Jim_Wynne
Posts: 1208
Joined: June 2006
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I'm still trying to get Robinson to respond to e-mail messages. I don't know if he's hasn't read them or is ignoring them. In the meantime, there's a story in the local paper about him and his book today. You can see it here. I don't know how long that link will stay alive, so here's the story:
| Quote | For a guy who does research for classes he teaches at his church on a computer decorated with pictures of "Star Wars" characters, maybe Keith Robinson's book, "Logic's End," was indeed a logical end.
About eight years ago Robinson was teaching a class on apologetics, the defense or proving of Christian doctrines, at Prayerhouse Assembly of God church when he struck on an idea for a way to lay out his critique of evolution.
"I had all this information, but I realized that this is the kind of information that many people never even hear," Robinson said. "In our day and age, one of the best ways to get information out to people is through stories, and I thought it would be really interesting if someone took this information and put it into an entertaining story."
The result is "Logic's End," the story - which Robinson calls "apologetics fiction," and probably owes a lot to his days playing Dungeons and Dragons and reading "The Chronicles of Narnia" books - of a manned space mission to a fictional planet in the not-so-distant future. The planet's large, dangerous and dragon-like inhabitants kidnap a human scientist and walk her through a world ruled only by the notion of survival of the fittest.
"I also liked the idea of doing a what-if, and this book really does that," said Robinson, the band and orchestra director at Indian Trail Academy. "What if evolution was taken out to its logical conclusion?"
The conclusion Robinson came to does not square with life as we know it on our planet. In "Logic's End," the mutations that drive evolution leave creatures asymmetrical. There is little or no consideration for the well-being of future generations. There is no art, and nothing is made or done with any aesthetic considerations.
These are problems that evolutionists cannot explain, Robinson said.
"Evolution can explain the negatives around us like slavery and abortion, but how do you explain beauty or love?" he said. "Why would someone take the time to make anything beautiful?"
The idea that living things evolve through mutation is shot through with holes, Robinson said.
"Why don't we have more mutations?" he asked. "There are a miniscule amount that are helpful, and then still disappear. Why is that? We don't see mutations helping animals and people. We don't see mutations adding to anything. They're just taking away."
Robinson - who was born in Kenosha, but lived most of his life in and around Chicago and graduated from Northern Illinois University - was not always a believer in creationism.
"I believed a lot of the alternative theories. I believed the secular scientists saying the Earth is millions of years old," he said. "There wasn't really a time where I believed in evolution, but there was a time where I believed in part."
But he couldn't square his religious faith with the science he had learned.
"There are parts of each that contradict the very basic points of the other," Robinson said. "Who were Adam and Eve if we evolved? Monkeys?"
The literalist Christian perspective won out, but the book is no rote recitation of any particular church's version of events.
"The book is called 'Logic's End.' I'm basing it on logic and science, not any specific, literal creation story," Robinson said.
Over the course of two years, Robinson (who had never attempted a book before) wrote and edited "Logic's End." It was another year before it was accepted by Anamolos Publishing of Crane, Mo., and then nine more months before there was a book the author could hold in his hand. Now Robinson can find his books for sale on store shelves and at amazon.com.
Robinson peppered the book with personal references, using connections to his day job to come up with all the alien terms he needed. The book's "Bratsche Gorge" comes from the German word for viola, Robinson's primary instrument. "Ionian Laser Technologies" comes from a kind of musical scale.
As descriptive as his writing may have been, Robinson responded to suggestions from early readers by adding, with the help of artist and recent Tremper High School graduate Samuel Schlenker, vivid drawings of the alien creatures - as well as a pair of maps and a pronunciation guide. Anything it takes to get people engrossed in the lively story, Robinson said, and get them to reconsider their preconceptions.
"One of my biggest frustrations is when I ask people why they believe what they believe and they say, 'Because that's what I was taught,' or 'That's what my parents told me,'" he said. "I want them to think, to ask questions. And they can have some fun while they do that." |
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Evolution is not about laws but about randomness on happanchance.--Robert Byers, at PT
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