Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Dawson Church will surely sell a gazillion books. I wonder, however, if this book will actually get the attention it deserves. It’s really two books, not back to back, but intertwined throughout. The first is the New Age manifesto that will surely appeal to his large following. “From that place in consciousness, you live a life of wisdom, intelligence, and love. You no longer ask for love, need love, or crave love, because you are love.” For those who aren’t currently aware of Church (I was not) or haven’t signed onto the language of the genre, unfortunately, this might cause them to put the book down (I almost did). The genre suffers from a perceived lack of authenticity in some quarters simply because the language tends to the flowery. That would be a shame. Church is a scientist and offers an abundance of scientific evidence to support his contentions, the primary one being that “mind creates matter” and the second being that our consciousness is somehow universal, not individual. “The entire universe may be self-aware.” I readily accept both, even more so after reading this book. Church claims that science is the new mysticism, suggesting that science has validated many beliefs that have been around for thousands of years. And that, too, is true. In doing that, however, Church has made an even more important contribution. He has clearly articulated the limitations of science. “What we find when we examine the way science is conducted is that for better or for worse, it is heavily influenced by belief. The ideal of the scientist as an objective assessor of facts is at odds with reality.” We live in the age of science. Of that there is little doubt. We have raised the scientific worldview to religious status. In the process, however, we have lost sight of context, which, as Church points out, is always critical. We have lost, as the Chinese philosophers might say, our sense of balance. When we isolate science from context we aren’t revealing knowledge, we are dumbing it down to meet the constraints of science as we have come to understand it. Church rightfully points out that once mainstream science spills over into the conceptual universe in which he participates, it will be the scientists themselves who resist the most ardently. They, having built their reputations and careers on a model of reality that is not quite accurate, will feel the most threatened. Having said that, my only reservation about the book is that Church did not really help us to understand what those arguments are. There are undoubtedly skeptics about the science he offers. If there weren’t then this would be the biggest cover-up in the history of humanity. Many of the stories he shares are so overwhelming that it would be unthinkable that all of science hasn’t embraced them. So I, for one, would like to understand what the skeptics have to say. Not because I think they can undermine what Church says here, but because I believe that would reinforce what I believe is the truth in Church’s assertions. Perhaps, however, that is for another book. In the meantime, this is a marvelous book. And my advice, particularly if you are not inclined toward New Age thinking (those people will read it anyway), is to most definitely read it. It is well written and very well informed. I only wish he had chosen a different cover. This one, I believe, just doesn’t do justice to just how paradigm-shattering his observations are.