Perloff, James.” Tornado in a Junkyard, the relentless myth of Darwinism”. Arlington, MA. Refugee Books. 1999.

Reason: During break I read a fantastic book called “Tornado in a Junkyard, the relentless myth of Darwinism” by James Perloff. Considering this is not a usual book that could easily follow the book report standards I will try my best to give you an in-depth look at this book while trying to cover some of the key concepts that I read about. This book is basically disproving Darwinism. I thought it would be an interesting book because I completely agreed with Darwinism prior to this book. That is the reasoning behind as to why I picked it. The setting would be in America, at around this time. No major developments have really happened that could disprove this book up to this point.
Plot: There are many different shaping points in this book. In the beginning (the 1960’s) he gives an account of his life prior to becoming an adult. He tells us about his prior, anti-Christian, liberal background. He explains how Darwinism is being taught as a fact today in schools. It is being taught as though it is as provable as the law of gravity, even though Charles Darwin himself called it "grievously too hypothetical." He states this in a negative tone, as if it shouldn’t be taught in schools. It slowly gets into the facts that support the fact that Darwinism is invalid. Fossil records are an issue in the book. A more interesting point would be why genetic mutations can't create higher life forms. He answered the question “What good is half an eye”. His explanation of irreducible complexity explains why half an organ won't win any battles for survival. To quote the book- "To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree." Then he also Then he points out that the classification system which is based on the fact that there are distinct differences in species. If evolution were true, it should be hard to classify animals because there should be so many intermediate forms. It would be like trying to divide a rainbow into distinct colors. That was something that I found really interesting. An interesting question that popped up during the end of chapter four was “why re extinction rates today are so high, and modern evolution is unknown.” That question, sadly, went unanswered. Darwinian evolution depends on the premise that there is no limit to the changes that can be achieved by selective reproduction. The next couple of chapters point out the limits to breeding. Species can vary only as much as the pre-existing genetic material allows. For instance, you cannot breed a dog and a cat, which disproved the whole Darwinism ordeal on that particular subject. Something that I found astounding was that according to evolutionists, pre-biotic molecules came together by chance and formed the first living cell. This book examines the probability of that happening, and concludes that it is just not possible. Later in the book the focus moves towards astronomy and not so much human evolution. It discusses human growth patterns and leaves me with a stunning statistic- that if there was only two people left on earth it would only take 6,300 years to get to the current population of 6 billion. There was more stuff in the book that talked about how we resemble dinosaurs, but it really got confusing with a lot of different pictures. The book ends with a brief overview of Christian beliefs and basically wants the reader to become Christian.
Character: there were no characters in the book besides the author who explained himself in the beginning as a very liberal person. His viewpoints definitely change from the beginning to the end, but it was more of an abrupt change right after chapter one when he starts talking about his adulthood, and evolution, and all the fun stuff.
Evaluation: I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was very educational. I usually do not like reading scientific novels but this one kept me going for the longest time. The only time I actually got a little bored was during the end when it got confusing. There were a lot of parts in the book that I needed clarification, in which I never received. However, it didn’t really affect this report thus far. I would recommend this book to someone who believes in the Darwin Theory, who someone who hasn’t decided what they believe. I did not really agree with the ending because it talked about how to be saved, and a whole bunch of Christian values that I do not currently believe in, however my views constantly change.
How does this book compare to real life? This book is actually all real. It is a non-fiction book that I enjoyed very much. This book seems to have a lot of to do with Christianity though; a Christian would enjoy reading this a lot more than probably a Mormon (Just a thought). I think everyone should read this book to just broaden their views.
Put yourself in the plot: This is N/A because their isn’t really a plot as much as just hard factual evidence.
Author: James Perloff was a contributing editor to “The New American” for several years. He has another book entitled “the shadows of power” which is about Americas Foreign policy. I liked this particular book, but I do not wish to read more by this author at this particular time.