Customer Reviews:
Shelley II :The middle of my century.......2005-02-16
I absolutely loved this book. Shelley tells her wild and crazy story of an actor's life in the 1950's. This includes the intense and gratifying work of being an actress and the world famous people she worked with, socialized, lived with and loved. I can say that there is drama, tragedy, humor and love on almost every page. What an exciting life she lived and she's still a young beautiful woman at the end of this book. Buy this book today!!!
Bravo Shelley.......2003-08-17
I liked this even more then the firt memory book.
It makes a light on all of a period and point of view, I do like to read about words different of mine.
She is (was?) a hard worker, a survivor, and as she recognises in her book not always a nice person to be with. But I like her and was very interested in how she sees the world.
INDOMITABLE STAR CAN REALLY WRITE........2003-05-08
Though it can be argued that Shelley Winters has assisted in creating her own legend (her ego is the real star of both highly entertaining autobiographies), there is a real flair to her writing and her memory for details (even allowing for the usual embellishment) is impressive. Her place in cinema is probably in question; two Oscars was a bit generous and her seeming insistence that she deserved to win Best Actress for "A Place in the Sun" over Vivien Leigh's Blanche in "Streetcar" is merely laughable today. But she did produce an impressive body of work (and relationships) on screen and stage and deserves credit for being larger than life, a trait that some actress of today could take a lesson from. Ms. Winters takes pride in her work and the craft of acting, which is to also be applauded, and she never paints herself in an angelic light when not appropriate. Overall, these are among the very finest autobiographies of any kind, celebrity or non-. Is it too much to hope for a third act to these treasured volumes?
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Shelley II: Middle of My Century
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Shelley: Also known as Shirley
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Book Description
When did you last encounter a myth? Maybe watching a movie, touring a museum or browsing the sci-fi section of your local bookstore? To contemporary men and women, myths seem mere relics of a premodern era--legendary stories of capricious gods, heroic deeds and lost cities. The physical and social anxieties that gave rise to myths have been dealt with more productively in our century by science, government and art. Right?"Not at all," says Philip Sampson. In
6 Modern Myths he shows that all societies, even sophisticated and skeptical societies like ours, nurture myths that distort both science and history to further cultural goals. Such myths are important guides to a society's understanding of itself.How often have you heard the story, for example, of plucky Galileo, armed merely with a telescope and reason, doing battle with a superstitious church only to be condemned as a heretic and harshly imprisoned? Even though most of the "facts" commonly assumed to be true about this story are just not so, the romanticized myth of Galileo boldly marches forward.Sampson dispels this myth and five others--that the rise of Christianity led to ecological crisis, that missionaries have oppressed native peoples, that Darwin's evolutionary ideas were embraced by scientists but vilified by religious leaders, that the church was responsible for persecution of witches, and that Christianity teaches the repression of bodily pleasures--all woven nearly inextricably into the fabric of Christianity and Western civilization. To tease apart historical fact from cultural fiction Sampson tells different stories, rich in historical detail, fascinating characters and surprising twists.
6 Modern Myths offers you a historical tapestry that unsettles conventional wisdom and provides an enlightening look at the complexities of truth.
Customer Reviews:
Great resource.......2007-08-14
We tend to believe that mythology is only for the ancients. What this author demonstrates is that our society now has our own mythology surrounding certain influential historical events. If nothing else, the true Galileo story makes this book worth a read. The fact is that Galileo was going against the scientific consensus of his day. The church merely was supporting the scientific consensus of the day. And we all know what "scientific consensus" means....
A Cogent Rebuttal of Modern Anti-Christian Myths.......2005-08-02
Social scientist Philip Sampson takes on six anti-Christian myths that are incessantly propagated through the news media, popular culture, the public schools, and academia. By "myth" Sampson means a story line in which a basic core of historical facts is altered - by addition, distortion, or subtraction - to create a picture in which Christianity is seen as a monolithic and destructive entity fundamentally hostile to humanistic values.
As timely as today's headlines, these modern "myths" include: (1) the story of Galileo versus the Catholic Church; (2) the ongoing Christian fight against Darwinism; (3) the pernicious influence of Christian missionaries on native societies; (4) Christian denigration of the body and sexuality; (5) Christian disregard for the environment; and (5) Christian persecution of witches. Sampson shows how in each case a generally accepted story has been created which seriously misrepresents the historical facts.
For example, in the chapter on Darwin, Sampson shows how the accepted story line of "Darwin and reason versus the church and superstition" overlooks the widespread scientific opposition to Darwin's ideas, both then and now, and the relative lack of empirical support for Darwinism. Moreover, Christians were not uniformly hostile to Darwin, nor were their objections necessarily based on Biblical fundamentalism.
Sampson also offers some interesting background on the famous Scopes "Monkey Trial," providing a much needed corrective for how that trial is often presented in the popular press. Even more to the point, Sampson shows how social policies derived from Darwinist assumptions - imperialism, eugenics, unfettered capitalism - were often OPPOSED by Christians.
And that is perhaps Sampson's major point: many of the attitudes for which Christianity is blamed are actually products of Enlightenment rationalism or Greek philosophy. Thus, the Indians were conquered not so much because Christianity demanded it but because modern, progressive, enlightened civilization demanded it; and if the environment is degraded, it is because since the Enlightenment we no longer see this as God's world, but man's, to do with as we please.
Sampson does not hide Christianity's historical sins. Rather, he puts them in perspective and shows how they often intertwined with other factors that are now overlooked. As a defense of a nuanced view of both actual history and intellectual history, Sampson provides an excellent antidote to the simplistic and bigoted myths which so often pass for fact.
Valuable book for defending Christian worldview.......2004-04-23
Sampson has provided a valuable historical treatise for defending the historic integrity of the Christian faith from modern myths. He points out how key issues regarding Christian history have been distorted by non-believing scholars. Their efforts have been so successful, they have become modern myths accepted without thinking.
Get it. Read it. You'll love it.
Enlightening Sober History.......2003-06-11
The overall theme of the book is fighting myths of Christianity with sober historical facts. He does not ignore the not-so-friendly aspects of those doing bad things in the name of Christianity. For instance he mentions the people killed in witch burnings is appalling and admits there were some missionaries that did more harm than good. But he does let readers know legitimate and relevant information of history that paint a rather different overall picture than what many popular myths have insinuated. Some of the historical information he presents might raise an eyebrow or two. Below are a couple of examples.
Some myths of Galileo made it appear that this scientist had the scientific facts on his side and that the Church was against heliocentric theory, ignoring the scientific evidence, for religious reasons, thereby making this a simple "science vs. religion" dispute. To give a taste of what he says, what the author puts into light is that the secular scientists of that era were actually against heliocentric theory, the evidence supporting heliocentric theory had not yet arrived, and that the Church really didn't care much about defending geocentricism at all, pointing out that it had let Copernicus publish the idea before Galileo was born and that many of Galileo's supporters were in the Church rather than among secular scientists. The motives behind the Catholic Church forcing Galileo to renounce heliocentricism and the lenient punishment are also explained, though the explanation of motives could have been done more thoroughly. While the Catholic Church is not portrayed as perfectly saintly, the notion of the whole conflict centering on "science vs. religion" is refuted fairly well.
The witch craze is put into perspective with some surprising facts. The number of witch trials was lowest precisely where the Church and the Inquisition were involved. The Church was also more skeptical of witch accusations than one might expect (the more radical ones anyway, such as claiming to have slept with Satan), and the author provided examples to illustrate that point. In the so-called burning times, the substantial majority of towns and villages never experienced a single witch trial. While he acknowledges that the number of people died in Europe, North America etc. (most recent estimates total to about 150 to 300 people per year, a total of 40,000 to 100,000 overall; he mentions that some exaggerations of the numbers have been falsely stretched into the millions) is a terrible enough catalog of human suffering, he puts it into perspective with the far greater amounts of bloodshed in recent history. For instance, the Battle of Somme in 1916 killed a million people in five months, twenty five thousand the first day. The point is reinforced with several more notable historical facts of the twentieth century.
What is somewhat disappointing is that he goes into a little, but only a very little, into how these myths emerged. I would like to have learned more about that in a book such as this. Another possible flaw is that on the section of Darwin, he mentions that the acceptance of Darwin's theory was patchy at best (which is in fact true), but what he leaves out is that most (though certainly not all) still nonetheless accepted some form of biological evolution; many scientists accepted evolution because of the book yet rejected Darwin's theory of it. This may have inadvertently left a false impression in the mind of the reader. All things considered though, the benefits and enlightening historical data still outweigh its possible flaws and I highly recommend this book to those who have a historical interest in Christianity, as well as those people who have been suspicious of such anti-religious claims of Christian history.
Valuable and fascinating!.......2001-07-03
No need to hesitate. Buy this beautifully researched, insightful book.
The author looks at 6 primary beliefs that define the modern world, tracing their development as fictions cultivated by 18-20th century Enlightenment humanists who distorted their opponents beliefs and history, even fabricating quote attributions in the process. The goal was to replace Christian understanding of God, reality and man with naturalist beliefs, derived from Greek paganism, thus move authority from God to man (specifically, them).
Because of the author's gentle style, some readers new to the debate over humanism vs. religion & science may find it valuable to first read "Atheism and the Erosion of Freedom" (Morey), to understand the underlying assumptions driving the Humanist project.
"Inventing the Flat Earth" (Russell) is another outstanding book that focuses on a single issue: the fabrication of the idea (in the 1820's) that medieval people thought the world flat, so as to discredit the church and construct a Dark Age to be be corrected by Enlightened moderns.
Included in "6 Myths":
#1) Remember plucky Galileo, who stood against the might of the church armed only with the flame of reason and a telescope? Tortured by the Inquisition and condemned as a heretic for showing humans lived on an insignificant speck orbiting a common star nowhere special in the Universe, a realization that devastated a now-undermined church? Well, nothing in the above humanist story is true.
Copernicus proposed the Earth revolved around the Sun decades before Galileo. It was widely discusssed, but evidence was lacking. The Roman Catholic Church provisionally accepted the view of Aristotle, that everything revolved around the Earth, pending other information. Geocentrism was a Greek idea, not a Biblical one.
While people debated heliocentrism, a matter of no significance in the Bible, (the main opponents of heliocentrism were other astronomers with pride vested in understanding of concentric spheres, NOT clergy), Galileo got in trouble for implying the Pope, who had gone out of his way to befriend Galileo, (even penning an ode to him in 1620), was a simpleton. Further, Galileo asserted that the Bible was written for the common man and did not need a church to interpret. This was strikingly similar to arguments of the earlier John Calvin and the Protestant Reformation, to which the Roman Catholic Church WAS acutely sensitive, contributing to Galileo's arrest.
The choicest morsel here is one that always baffled me: the notion that heliocentrism somehow devastated the church by removing Man from the center of creation. This shows total ignorance of Biblical Christianity which ACTUALLY says all things were made NOT for humans, but for the Son of God. Their value arises from God's delight in them.
When the Enlightenment lapsed back into Greek idiom, it confused mankind being given "dominion" (leadership responsibility) with the Greek understanding: "domination". The idea that nature's reason for existence is its usefulness to mankind is a Greek one, coming from Aristotle, not the Bible. It was extended by the Romans, who treated the natural environment as a conquered province. At times the confusion did seep into the church, via writings influenced by Hellenism, such as Aquinas, but was expelled during the Reformation.
At the time of Galileo, the Earth being at the center of the universe was NOT AN HONOR. It was the outer celestial spheres that were pure and divine. The Universe became more corrupt as you moved to the center, which is why Dante put Hell in the center of the Earth. The Earth was held to be corrupt due to mankind's Fall and sinful nature.
When Galileo asserted the Earth was ACTUALLY a heavenly body, far from demoting it, he elevated it (and mankind) in importance. And he wrote so. Which is what endeared him to the humanistic (ego/pride-centered) "Enlightenment" intellects.
Chapter #2) Darwin: completed the Copernican revolution for humanists, by seeming to remove God and Original Sin. Materialistic, undirected evolution meant human thought, ego/pride and power were the actual pivots around which the universe revolved, not God. The book documents an array of historical fabrications used to caricature the church's position on evolution. Humanists need to reinforce their view of themselves as rational and tolerant (because they are not), needing an enemy to attack so as to avoid self-examination (see my review of "Why People Believe Weird Things"(Shermer)). This is one reason there seem to be countless books railing against the danger of believing in pseudo-science like dowsing, but one is hard pressed to find anything pro-dowsing. Shadow-boxing?).
#3) The Environment. Shows how, contrary to the humanist myth that Bible-based human "dominion" caused environmental degradation, it is actually Greek and Roman thought, revived by the Enlightenment project (while suppressing Christianity through caricature and demonization), that gives the go ahead. To a Christian, a tree is part of Creation, designed by God. The Puritans were strong, original environmentalists, opposing animal cruelty even as their detractors lied to cartoon their motives as the opposite. It is in Christian societies where modern environmental awareness was founded and developed.
#4) The Missionaries -- shows how terms like "savage" and "barbarian" and "civilization" are foreign to Biblical understanding, but are prominent in "Enlightened" thought. Actual Christianity sees all humans as being made in the image of God thus having intrinsic worth. Accordingly, it is in Christian societies where slavery was legally banned and the idea of "human rights" has root.
#5) Human body -- punctures the idea the Christianity means sexual repression, and shows why humanists needed to invent the caricature.
#6) Witchcraft -- documents the real history, grossly exagerrated by humanists. 20 people died in Salem. But hundreds of millions have been killed and enslaved this century trying to create secular Utopias, be they communist, socialist, or fascist.
This skeletal summary doesn't do the book justice. Get the book. Read carefully.
Customer Reviews:
Great Book.......2007-05-12
It's a very interesting read, with good arguments. Whether you believe his scenario or not, he shows there are still alternative theories than what we are taught. Highly recommended.
Excellent Science, and very worthy of review.......2007-04-19
Many now realize that Darwinian macroevolution is in direct violation of many known scientific laws (such as entropy, biogenesis, mass action, and energy conservation--just to name a few), it is also quite at odds with the fossil record. Even Charles Darwin conceded that geological evidence (including the fossil record) of his day (the late 1800's) contradicted his theory. How much more do the discoveries of the last hundred years or so expose his error? Considering that every supposed time epoch of the earth now has authenticated human artifacts in those strata (proven to not have been introduced at a later time), Darwin's theory is way beyond capability for resuscitation.
What most Evolutionists fail to admit is the fact that much of their "science" has been built upon completely unverifiable assumptions (like the "complete suspension of physical laws" during some distant past epoch in order for the universe to form in accordance to their theory). Moreover, their results are often "bent" to fit their core belief systems (i.e. there "is no God," or rather, their actual deifying of the material universe itself) while some often hypocritically accuse Creationists of doing the same. Even their dating systems are circular with regard to the fossil record (i.e. they date the rock by the fossil and the fossil by the same rock). All of this, while still claiming that their "science" is true, and often that the Creationists are a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals with both bad theology and implausible postulates. The reality is: both evolutionary and creationism theories are dependent in-part on assumptions. The only difference is that Creationists derive theirs from Scripture and find true science often confirms their assumptions, while the Evolutionist essentially invent their assumptions in an attempt to support an already disproven theory.
Moreover, Darwin himself also conceded that if ever man could delve into microbiological structures and discover that irreducible complexity existed (i.e. that the whole could not survive without all of its parts), then his theory would be "absolutely broken down." In modern science, "Darwin's Black Box" (a phrase used also as a book title regarding this issue) has done exactly what the troubled theorist feared--confirmed the absolute absurdity of his theory...and then some. The irreducible complexity of an individual cell has been absolutely proven. Moreover, the marvelous complexity of microbiological structures (such as flagellum) has turned many now-former evolutionists away from the fatally flawed theory--even when some of those same scientists have yet to concede to a Creationist model (although many have). Still more, continued study of DNA has so obliterated evolutionary precepts with their discoveries that it has become increasingly obvious to many that Darwinian Evolution is, in fact, a religion in and of itself, for its defenders show a "religious fervor" in their continuous adherence to an easily debunked theory. Even Humanism (recognized in a 1961 US Supreme Court decision to be a religion) requires its adherents to "believe" in Darwinian evolution.
I would suggest several things to all who might read this review/commentary: One, buy this book Starlight & Time. I HAVE read the book. Therein, every point that others have accused the author, Dr. Russell Humphries, of failing to address is actually covered in remarkable detail. (And quite frankly, I would be surprised if the DVD, which is much later that the book, actually does not answer MORE than the original book. However, I have not yet viewed the DVD.)
Herein, Dr. Humphries does a fine job in detailing his logic and review of relevant facts regarding a young earth creation model, while faithfully utilizing Einstein's General Relativity (GR) theory to support his postulate. He points out (very respectfully, I might add) that Big Bang theorists derive their data from the same sources and process it via the same GR theory he does, but simply add the variable of their preferred Darwinian worldview instead of a biblical paradigm. The GR theory equally processes what is put into it as a "food processor" might, and the only difference that produces varying conclusions in his theory apart from Big Bang theorists is the worldview assumptions that are also fed into the "hopper." His book also contains his actual position papers as appendixes with full data and mathematical calculations in one, and his theology basis in the other.
Second, obtain a copy of "Why Do Men Believe Evolution Against All Odds" by Dr. Carl E. Baugh, and consider the facts. Pay special attention to the final chapter entitled, "Why Good Men Believe Bad Science." Therein, the author (a former Evolutionist himself) describes not only their failed "science" and its impossibility, but also the mental processes and states that allow seemingly educated people to adhere to such a ludicrous belief system (which, even some Evolutionists concede, has hindered true science more than helped it).
Spaced Out About Starlight and Time.......2007-03-22
The absurdities necessary to sustain a Young Earth Creationist (YEC) worldview are literally cosmological in scope as "Starlight and Time" painfully attests. Forcibly mating biblically induced fundamentalist dogma and magical thinking with General Relativity and Cosmology is an act of intellectual and scientific rape - but contemporary YECs never have let their sense of morals prevent them from doing what is 'right.'
"Starlight and Time" purports to show how light could travel billions of light years from distant astronomical objects during the passage of only a few thousand years of Earth time. Even YECs admit that the universe is vast - beyond any biblical cosmology however burlesque their exegetical exertions - but dogmatically refuse to cede that the earth is old - a paradox of their own making, a single snowflake in the blizzard of ignorance that typifies so-called 'creation science.'
The author, Dr. D. Russell Humphreys, posits an alternative cosmology to solve the light travel time problem and assuage febrile creationist sensibilities. Although Humphreys is a physicist, he is untrained in General Relativity or Cosmology, and it shows. His white hole cosmology has been reviewed and found universally wanting by the reality-based scientific community and old earth creationists! Even YEC stalwarts, who routinely swallow shallow sacro-scientific swill, entertain substantial doubts, although leading purveyors of misinformation such as Answers in Genesis (AiG) and the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) continue to disingenuously pimp "Starlight and Time" - even while they subtly admit that it is ultimately flawed.
The core of Humphreys' model is the abandonment of the cosmological principle. Instead, he proposes that the universe is not uniform, but rather has the shape of a sphere with a finite radius. In the model, the universe originated from a single point in the center of the sphere. In effect, Humphreys' model brings to life many of the common misconceptions about what the Big Bang actually says about the origin of the universe.
Humphreys tries to apply General Relativity to the resulting matter distribution, claiming that gravitational time dilation will cause time to pass faster the more distant one is from the center. If one postulates that the earth is very near the center of the universe, Humphreys claims that this resolves a central problem for Young Earth Creationists - how to resolve the evidence for an ancient universe with their demand that the earth was created anywhere from 6,000 to 12,000 years ago.
"Starlight and Time" models the center of the universe as a white hole, the opposite of a black hole (instead of matter only flowing inwards, a white hole constantly emits matter and energy). Humphreys fails to explain why that white hole does not appear to exist anymore - we would notice the extremely strong X-ray flux, if nothing else - but that is far from the only problem with the model. In particular, Humphreys badly mangles the standard General Relativity treatment for gravitational time dilation - in order for time to pass more rapidly far away from the earth, we would need to be near a black hole, not a white hole. Humphreys tried to salvage his model by later claiming a time dilation within the white hole, but this was equally unworkable. It goes without saying that his model fails to explain a vast array of cosmological observations, including the existence of the cosmic microwave background radiation and its anisotropy, supernovae time dilation, light element abundance and so forth.
Humphreys' findings are, to borrow a phrase from the Nobel Prize winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli, "not even wrong." Humphreys later publication "New Vistas of Spacetime Rebut the Critics" orphans his original arguments by inventing fresh fallacies to replace his former fantasies - an unfortunate pattern that permeates all of his work.
Ultimately Humphreys is wrestling with a preposterous hypothesis. His failure is spectacular and totally expected. Any YEC universe consistent with General Relativity must display extraordinarily rapid decreases in the observed redshifts of distant galaxies and cannot contain visible objects which are more than a few thousand light years away!
The redshift anomalies predicted are not observed and objects billions and billions of light years away are routinely surveyed and cataloged. General Relativity and the Big Bang as utilized by reality-based mainstream science trumps the hermit hermeneutics endemic to the 'genesis is an incontrovertible history of the universe' claque of credulous YECs.
If you enjoy convoluted and elastic reasoning as an art form, or wish to build a library of classic YEC calumnies and conceits by all means purchase "Starlight and Time" - it is a tendentious treasure. By any other metrics the demon haunted universe is brain dead and so is this book.
For a reality-based look at the cosmos try The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe by Steven Weinberg or Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes by Alex Vilenkin.
A depressing act of desperation.......2007-03-21
My pastor (a great guy) gave this to me when I expressed my skepticism about literal creationism because of the starlight problem. I found this to be a depressing act of desperation. If this is the best that the creationists can come up with - bad science, muddled thinking, and outrageous science fantasy scenarios that can never be tested, it is a very sad commentary on creationists. As far as intellectual integrity goes, this book is disgusting.
Starlight and Time.......2007-02-19
This is a religious book not a science book. If you are a religious believer save your money you don't need this book. If you are looking for science information look for a different book.
Book Description
While the importance of learning to develop as a society in sustainable ways has become a major political concern around the world, schools have been slow to express this priority in formal curricula. In this important book, Joy Palmer addresses the impediments to the development of rigorous programs in environmental education; the history of environmental activism and of its role in shaping the political climate; and the prospects and challenges that face environmental education as it seeks to shape the future of our relationship to the environment. Palmer draws on her own extensive experience and research in the field, as well as the testimony of 15 educators on the progress of environmental education in their countries, to provide an integrated model for the planning of environmental education programs for the future. Theory of Environmental Education promises to reposition environmental education at the core of educational development for the 21st century.
Books:
- Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America
- Sir Walter: Walter Hagen and the Invention of Professional Golf
- Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews, 1958-1996
- Stay Alive My Son
- Susanna Wesley, Mother of John and Charles (The Sowers)
- Talking to Faith Ringgold
- The Accidental Investment Banker: Inside the Decade that Transformed Wall Street
- The Betrayal of Liliuokalani: Last Queen of Hawaii 1838-1917
- The Chelsea Whistle: A Memoir (Live Girls)
- The Cher Scrapbook
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