The Language of God

 

The Language of God – by Francis S. Collins

One of the curses (or blessings) of shopping in the year 2023 is that it’s too easy to make an impulse purchase.  If someone recommends online somewhere, it only takes a couple of clicks before your online shopping cart is full and ready for purchase.  Back in the olden days, when you had to get in your car and drive to a store, you had a bit more time to think about whether or not you should make your purchase.  I mention this because this particular book is definitely not a book that I would have bought had I been browsing in a book department at a brick-and-mortar store.  It’s a well-written book and all, it’s just not really a topic that interests me that much, and had I not been quite so impulsive, I probably would have, and maybe should have, skipped it.

This book, from what I can tell, is simply a testimony of a scientist.  It could have been written by just about anybody, and it doesn’t really seem to make that much of an impact on the world of the general reading population.  It does state it’s a “New York Times Bestseller”, but I’ve come to take that moniker with a grain of salt.  Scientists, generally, don’t believe in God nor have faith.  This is a story of one who does and his journey to said faith.  This isn’t a long book, but there’s an awful lot of scientific nomenclature here, so it was hard for me to really stay interested.   There weren’t really any “ah-ha’s” in this book.  It’s simply a scientist pontificating on why he’s a Christian.

What might raise a few eyebrows is that the author is a staunch evolutionist. “Evolution” is a mighty bad word among the dogmatically devout, so I imagine that the author’s beliefs just might upset enough people to cause a tad of a stink.  Personally, I’ve never had a problem with God co-existing with evolution, so such musings don’t really excite me either way.

I have to be completely honest and state that there was too much of this book that I simply had to skim. It simply wasn’t that interesting for my taste.  Again, the fault isn’t the author nor the book.  I’m sure there are many who would love to read a book such as this.  I would just caution everybody (including myself) to pause a few seconds before filling your library up with books that you might not be that crazy about upon closer examination.