organization and often no central thought. He instead makes list after list of items often recycling the same bullet point for no apparent reason apart from his own rambling disorganization. There's some formatting issues as well including one page where the text is printed right at the edge of the page without it's margin.

It's hard to say if there are any real facts in this book. I am well versed enough in evolutionary science to point out every lie and lie by omission he printed...but my geology and climate science is a good bit rougher. Of course McMurtry's method is to spit out some unsourced, unexplained data point and tell you it supports his view before topping it off with a Bible verse to let you know it's beyond debate. He does this with the content of the Bible as well, though probably just with his glib summary of whatever book/chapter/verse he drops. I was not even remotely motivated to pull out my Bible and check if the Bible verses he referenced but didn't print (he did this a lot) said what claimed so I decided to regard them as the I did his science. Unreliable. After all, why paraphrase the if the original verse demonstrated your point for you? It's not like there's a copyright issue there.

As a bonus this particular edition was revised to let reader know what, as Christians, we should think about all of this climate change/environmental stuff. So, though it wasn't easy to pick something to share here's a little taste.

"What is the environmental terrorist's agenda? The Green Movement is the new home of global socialism/communism. What the communists could not do through their military and political machinery they are now accomplishing through economic means. What they could not accomplish through brute force, they are now trying to accomplish by locking up the natural resources needed for biblically based capitalism to survive. As an example, they are against both pesticides and the use of biotechnology to increase crop yields, yet these things have tripled crop production since WW II."

McMurtry dismisses the prospect of climate change with many unsourced, redundant, contradictory and unexplained bullet points before putting his foot down on the matter:

"Man is not in charge of the weather. God is in charge of the weather! (Matt. 5:45)" ...emphasis most emphatically his.

Weep for me for I have just read a 160 page crackpot chain email.… (més)