Can Books be Life-Changing?

A Catholic Assessment of Evolution Theory

Weighing the Scientific Evidence in Light of Thomistic Principles and Church Teachings on Origins

by John M. Wynne of Restoring Truth Ministries, LLC

Without exaggeration, I will be forever indebted to Hugh Owen, Director of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation (952 Kelly Rd., Mt. Jackson, VA) for sending me a copy of this book and asking me to review it.

Reading is something we cannot really do enough of, as long as the authors are truly approved ones and John M. Wynne has my approval and without reservation. I thank his book for a new vision of our world, of time, and for a load of new personal challenges which I still don't exactly know how I am going to face. I've begun discussing the book here already  (see web links there on the topic ) and hope from time to time to come back to the issues confronted by his book. For now, let me say that what it boils down to for me is new self knowledge concerning the extent to which my own worldview has been tainted by common parlance, despite my own personal rejection of Godless science. I can see that I need to get friendlier with Pope Leo XIII and Proventissimus Deus and long term I hope to read St. Augustine's great work On the Literal Meaning of Genesis. Honest science, serious science with an eye to the Truth which comes from God, as explained by John Wynne and other good Catholics, has swept much more of the false science off the table.

In his 514 page book, a pared down version of a much more sophisticated work, Repairing the Breach, this one written for ordinary folk like me who shied away from calculus and physics in high school, Wynne's debunking of evolution theory, old earth hypotheses, and even carbon-14 dating raises lots of questions, but not nearly so many as it answers for me. I doubt if I'll ever again pick up another National Geographic in a doctor's office waiting room.

Wynne is not anti-science; rather, he would have us well-informed about legitimate scientific findings. Following the instruction of Pope Leo XIII, he would have us not depart from the straightforward and obvious meaning of Scripture unless reason and necessity requires.

The world deserves better than Charles Darwin...