DECEPTIVE INFLUENCES

Complacency, the author asserts, is the enemy of knowledge. If one is comfortable with what one has been taught, why pose questions?

Good Morning God—I have a question: Just what is your plan? Why do you let things happen the way they do? You started out with such a good plan. What Happened?

After traveling the world as an applications engineer, experiencing cultures radically alien to his small-town upbringing on a Michigan farm, Forbes began to seriously reflect upon the why of how he views his place in the universe. The conclusions he reached altered his life and beliefs, and fundamentally transformed him as a human being.

Deceptive Influences: Life’s Emotional Opinion of God and Evolution examines the issue of education vs. indoctrination as it relates to how and why we come to hold our opinions. Big Bang? God created the heavens and the earth? Where should we place our faith? These questions are about emotion as much as intellect, and Forbes has performed extensive research and drawn convincing–indeed, inarguable–conclusions.

Depending on where we live, we might learn things totally opposite of someone living in a different region of the world. So what is correct? And most important of all, why? What is it about man that drives him to take sides and drive agendas? How we react to what life hands us is a product of what we have allowed ourselves to become, as is based on things we have developed faith in as being real.

Forbes incorporates anecdotal material throughout, personalizing the text in his expressions of very human inquisitiveness and creating an approachable whole that eschews oft-repeated textbook-isms. The author assesses the motivations and theories behind modern evolutionary synthesis, from the womb to the cosmos, and makes eminently logical demands of its very foundation.